n8caster

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

c) cut along the orange lines continuing all through the headstock and add contrasting veneers - or several of varying widths and colours if you prefer! The dark red lines are just for clarifying the idea, it could as well be purpleheart with a bright green 0.55 mm veneer to for accentuating the transition.

This would certainly make a bit of a statement! 

16 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Do you have any fretboard off-cuts left? It is common to cut strips from the fretboard blank, cut the slots, and then glue the strips back on as a blind binding. If not, I'd go with @Norris's suggestion.

SR

Yes, but unfortunately I cut fret slots in before rough-cutting the board to shape, so the offcuts are slotted. I might be able to salvage them or glue them so the slots are aligned accurately.

4 minutes ago, Norris said:

Maybe choose a contrasting wood (maple?), and slim it towards the nut end to get a consistent width of "binding"

I've been thinking a lot about this option. Since the width at the nut is currently correct, the maple "binding" would taper off toward the nut. I honestly think this would be a cool look, but it's definitely not the kind of aesthetic I originally had in mind for this build. 

There are two alternatives for laminating. 

     a) First glue up maple and rosewood in the correct thicknesses, make wedges from that assembly, and then glue those to the neck. This would give the most natural look, but if not done accurately there would be some odd looking spots. For example, you'd likely see where the rosewood isn't the exact thickness of the original board on the heel of the neck. 

     b) Slim the neck down further at the nut end. I could then add the "binding" in a consistent thickness all the way down the neck. 

Both of these would be pretty challenging, but I might be able to pull them off. Ultimately, though, I'd still have a neck made with some compromises.

Overall I think I'm leaning towards installing the neck and bridge as is now, and then building a new neck for the guitar a few months from now when it's easier to run out and get supplies. It would be easy enough to re-route the neck pocket to accept a wider neck, and I can use this neck as my practice run. This will also give me a chance to see what I like and dislike about my neck (in terms of shape and thickness) and make other adjustments.

Upon further investigation my neck is indeed too narrow toward the heel. Here's what happened...

When I made my template I knew that the width at the nut and bottom of the neck needed to be accurate so I checked the dimensions in my model and sanded them to exact width. When I realized my neck was too long I cut off an inch from the bottom of the neck, and in doing so the heel was moved to a thinner part of the neck. I didn't realize this at the time, so now I've got an extra skinny neck.

So what do we do about this? 

I set up an experiment by placing the bridge 25.5 inches from the nut and pulling some thread into position to see how the E strings would lay on the fretboard:

Apologies for the difficult-to-see orange thread (it was the first string I could find). As you can see with the E strings approximately at the correct spacing at the nut and then pulled through their saddles, the strings will indeed be very close to the edge of the board in the upper positions. 

Here are my options moving forward:

     1. Just live with it. The guitar will be perfectly playable up through the 17th fret or so, and I'm not exactly a shredder who spends a lot of time in the upper register. This is my first build after all, and this would give it a little "character".

     2. Find a bridge with narrow string spacing. I did some preliminary research and couldn't find any tremolo bridges narrower than 2-1/16" spacing. If I could find a bridge with 2" spacing I would be golden. Anyone seen something like this? 

     3. Laminate some wedge-shaped strips of wood to the side of the neck. I haven't carved the neck profile yet, so this is likely doable, but there may be some interesting cosmetic results. This would also be challenging for me to pull off accurately with the tools I have at my disposal.

     4. Make a new neck. Yikes. 

What do you think? Is there something I'm not thinking of? I'm definitely open to suggestions!

23 minutes ago, komodo said:

Cool cool, just checking. You hate to get down a road and have to go back, That said, sometimes redoing things or figuring out how to fix things is what really builds your strengths.

Haha - I know what you mean. I got pretty good at making MDF templates after realizing my drawings weren't sized appropriately.

3 hours ago, komodo said:

Does the neck have any taper to it? It looks almost the same width from the nut to the heel. If you draw lines from each bridge saddle to each nut slot, they should taper inwards as the nut is not as wide as the bridge. If the heel of the neck isnt wide enough, the strings would not be on the fret board.

There is a taper. There's a bunch of extra rosewood above the nut that I think is making a bit of an optical illusion. That material will get removed when I cut the headstock down to final thickness. 

I just measured, and I'm sitting at right about 1.7" at the nut and 1.89" at the 12th fret. That should give me just about the right width for my tremolo saddles at the bridge. 

Thanks for looking out though! I'm 100% expecting someone on this site to find a critical error somewhere in the build process. So far so good  

9 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Hi

Excellent progress and some good work!  I like that fret slotting jig.

As you say, the trussrod can't go anywhere.  And in use, it will be pressing hard in at least three places at the slot tops and bottoms.  So assuming the slot is reasonably tight and accurate - and yours looks OK - it is very unlikely to rattle.

