Woltz

So I looked closely at the piece of Greenstone Mallee today and it's too twisted to use unfortunately.  I'll have to source another blank for a fretboard.  I also noticed that the neck blank has shifted a bit since it was thicknessed.  Even though it isn't dead flat I'll still progress forward with it because it's only a very small amount of bow and I'll check for any sign of twisting tomorrow.

Neck blank all marked up.  Truss rod slot is next.

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Tru dat! I made the very mistake of not making the fretboard thin enough and managed to make an extra entry to the truss rod channel. Not funny but luckily recoverable.

My neck blank is pretty much dead on 19mm and the truss rod slot depth needs to be around 11mm deep for the two-way rod I have.  So hopefully I shouldn't run into that problem.  The neck is almost exactly the same as my telecaster thinline that I built so hopefully there shouldn't be any issues.

10 hours ago, ADFinlayson said:

How thin did you go? you'd be surprised how thin you can get away with on a fretboard, the DCs I'm working on are 4.5mm in the centre after radius, pretty sure the rosewood board on my fat strat is no thicker. In fact reducing the fretboard thickness is a good way to get a thinner neck without compromising too much strength under the trussrod 

It wasn't as thin as 4.5mm but the thicknesser had also taken a divet out of the board so by the time I removed that it likely would've been below 4.5mm.  Considering I had a couple other fretboard blanks sitting here, the easiest thing was to give the board to another bloke who has something else in mind for it (other than instrument stuff) and I can just use the piece of mallee. 

Made a mistake tonight and thicknessed the sheoak fretboard too thin.  So the fretboard will now be a piece of greenstone mallee which is the second board from the left.

12 hours ago, mistermikev said:

lovely stuff but not sure I agree with the scale length and choice of tone mdf (hehe).

Haha hadn't you heard that the resin in the MDF is the secret ingredient for tonewood? Lol

5 hours ago, ScottR said:

How about knuckles?

SR

Do you mean can I turn the tuners without my hand hitting other tuners?

It's been a busy few weeks but now that I will have some free time again, it's time to get back into it.

Decided today was a good day to mock up the headstock using MDF to see if the tuners I purchased fit.

It's tight but there doesn't appear to be any tuners the collide with each other.

10 hours ago, Crusader said:

Very cool. My first two guitars were made of Jarrah!

What sort of guitars were they?  Without chambering I'd imagine they were heavy.

On 5/20/2020 at 1:11 AM, JayT said:

I'm a little disappointed at the shortcuts you've taken ... I mean, you didn't even smelt the metal yourself.

Obviously that's sarcasm born from the awe I'm in from the various skills showcased in this thread.

Seriously though, did you smelt the metals?

 I just bought a sheet of aluminium and made it from that.

However, the woodwork club that I am a part of actually has a forge so maybe for my next project I can learn to smelt the metal as well haha.

So I've been a little quiet as I've been quite busy and no work has happened on the Rick build.  But my maple has arrived and I have a piece of Australin timber called Wadjil which I'll use for the fretboard if I have enough thickness left after I take the twist out of it.  My next step is to make a template of the headstock and do a mock up to check that the tuners all fit together.  Hopefully I'll get to that and making the rest of the working templates in a few weeks.  I also need to finish the new saddles for the bridge and make the tailpiece parts now that I've tweaked the design.

Here is a glimpse of some of the other projects on the go.  A couple of pedals built using Aion Electronics boards.  Here they are wired up to test.

I've also done a couple of things on my strat build.  I'll start another thread for that.

And here is a piece of timber that I have drying in my shed that I'm trying to work out what I'm going to use it for.  We call it Silky Oak here but most people know it as lacewood.  I've always wanted a PRS Style guitar so maybe it could be the top for a PRS Style build.  It's a bit over 2 inches thick so I can split it and have roughly a 1 inch bookmatched cap to work with.  I have enough if it to probably make a couple of solid bodies and an acoustic.

On 4/17/2020 at 5:03 PM, Bizman62 said:

Some pretty wiring indeed!

The only thing showing you're a mere mortal alike the rest of us is the red wire to the jack staying straight instead of evenly swirling with the black.

I didn't even notice that haha. 

