Nicco

Yeah, I get you now on the club look, agreed, I think it looks great too. Also hearing you on the grain filler thing. I should probably add why I'm aiming for the blue. So most importantly, I was looking at the other guitars hanging on the wall and basically it's a gap in the colours. Ha ha. I've got a cheapie black bass as well as an Ibanez, my first guitar which was a strat knock off is a wicked metallic green, I've got an old cheapie accoustic with it's natural yellowy colour, then my one I made at the course all those years ago which is the pinky/purple explorer. So the bluey coloured stone in the fret board was picked to fit that and to hopefully tie it all together. Having said all of that, if I can't make it look good then I would still be okay with a more natural finish on the body and just have the blue accent on the fret board. My test piece is looking okay though. So I started again to sand it closer to a finished point than the image I posted before, the coats of clear, then mixed the finish and dye 1:1 and did a colour coat. It's a little splotchy in places as it was starting to dry while I was applying it; so there's a lesson in that for when I'm trying to do a whole guitar body. Next step will be a dark burst edging. I actually really like the colour, but I'm a bit disappointed at how little the grain of the timber shows through, maybe it's cause I'm doing a wipe on finish, but it seems the grain gets distorted and hard to see after the colour goes on.

Bizman, thanks for the link to Drak's Beryl build; very cool. When you say you'd be tempted to go for the "club" look in this case, what exactly do you mean? And also, in your previous post you mentioned possibly going a matching colour grain fill? Did you mean a matching the timber colour, or matching the dye colour? Or something else? Drak, thanks again for chiming in, I see you popping up in a lot of topics talking about finishing, so really appreciate your input. Yep, you've picked the wood type, it's Tasmanian Oak, which is in no way related to real oak, but looks and acts a lot like it. Ha ha. I went and had a look through your table top tele's build thread, so saw the before and after the grain fill on one of them, I actually couldn't believe how much of a difference it made. Looking at the pores on my timber, they look a lot closer to what you've got on the yellow one you've linked here; in terms of it's going to be lots of random little dark pores scattered, more so than the nice, structured grain lines (if that makes sense) like the table top ones, or even the crazy looking middle guitar you posted. So when you say you're spraying clear and shader coats, are you using a proper spray gun in your case? And is it a lacquer, or something else you're using? And do you mix up the shader coats yourself with a bit of pigment from somewhere? I don't have any spray equipment here, and the dye I currently have (I know I can always buy more, but as a starting point) is a water based dye. Could I use a similar approach using a wipe on, water based polyurethane; my thought being I can use my existing dyes to do the colour coat; or am I just way barking up the wrong tree here? I could use a spray on clear which would be easily found in a aerosol can, but not sure where/if you can get colours in that around here other than the basics or solid colours. I've started a small test piece with the polyurethane and some dark filler, will see how it looks. I'll probably get to chuck some colour on it over the weekend, hopefully. Thanks again for all the ideas though, I'm definitely keen to play around with different options and get something cool - my biggest fear is ending up with a guitar that looks it's best when you see it from behind, ha ha. Cheers, Nic.

Hey fellas, just wanted to say thanks for all the info. I'll get a chance to read through and respond properly soon.

Thanks for the reply, mate. Yeah, I'm not quite sure which way to turn. Completely natural feels a bit dull, but the blue dye didn't quite highlight the timber how I was hoping. I'm definitely going to have to do some more test pieces to work out which way to go.

So I'm potentially going to have to change tack on the colour... I was doing more sanding yesterday arvo and hit the top with some turps to clean it up... and it looks really good as just natural timber. I looked over at the blue test piece (which looks more vivid in the photos than in person) and I can't shake the feeling that it'll be nicer without the dye. I've got quite a bit more sanding to do, which gives me time to decide, but yeah, perhaps a change of plan. Photos of the top with turps on it attached. Unfortunately, it was hard to really photograph well with a phone camera.

Slowly slowly getting more done. I've got my bindings all bent up to suit, including around the horn. There is still quite a bit of charring as I said before, but in going to soldier on for now. Started working on the carve of the top. Used an angle grinder with a flap disc to rough it in, then a mix of sanding, files and the plane in a few spota to get it levelled out. I feel like there's better ways to do it, but they're the tools I have at the moment. Also had a play around with colour, so I think I know where I'm going with it now. Can't wait to see the colour on the body, but have a lot more sanding and finessing of the carve to do first.

Got started on bending my binding strips yesterday. Got most the of body done, but couldn't get it to bend with out breaking on the tip of the horn. Had to take a break. I've ended up with a bit of charring on the face of the binding where I've done the concave bends. Hoping I'll be able to sand them out fairly easily, but I'm a little worried that they'll be deep and write the binding off. I think a big part of that is using the wrong tools; all I've got to do the heating is a soldering iron, so very concentrated heat. I think I'm going to have to buy some plastic binding as back up.

