JouniK

Nice to hear. Neck came without installed dot inlays because I ordered the neck without them since normally they would have installed white dots. I wanted just black neck/fretboard. As I understood their molding process the inlay holes are fixed in their mold casts. At the current state of the build where I am now they are in place. but I have not yet posted the photos about those stages. I will in the following days.

I think they at that time advertised that it would be "impervious to humidity and temperature variations". That does not sound very good.

Routing control cavity and recess for plate. Neck to body. Flaxwood neck already had fitted bolt threads in the neck but the "outer" ones were in the way because I wanted the access to upper frets to be different than in a normal strat. So I decided to fit my own. Which brings me to one thing that this material is difficult to work with. It sands like wood but drilling hole are more precise work than working with wood. The material cracks under pressure unlike wood when screw or in this case insert nut is screwed in. The hole needs to be big enough to fit the insert in but small enough it to cut into the material. I ended up drilling a hole big enough inserts to go in but not tightly enough it hold in place. Then filling the insert threads with 2-component metal glue. Routing mistakes continued. Trying to route a recess type of thing for the input jack I managed not to check the router bit bearing to get in contact with the template so I also routed the template. So again changes to plans and new plans how to fix this one. Decided to cut a cube with a input jack hole in it to fill the gap. Then did the control plate using the template I used to route the cavity. Then some wiring holes

I have been anxious to play this thing from the start. I played one Flaxwood model at a trade fair and liked it. One speciality is that this material is not affected by moisture or temperature changes. Of course one thing was that the company sells these necks separately and already fretted.

I did not have any model drawings or templates and I wanted to do a bit of my own design. First thing was that I wanted a light weight and ergonomic design to reduce stress to my shoulders when playing hours or sit the guitar tightly on my lap when trying to records something. I knew that Ola Strandberg design has all these features already figured out and it looked very pleasing comparing to other manufacture models out there. So I searched online a picture from Strandberg Masvidalien Cosmo -Boden model and started sketching the full size body design to a piece of paper. Made several designs and tried to figure out how they would sit on my lap or standing up. What changes I wanted to make to look better. Is it just me or do you guys do this kind of thing or not? This is the design I came up with. Had to cut a piece to the bottom horn cause the blanks were a bit too small: ...and this is how it turned out when routed the pickup cavities and neck pocket. This was also a first time I used a router. Had to a few test runs with router to test the fit of the neck pocket. I routed out the neck pocket before I cutted the body shape. I figure that doing it in this order it would easier to have the template secured in-place. Turned out that the neck pocket was spot on: Next up cutting a recess behind the bridge/tuning machine. I originally designed that this recess could give protection to the bridge when positioning guitar in a "more" classical way. If that makes sense. But here is the first thing I messed things up. I did not make proper template for this and the thing that happened was that the template was not big enough for the router and the router flipped a bit. I should have made the recess before cutting the body shape. This led me removing the recess all together from my design. The next thing about templates. I bought online a premade template for the pickups. Fitting pickups to these were ok and tight which led me believe that pickups would sit nicely in the cavities. No no no. A bit anxiously routed the pickup cavities only to find that the router bit was too large to route the corners correctly. I found out the workshop did not have small enough router bit with a bearing to route the corners of the cavity. So the instructor came up a plan to carve cavity corners with a chisel to fit the pickups. Nerves were blown when carving the corner bigger the chisel chipped a piece off from corner where I did not want. I managed to correct by gluing the chipped piece back. This was the time I threw the chisels away and started routing again cavities again. Now slightly moving the template to the side. This helped but the chisel marks were still noticable. This time I also started looking the pickup mouting. It found out that the pickups had screw threads in them. So now I can make pickup rings of my own and hide the mistakes under them. Hurray!

Yes. Hated making the templates so I cut corners and found making unnecessary mistakes. This was one thing that I should have done better on my first build.

First time at the workshop that I found from the neighbouring town. Hourly charged workshop where I could find all the power and hand -tools for the project...or so I thought. First off was planing the body blanks and joints. Then gluing the body pieces and blanks together. Chopping off the head from the pre-manufactured neck and drilling side dots:

Hi, This is my first attempt/journey into guitar building. Before starting the build it took about 3-4 months investigating what steps needed, where to purchase parts/woods, reading how-to articles online and most difficult thing was finding a facilitiy to do all the wood work and finishing. Plans have been changed quite a lot during the project when issues came up. Issues were facility/budget/time -related. Name: Aquilae 50. Infuenced by the color scheme that I wanted the body to have. Here is the specs for my build: Shape: Headless 6-string. Heavily influenced by ergonomic design by Ola Strandberg (Boden model) Body woods: Poplar Burl -top (15mm, bookmatched 2 piece) + European Alder (2 piece) Scale: 25,5inch, 22 frets Neck: Bolt-On Flaxwood Hybrid with jumbo nickel frets (pre-manufactured without filled fretboard dots) (Wood fiber composite -material) Fretboard dot inlay color: Black, Side dots: Orange (luminous) Hipshot 6 String Guitar Headless Fixed -bridge (tuning machines) + traditional headpiece Pickups: Fishman Fluence Tosin Abasi -set Pickup Selector: 5-way Schaller Megaswitch 1 volume -pot Here is where it all began:

How would the oil finish look when voids are filled with epoxy or glue+sawdust since it does not sink into those? Would it look odd? I am now planning on doing my own oil+polyurethane mix (like danish oil) to get a bit of a film build up on top of the body. Probably that would add more durability and look more consistent when voids filled with epoxy etc. I probably have to do some test of my own with the little left overs I have from cutting the body plank. I hope I have enough of the oil and stains to do those.

Any suggestions on how to get the wood more durable by still using the finishing oil I already purchased (Crimson Guitars Penetrating finishing oil)? Mix in a bit of shellac maybe or add something else after the oil? Earlier I was looking into Danish Oil but read about the bad odor it has and disregarded it as valid choice.

I have a bottle of titebond original. if I mix that with dye+sanding dust would that be too stiff to get exactly to the voids? Thinking that can I get the excess off by sanding from pores around the voids to accept stain and oil again or would that be even an issue?

I chose oil finish so that it would be as "organic" looking as possible. Yeah, I noticed that burl is pretty soft and porous but thought that several coats of oil would make it tougher enough. Do not like much about laquer or poly finishes. And because I do not have equipment or separate place to spray those on so those should be wipe-on products.

Hi, Suggestions for methods of filling poplar burl (1cm thick drop top) voids when using water based stains and an oil finish? I am pretty new to building guitars and wood working let alone working with poplar burl and was wondering how would you guys treat the wood when option is to use water based stains and an oil finish. I want as much as possibly to highlight the wood textures with stains and use an oil finish. How do I minimize the affect of filling the voids with glue etc. to stains or oil finish? I have read about filling the voids with epoxy/CA glue, CA glue + wood dust/coffee grounds or let the voids open. Any pros or cons to these? How about sealing the grain?