asgeirogm

Great tips guys, I think I was in fact doing a back-and-forth instead of one-way, and probably some other bad stuff that did not comply with what you just described Prostheta. I will try again, keeping these tips in mind, thanks a lot!

Good idea, it'll be my backup As far as I can recall, that made the most sense for me and what I had planned on doing. I guess I'll put the body to the side for now and continue on the CNC. I actually have a slight problem with the neck as far as I can recall, I just couldn't get it completely flat with my steel bar sanding thing, there's an ever so slight valley/dip/hill in one place I think that I just couldn't get rid of last time around. I'm not sure if my steel bar thing is not flat enough or if I was unintentionally putting uneven force when sanding, but I also recall trying turning the neck 180 degrees and also barely holding it and letting basically gravity do it's thing when sanding or holding the neck in a different location when sanding, but nothing worked. I'll have to take a look at that again... Maybe I should take some pictures of the problem and see if anyone has ideas or thoughts.

@nakedzen Yep I found out about that technique so I did that the second time around

I forgot, I got a dog three months ago, so here's dog tax

With the missus out of the country for a week, I thought this would be a good time to transform the dinner table into a guitar building workshop and get back on the horse. I contemplated my choices for handling the broken screw, either digging it out, gluing in a plug and redrilling - or just moving the plate a few millimeters and drilling new holes. The latter option was the obvious choice for me since it required much less work. I filled the OK hole with a whittled wooden grill pin and then somehow, I managed to drill the first hole too far from the original hole (as well as drilling the second hole off center ), so now the old hole with he broken screw is actually visible. I'll probably make due with filling it with sawdust mixed with wood glue. View from inside the cavity As a side note, keeping the guitar in a closet in the basement without enough care meant that a bit of the thin neck join areas broke off... But I'll sand that in nicely once I glue in the neck Now I'm left thinking: What the hell was going to be my next step when I stopped a year ago... Sanding a smidge and gluing the neck in seems like the logical choice, but now I need to rethink (since I can't remember what I decided) whether I will glue the fretboard on the neck before or after gluing the neck in the pocket... If I want to finish the neck, fretboard and all, before gluing the neck into the pocket, I will need to turn my focus on to the CNC I started building, finish that, finish designing the inlay, route that, glue the board on and all the jazz before gluing the neck on the body. I think I spent a lot of time thinking about the order of things to do before, but I cannot remember what I decided, or the knowledge I gained by pouring hours into seeing what other people have been doing, reading articles and watching videos. Sigh... If anyone has opinions, I would love to hear them. In the mean time, I'll dive into member builds and such to try to pick up my thought process where I left off.

Sooooo, I'm back (for better or worse )! The long and short of it is that I have ADHD and we ADHDers have a tendency to have a grilliion projects going on that never get finished, jumping between them willy nilly. Well I'm back on this one, let's go! A bit of a photo dump here on some photos I took the last time I worked on the project, about a year ago: I can't remember if I mentioned it already but I wanted to do a Strat style jack on the butt, but I wanted to do a proof of concept first: Looks good enough, so onto the real thing V Voila Pot holes drilled and control cavity routed Pots and jack plate getting a test run I had then had an F up and broke off one of the screws for the jack plate And that's where I stopped, a week short of one year ago.

Sorry for linking to another forum (someone please let me know if that's frowned upon), but here is a fantastic, very detailed thread on a laminated 335 build: https://www.tdpri.com/threads/1959-es-335td-proto-build.273300/

I agree on the face needing some work, I will need to play around with it some to get it closer to the photo

I just bought some flamed maple from magic_wood for my next build, still waitng for it to arrive but looks great on the pictures and he/she was very friendly, so I'll probably use them again in the future

@Bizman62 I first had the head on the 12th, but since the 11th is obviously a bit bigger, I moved it up so I could scale the ape a bit up, but I think having the head on the 12th is probably better. Here are some more mockups, where #1 is the original, #2 is basically what you suggested, and then #3 and #4 are some variations. I think I prefer #4, which is your suggestion but with horizontalish grain on the belly. Here's the original photo of the glorious great ape that I used as a basis for the design. The coat and face is a bit darker but I wanted to lighten it up a bit, especially since I have a dark ebony fretboard as the background.