11 hours ago, mistermikev said:

I appreciate the offer but jpg is fine.  the way I would use is just the body shape as a reference.  if I were to build I would probably go with my own scale length and perhaps change other details so the main thing I do is just take the body shape and use it's outline.  I can see they need to be scaled but the hard part of getting the curves is done so... great. 

the seagull is an interesting one for me - have not seen that model b4.  no bc rich expert but I've been around.

Yeh I'd never heard of the Seagull until someone messaged me and asked if I could draw a basic plan so he could make a routing  template.

5 hours ago, mistermikev said:

what a great share.  I too love the planning part a lot and have done the eagle myself but a few oddities here that are not in my collection and I will add.  thank you very much for that.

I can send you PDFs or Illustrator Files of you would prefer rather than grabbing the images from here.

One of the things I actually enjoy about the build process is drawing plans.  Here are plans I've drawn so far for guitars that either don't have plans available or it is difficult to find, all of them are still being refined and having details added so they are at different stages of completeness.  However, if you would like any of them then send me a message and I'm happy to share them.  As with all plans you should print them and create templates and test fit everything to ensure everything fits properly first.

BC Rich Eagle

BC Rich Seagull

Malcolm Young Gretsch

PRS S2 Vela

Steinberger XT-2

Rickenbacker 330/12 (with a wider 660/12 neck)

Had a small amount of free time last night and my electronics had arrived in the last couple days so thought I'd do the wiring harness.

Here is my drawing based off different diagrams and images around the internet.

And a few photos of it all done.

Pickup wired in to test everything by holding the pickup up to the strings of one of my other guitars.

14 hours ago, komodo said:

I'm curious as to your process, esp since it looks your are very proficient in Illustrator. I'm a graphic designer by day and use the full Adobe suite, so using Illustrator is the easiest tool at hand. Usually I'll start with source images I've found, as straight on angle as possible. I'll set up a fretboard using Fretfind, then put the vector into Illustrator. Also, I'll try to get as many measurements as possible. Then, it's just a matter of doing the contours and scaling everything to match the image, and lots of tweaking.

Here's a good resource: https://www.electricherald.com/guitar-templates/

I do mine exactly the same way.  I haven't come across a better method that is affordable.

On 4/14/2020 at 10:38 AM, komodo said:

Ooooh I've been eyeing that exact Gretsch recently as inspiration for a build based on some P90s I have. Such a kickass guitar.

Any guitars that I can't find plans for, like doing this partially modified Rick, I just draw up the plans and I've actually been drawing up a plan in Illustrator for the Malcolm Young Gretsch. 

I've already drawn the BC Rich Eagle plan.

I have plans for the Starcaster and PRS already that I found online.

12 hours ago, komodo said:

Awesome!  The pickup build is perfect. I didn't realize the covers where chromed in the earlier pics.

What other pickups are you thinking of building?

The first one I did was a rewind of a Tele Neck Pickup that was DOA but I'd had it laying around for so long it was too much hassle to return and it was good practice

I've done these two for this build obviously. 

Next I have 3 strat pickups to wind for my strat build that I'm doing alongside this build.

After that I have a number of guitars I'd like to build with humbuckers (BC Rich Eagle, a Fender Starcaster and a PRS) and I'd also like to do a Malcolm Young Gretsch which has a Filtertron.  So potentially I may wind the pickups for all of those.

15 hours ago, komodo said:

Love everything about this build. The Rick and those multi-tiered pick guards has always fascinated me, What will you do to the tailpiece and toasters for finishing?

Do you mean how will I finish the Aluminium?

For the tailpiece I'll probably just polish it.  The toaster covers I bought are chrome so no finishing required.  The baseplates I'll sand smooth as you can see in the photos above, I won't bother polishing them because they'll never be seen.

I finished making the first baseplate this morning. I charged the magnets and assembled the first one.

1 minute ago, Bizman62 said:

Wood. Foam may disintegrate.

Yeh that's a good suggestion.  I have some thin pieces left over from another project which may do the job.

Two toaster bobbins wound, hookup wires soldered and wax potted.

I've started making the baseplate for the pickup cover but when I put the pickup together I'll need to put a little bit of foam or something inside to keep the bobbin from moving around.

First bobbin wound.  6.15k

On 3/25/2020 at 3:34 AM, ScottR said:

Nice!

Good to see you again.

SR

Thanks mate.  I hope to really get stuck into this build and my other build which is a Strat that I'm doing with all Australian timbers.  And I still need to paint the Tele.  Not enough hours in the day.