In the unlikely event that you find you don't need any truss rod tension to get the correct relief, then tighten the spoke nut until you just start to feel resistance - it won't bend the neck but it will ensure the rod is firmly held in the slot.

Thanks! I was worried that I had overlooked something critical, so glad to hear my setup will likely work out. 

Hi All,

Sorry for the long time between posts! I'm finding that I'm a more diligent builder than blogger

Anyway, I've made a bit of progress on this build. Still a long way to go, but honestly I'm quite proud of how far I've managed to get so far. It's starting to look like a real guitar! 

I started by making templates from 1/8" plywood and then transferring those to MDF. I used the plywood first because it was a bit easier for me to shape and transferring to the MDF helped me practice with the router. I was then able to cut out the body blank.

Neck Templates

This is where I ran into my first issue. I didn't realize until after I cut out the templates that my blueprints were about an 5% oversized. Not a huge deal for the body, but the neck needed to be trimmed down to avoid scale length issues later in the build.

Trimmed Down Neck Template

Body Templates and Routed Body Blank

I also cut the templates for routing pickup and electronic cavities. I didn't buy a pre-made template for this, so I'm super pleased at how the cavity shapes look. I'm waiting to get the neck in position before routing the cavities in the actual body.

Pickup and Electronics Template

Next I went to work on the neck. First step was to get the truss rod channel routed. I'm using the StewMac hot rod with a spoke nut. I routed most of the channel with the appropriate sized bit, and had to hand chisel the larger recesses for the spoke nut. This was my first attempt at chiseling, and again I'm pleased that I didn't butcher it.

Truss Rod Channel

I had to resaw a thick offcut of rosewood I bought on the cheap on my bandsaw (this is my first project after all...), and managed to plane it down to the appropriate thickness. I built a jig to work with my fret scale template for cutting frets and went to work.

Fret Slotting Jig with Indexing Pin

Slotting Action Shot

Fretboard Glue-up

Then I routed out the neck with my template, and things are starting to look promising! I cut out an access for truss rod adjustments just past the 22nd fret. I think this looks a little more elegant then having the rod poke out into the body with an access cut into the pick guard. 

Truss Rod Access

Routed Neck and Body

I can almost hear the riffs already...

One question I have is related to the spoke nut truss rod. After I glued the fretboard on I realized the truss rod can slide right out of the heal of the neck. Once the neck is set in the body the rod obviously won't come out, but I'm concerned about rattling issues and the function of the rod. My instinct is to wrap the rod with some teflon plumbers tape and push it back into the neck with a snug fit, but I'm wondering if there is something more secure I could try. If anyone has run into this I'd love to hear how they solved it!

17 hours ago, JayT said:

Heartbreaking! Good news is it looks like the split will glue up and not be noticeable. 

For future designs be careful about cutouts with a small radius (like the pointy end of your teardrop shape), especially in the direction of the grain. Cracks will tend to propagate from those points. On the other hand that's one of the coolest looking headstocks I've seen in a long time. 

3 hours ago, Gogzs said:

I also skipped getting a jig for my first build, and I'll probably skip getting one, period... I read on here a few tips for cutting fret slots that I followed and they turned out marvelous:

Draw a center line across the fretboard (will be usefull later when cutting, also, easier to make the frets 90 degrees angle to the centerline)

Use a long ruler with mm markings and mark every fret position with it from the nut. Don't use a caliper measuring fret to fret, errors will accumulate and you'll end up with a bigger mess than just marking them with the long ruler.

I hand cut the slots with a japanese style saw. Use the center line in the reflection of the saw blade to make sure you're holding the saw correctly (you need to be sure you're 90 degrees to the fretboard, and that the cut is 90 degrees to the center line... so if you hold your saw correct, the center line will appear to continue through the blade in the reflection, that's when you know you're holding the saw correct). 

Take your time and enjoy, not much can go wrong if you measure twice and cut carefully

Great tips!

6 hours ago, Muzz said:

Something like this works a treat and won't break the bank

I'm glad you posted this image. I was already over-thinking the jig in my head. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.

7 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

like that silver(ish) look to it.  looking fwd to watching your progress.

It does look good in silver! But I actually haven't decided on a color for the finish. I'm almost definitely going to go with a solid color but I'm waiting for the guitar to tell me what color it wants to be lol.

I'm definitely open to color suggestions. The pickguard material I bought is black.

1 hour ago, komodo said:

Welcome!

With no neck tilt (assumed) put lots of attention to neck pocket depth and neck height above the body. That will largely determine action and playability.

Thanks! Setting the neck is probably one of the two steps I'm most worried about. That and sawing the fret slots. I've got the correctly sized fret saw from stewmac, but their fret sawing jig was a little beyond my budget for build #1. I'm going to have to figure out how to make my own jig. 

Jay - awesome work on this. I'm about to embark on my first build and seeing your progress is pretty inspirational. Can't wait to see these beauties finished!