Bizman62

11 hours ago, Radmcg said:

 Im afraid if I sand anymore I will be through the veneer so I'm trying to fill the areas

If there's too much glue under the veneer or if the veneer is sort of "too large" to nicely fit that place, you can try cutting the bubble along the grain line and ironing. I've even seen a video where they cut a slice off of a larger bubble to make it fit but that was scary! For a fingertip sized bubble a single cut may well do the trick, test in a hidden area first!

3 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Something else I found interesting, the Mirka abranet pads are barely touching it, I switched the sander over to the 5" pad so I could use my 5" xtract discs and they were considerably more effective at removing paint.

I've noticed something similar with Abranet. It works fine for some surfaces but not so well on others. My local car paint dealer once gave me a sample pack of 3M™ Cubitron™ II Hookit™ pads which are intended for sanding finishes smoothly but effectively. They also seem to work well on wood. Abranet still has its use but it depends on the task at hand, often requiring testing which one works best.

3 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

Are you saying I should hire a pro with a belt sander?

I consider you pro enough, just pointing out that there's really rough grits for really tough finishes.

And I guess after all these years you knew what I meant. Or, as @mistermikev put it shortly after I followed you to this forum, "I thought he was your friend!"

8 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

80 grit abrenet pad, this took a long time - the finish on the back was seriously thick.

Back in the day when we bought this house we wanted to get rid of the old paint on the floor and hired a pro to do it with a big belt sander, the base was a square foot or so. And the belts: Starting at 16 grit he used several sequences before getting to 100 g for bare wood. The actual thickness of the old paint may have been somewhere around one mm or even less but the old skool floor paint was made to last.

40 minutes ago, RVA said:

The original idea was to do it as a form of relaxing, but then I learned about tear-out, cupping etc, so it is a mixed bag!!

Isn't it relaxating to find out that there's ways to deal with or even prevent tear-out, cupping etc. and that all you have to do is ask?

And that nothing truly bad will happen if the abovementioned happen, they're just an excuse for redesigning. Build once, plan three times, change your mind and end up with the urge of wanting to do it again, only a bit differently...

Recreation in guitar building should be understood as re-creation, creating something again, and again, and again...

13 minutes ago, RVA said:

I finally have a reason to try out CAD software!

Or if you're lazy can use a pencil and a ruler you simply guesstimate use a contour cauge to sketch the cross sections at 2nd and 12th fret of your preferred neck profile and draw a picture looking like the CAD produced one.

2 hours ago, RVA said:

Your calculations are impressive. That side of the brain never worked well for me!

My wife helped me.

30 minutes ago, Asdrael said:

Just remember they are there when shaping the neck so you don't sand through

That's a good reminder! The height of the rods has never been mentioned in this thread unless that piece of information slipped my eye.

Back in the day I compiled this piece of math for calculating how much thickness you'd need for a flat inlay piece so it won't be sanded through when radiusing the fretboard. It might help estimating how much wood there is to cover the rods. If the rods are properly seated to the bottom of the slots you'd only need a single mm to hide the rods. Strength wise they could even peek through but making that look good might be challenging.

The actual numbers depend on the neck shape, but for a half round neck R would be about 22mm at the first fret.  Y is what you'd want to know, in this case in two locations. And just for clarity the drawing is "upside down" for this purpose, the fingerboard would be at the tip of the triangle.

If you've used pva glue (like Titebond or white glue) for gluing the veneer using a regular clothes iron should melt the veneer and when it cools down it should stick back. They even sell pre-glued veneer sheets to be ironed on for furniture makers.

We have an expert here about that subject, google this site for applying veneer.

Tinkering with the details, had to fill a knot hole and a cracked knot. Fill, harden, scrape, rinse and repeat. There's still bumps and dings but as we're talking about wood that was used as step at our front door they sort of belong to the picture. I just had to fill those that would grab the clothing or scratch the skin when playing.

Went through it all with a 1000 grit pad and applied a couple of layers of my BLO-poly blend. It's got a nice sheen, I may or may not consider the finish done. As it only takes a few minutes to apply and then wipe the excess off after half an hour I may add a protective layer or two. Then again, having our living room smell like a paint booth wouldn't be comfortable and it could even pose a health issue.

It's not about "good eyes", it's something in the spine, hard coded to our caveman within. Seeing things that don't fit the pattern like grass swaying against the wind at one spot was a life saver as the culprit might have been a saber tooth.

7 hours ago, henrim said:

The middle tuner on the right (treble side), is a bit off though.

Thanks, I have been watching it, seeing there's something wrong with the string angle compared to the adjacent ones. That explains it. The human eye can be ridiculously accurate at times!

9 hours ago, Asdrael said:

Strings are between 2 to 3° off straight, which should be no issue whatsoever.

You definitely won't need a String Butler with that design! Nor is there any chance for the high e string to fall off the nut slot like in some Jackson guitars.