So, I haven't had much time to work on the guitar lately, but I've been working on the inlay design and I wanted to ask for opinions. Here's the design in padauk, sapele, MOP and ebony: Here it is as a part of the big picture Couple of things I'm thinking about: Should I make the orangutan a bit smaller? Should I place it slightly higher or lower (its head currenty on the 11th fret)? Should I put anything more on the fretboard (i.e. other orangutans, leaves, bananas, what ever, suggestions welcome!) I think adding more inlays on the board might draw away from the current main inlay. I'm not sure if the size and/or positioning could be better, but I think it looks pretty decent the way it is now. Any and all opinions and feedback is welcome!

Looks great Andy, fantastic build!

Seeing as the ESP custom shop in Japan apparently still does the lawsuit Explorer, it wouldn't surprise me if they would also do the Jackson headstock if requested. If It's actually feasible for the average westerner is maybe another matter, I don't know how their ordering and delivery system works at all.

3d printed PLA. ABS would probably be better with regards to possible heat generated by the bearing rubbing against it but it hadn't been an issue for me so far

Haven't had much time to work on it lately, and when I've had time, it's been little at a time, which has for sure made me a little sloppy as I've wanted to get something done when I get time here and there. But all the sloppiness is invisible, so not that big of a deal. Hogged out the pickup cavities with a forstner Routed, quite sloppily, I only have the long pattern bit so I needed to prop up my template with some mdf, and I did not align the template thoroughly enough (and at one point I didn't fasten the mdf well enough so it slipped a little. I decided to just route ca 16mm deep pockets and then hog out a little more for the pickup legs. I did that with the forstner, but I wasn't close enough to the wall of the cavity so I cleaned it up with the router. I had a suspicion that the PUs would fit as the only pattern bit I have has a diameter of 16mm, so the corners had a big radius, and they did indeed not fit. I decided to use a 6mm bit and use the shaft against the template. That worked okay. I made a mistake when routing the extra depth for the PU legs for the neck PU, I took it much deeper than required, which in turn unnecessarily removed some gluing surface for the neck tenon. I realized that about 2 minutes too late. I needed to drill a little for the PU screws for the neck PU. Neck in the pocket I then re-planed the 2 degree angle into the neck as it was a bit off after sanding twist out of the neck, as mentioned before. I must not have tightened the fastening thing on the plunge router when planing, and I wasn't using the depth control screw thing either, so at one point, the tightening gismo vibrated loose and the bit plunged into the heel. Luckily, it was not so deep and it looks like I was lucky enough with the location that I can remove the error when I do the final heel carve. I then started sawing out the excess in the top part of the heel, and I was using a really crappy saw with a really "bendy" blade, and I don't know why I persisted so long after it was clear that I was just causing damage. Thankfully, at some point I pulled my head of my behind and stopped, took the neck to the router sled and routed the excess away. Definitely some ugly saw marks left there, but no one will ever know (well except us ) I've left some wood there on the left of the pencil line the neck, I will remove that later once the fretboard is more or less complete so I know exactly where to cut, as if I saw too much, it will be visible on the sides. Next up are is the control cavity, I've designed and 3d printed templates for routing. I wanted to see if I could save some plastic so I printed the template for the cavity plate recess, and then printed what would essentially be the ledge for the plate to sit on. When I will route the cavity itself, I will insert the white ledge part into the other one, and when routing the recess/ledge for the plate, I will remove the white part. I think it will go well. Here's essentially what I mean with a top view The cavity is definitely a little tighter than on the ESP explorers, but it seems similar clearance for the pots as on e.g. LPs so I think it's fine. I plan on soldering together a harness anyway outside the cavity and then placing the harness inside, so it's not a problem. I also put drill guide holes for 4mm magnets on the ledge part.

Sweet, will do, thanks for all the good advice guys

Well it was two layers of paper, one on each side. I've borrowed a plane from neighbor and have been trying to produce some shavings, with mixed results. I'll look into if It's feasible to stick some in there when I glue, but I won't try to hard if it fails at first.

Okay so, I looked at the pocket again and it is only ever so slightly too big on the inner part of the pocket, I actually tried wrapping the end of the heel in a normal piece of paper and put it into the pocket and it was snug as a bug in a rug. Seeing as it is so barely too wide at the inner part of the pocket, I'm wondering if going through the trouble of glueing some wood on either side of the pocket, and then aligning everything again for a template and routing again to add parts of a millimeter on either side is the right course of action here. I would love it if someone has a better idea PS. At some point I saw someone in the same situation talking about wetting the heel with water to raise the grain or swell it slightly or something, but is that really a good solution?

Ahhh okay, I thought you were taking about the pocket, not the shoulder (I only now realized what the shoulder actually is), so I was confused. Thanks you two for the explanation.

Could you elaborate on that?

To me that's by far my best option as it allows me to put the heel again all the way back into the pocket. I had seen many LP builds and I was wondering why all of them had a gap, it had to be intentional. Now I know, thanks for the info

Continued faceting Couldn't see any more twisting/warping so I just finished the carve and the headstock transition. I will then do tweaks and more sanding once the fretboard is on and all that (I can already feel that I would like the shoulder a little less pronounced, at least on the bass side) I then decided to just flatten the twisted guitar top, so I clamped down my wonderful steel beam with 120 grit DS taped to it and just sanded until everything was nice and flat After some sanding it was easy to see the corner that had lifted away from the previous plane Done! Here are a couple of pictures that show how the grain is not completely straight I've decided that unless the neck suddenly turns into a propeller on me, I will keep the neck. To be honest, after carving it out and loving the feeling of holding that in my hand, I've become emotionally attached to it, so I really don't want to chuck it in the bin If it twists on me later (and I can't fix it with a level and a recrowning), then at least it will be pretty on the wall. One thing I forgot to mention before is that I made a mistake when sanding the neck pocket, I clearly didn't sand it as evenly as I though I was, so I made it too loose further into the body, so when I realized that I hadn't sanded it enough further front in the pocket, so I did that and discovered to keep the neck snugly in the pocket, I needed to move the neck forward in the pocket by 3 millimeters. Annoying, but I could live with moving the neck pickup and the bridge forward by 3 millimeters. This was a few days ago, I just put the neck into the pocket again and clearly either the neck or the pocket (or both) have been moving a bit so now to have the neck snugly in the pocket, I need to move it forward roughly 6 millimeters, and I think that is too much, so I will have to create a couple of shims and glue them in the pocket on each side and route that again and sand until the neck fits snugly in the correct place. I will on doing that until I'm sure the neck isn't going to move any more. I will also need to reroute the 2 degree neck angle into the neck as after sanding the front flat, there is a 0,5mm difference on the end of the heel from one side to the other. I will also sand the front of the headstock a little bit to move the neck break down a bit.

I had to look up the Hand of God inlay after these discussions, man that thing is a work of art, kudos @avengers63

@Prostheta I guess the subtext of what you said is that it might well twist/warp down the line, it might not. I think I will do some more facets over the next few days and see how I feel about my chances before either chucking the thing in the garbage or finishing it. One thing that is putting a mark in the "don't chuck it" column is that I'm not sure I have a really good replacement candidate ready, so I might have to source a new neck blank from somewhere, and I'm really trying to see if I can make use with what I already have. Let's see...

I feel compelled to ask again since I didn't get a response, and I get that since I guess someone might be hesitant to answer since if you say "it's not likely that it will twist later" and then I complete the build and then it twists, I would hold you responsible. Well, that certainly won't be the case, I just don't know enough about how wood moves over long periods of time so I would love to learn more so I can try to make the best decision here. So, I really would love it if someone could share their feeling on how likely it could be that the neck would twist somewhere down the road after the build is completed, given that it stopped moving during building after being given ample time to stabilize. I just have no feeling if it's likely since it twisted a bit before, or if it's unlikely since I live Denmark and the wood will have moved how it wants to move already, or if it's impossible to say since it depends on the grain in that particular piece of wood, etc. Any input would be most welcome, and also taken with a grain of salt I just want to learn.