Yet another trick to consider: How about locating the tuners about 1 mm inwards? Just enough to straighten at least the outermost strings. The knob shaft should be long enough to allow such minor adjustment - if I'm not totally mistaken there's headstocks with curved sides but the tuners are aligned on a straight line.

There was some discussion in another thread about the radius of the bridge being different to that of the fretboard. The conclusion was that the difference is measurable but it's fractions of a mm which many players may not even notice. Yet sometimes even the tiniest inconsistency may make the guitar less pleasant to play - just think about compensating the string thickness on the nut! So yes, filing the radius may be worth the effort but I'd recommend baby steps with a week of playing in between to find out whether it's for better or worse.

As I don't have access to a PRS this idea may not be applicable: Do the threaded inserts have collars? If so, countersinking them might give some clearance.

I agree with @henrim about the headstock. It looks nice and the string angle at the nut is close enough to straight string pull. The slight angle reminds me of PRS but they have the left and right tuners aligned. Anyhow, straight string pull isn't a must although it helps with tuning stability when bending. But have you ever heard any LP user complain about that?

There's one minor thing, though, that caught my eye: The string pull on the bass side is straighter than on the treble side. Yet most of the bending happens on the plain strings so that's where straightness would be most beneficial. Easy fix: Cut the lower corner a bit:

Yay! The Xmas hiatus is over! Measured, angled and double checked to find out where to cut to make the back plate line up with something. Also, don't you think a bevel at the edge of the cover hides nicely that it isn't a hermetic fit?

Adding some oil made it look much better! The birch almost got the same hue as the pine, at least in some parts.

There were scratches on the headstock veneer so it went through some scraping and sanding, and reoiling. The remains of the iron acetate handling became subtler which I like a lot. And a similar treatment for the back of the headstock.

Not much done or so it seems. But if there's a flaw in any detail it will bug you until it's fixed, don't you think? The cavity cover now is lined up with the centerline which also aligns it with the back spine of the neck and the back of the headstock. And I'm still not 100% positive that it's going to be the final iteration!

27 minutes ago, henrim said:

What comes to photographic gear, I’m more a prime lens guy

That makes you a more serious photographer than the average Joe. Back then I bought a Nikkormat SLR and a wide range zoom, something like 35-105 with a poor lens speed, I soon swapped that to a slightly better Tamron 28-200. Most of the time I could have done with a good 50mm which I later found. And maybe something like a 150mm for more tightly cropped images. Same with guitars, I rarely touch the pots or even the switch and if I do it's not during playing, it's mostly during the "sound check" to find a setting that suits my mood - I'm not playing in a band so it's just me and my tiny amp and maybe a YouTube backing track.

Back to the subject, I guess most amateur players only need a couple of settings. They may test everything but won't actually master anything - trying to find their voice might be the closest definition and the amount of owned or at least tested gear is comparable to the lures of a fisherman. As you know new lures aren't for more suspicious fish, they're for the fishermen. There's tons of recordings of brilliant guitar players to be influenced by but most players don't have the itch to actually study the instrument to reach the level that would take them into the same row. Skillful, yes. Musical, definitely. Determined... One can always say that they don't have the time to practice because they have to work for their living but the actual truth is that if the itch is strong enough there'd be nothing to stop them.

One good sound is all that's needed if you can play like a god.

Heh, using/not the tone seems like using the zoom lens in a camera. Don't know about how people nowadays use their cell phones but at least back when I was more into photography they launched a pocket size dual lense camera instead of a zoom, just because it was only the extents that an average Joe would use. A switch for various pickup settings sounds just like that!

You may also want to test with other values for a tone you like.

Haven't done it, but addressing the potential treble issue is very simple: A resistor of 500k would equivalent a 5ook pot without the adjusting ability.

At least in my understanding, but I may be wrong.

7 minutes ago, Akula said:

do it with mirror acrylic

That would tie up with the other damaged mirror acrylic parts. Is the mirroring surface easy to scratch from the bottom side? If so, scraping the mirror off for your logo might look interesting.

9 minutes ago, henrim said:

For setting and locking intonation. 

Oh... I've always thought that intonation screws are longitudinal only. New thing learned!

So, now you made me watch a video about how to intonat a FR, not as straightforward as with a more traditional bridge!

1 hour ago, henrim said:

just put something under the outer saddles to get the feel.

Pieces of a soda can work well with metal. A dab of super glue can be used to align several layers.

2 hours ago, henrim said:

No, not with set screws. But yes, with shims.

Ahh... Excuse me for my stupidity, I've never actually used a Floyd: What are those hex screws for?

Umm... Aren't the bridge pieces individually height adjustable? If the actual base has a radius too tight, raising the outer pieces should straighten it.

Also, you said you 'think' that the bridge radius is similar to the nut. But have you actually measured it? Eyeballing can be surprisingly accurate but sometimes our brains do tricks to what we see.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!