Wow, top shelf! This looks amazing. Well done

Ah yeah right. I did see your post about bringing the shape in by a smidge and redoing the binding channel. Good luck with the dye then, fingers crossed it takes evenly!

Ha ha, oh yeah? Sounds like an interesting story. Why did you think that?

Awesome, thanks mate, some great suggestions there. I'll see how it all looks after I've bent them up and done the rough shaping to work out the best plan of attack from there. As for getting such a good fit up that I won't need to fill the gaps... ha ha, yeah, nah not likely.

I've hit a few mile stones lately, got the neck joint finished and the screws in, pickups routed in, and now working on the binding. I've made life unnecessarily complicated by choosing to use left over Queensland maple from the neck as my binding. Had to hand rip it using my cheap shitty saw again; what I would have given for a band saw with a fence, a thicknesser and potentially some proper work holding. Ha ha Tried putting it in the laser cutter to turn into actual straight, perfectly sized strips and... unfortunately, failed miserably and had to start again. I've now ripped another strip, thicknessed it with a dodgy router sled thingy and ready to try and cut into actual binding strips. I want to get the binding all bent up and ready to fit before I start shaping the top, so I know exactly where to aim at. I'm not sure after that though, when it comes time to dye the top whether I should attach the binding first; I want the binding to stay natural obviously. Fitting prior to dye makes sense to me, so all the shaping and sanding can be fully fettled, but I'm not sure how to keep the binding clear during dye. I could leave them to glue on after I've dyed, but it just seems like there's plenty of margin for error in that process. What's the normal way of doing this bit?

Thanks mate. Yeah, I clamped a 1m ruler on the neck and centred it sat the nut and at the 24th fret, then used a set square to project the scale length down to the surface of the guitar, and also used the ruler to draw my neck centreline on the body. I was reasonably confident it was a good centre, I must have checked it about 40 times. Ha ha. But when I read Mike's method, that is a far more sensible way of doing it! Ha ha. The Schaller documentation had the hole centre dimensions off centre line, so I double checked that against the physical bridge and it was correct, so I've just gone off that number; rather than using the bridge itself to mark it out. It's definitely possible I'm missing something and just jagged it though. Ha ha

Thanks Mike, Yep, your post makes sense, thanks for such a detailed reply. I actually dove straight in after Bizman's comment (shed time is hard to come by, so took the window when i had it, ha ha) so it was all done by the time I saw your post. I had a bit of a panic when I read your advice on how to get the centre line, that is a much more solid approach than I took. I went out and rechecked using your method and I'm about 0.5mm off centre; I can live with that, but definitely considering that lesson learned! Thanks again

Beautiful, thanks heaps.

Hey guys, I was hoping to get a little advice from you all with regards to the bridge placement. The bridge didn't come with any mention of where to drill the posts with respect to the scale length. I've seen info saying I should have the bass side set longer slightly (by about 1.5mm) than the high side, but I've also seen info saying it should be square to the centre line. What's the right approach to take? I would have thought the process should be something along the lines of: 1. Mark scale length 2. Position bridge square to that with scale length being halfway through intonation adjustment 3. Mark post locations half way along the bridges forward and back travel (which more or less plonks the bridge posts on the scale length line) Thanks in advance

Figured you guys overseas might get a giggle out of this; got out to the shed to do some non-guitar work over the weekend and needed to grab a rag from the rags bin... was met by this little fella! He's a King's Skink. They grow up to about 55cm long and are one of the (I think actually the) biggest skink in Australia. Anyway, he's made the shed home and he's welcome to stay because they are territorial and fight off any snakes!

Hi everyone, merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone. Bizman, sorry, I never responded. Ha ha, thanks though. I've got AutoCAD on my work computer, so could sneak that in as a lunch time job. Made life much easier. Been pretty slow going since Christmas, barely managed to get to the shed, and it's been bloody hot on the days I have been able to. But, I've finally made the neck pocket now. Eeek! Went well in the end, I tweaked my dimensions since that last post, and took on the advice about sinking the neck in a bit lower. Made a routing template, then another cause the first one wasn't tight enough (ha ha) and made the cut. There's a tiny bit of fettling left still to get it sitting in perfectly, but for all intents and purposes it's done. Stoked to see the neck on the guitar finally. Neck needs a slight reshape to suit the body after I took a bit off the tongue of the neck pocket to counter that tear out early, but all in all, yeah, very happy with it. Thanks for all the advice on doing the neck pocket, it was definitely the most nerve wracking bit so far!

Worth noting all my dimensions are in millimetres.

Hey gents, yep, definitely taking on board the suggestion around not taking the word of the documentation. I will measure that for sure. As far as making sure I understand how this all works though, I've attached a drawing of how it should all fit together. Does this look right? Are the values I'm using for underside of string height at the 1st and 12th fret right?

I managed to get the body top glued on over the weekend, plus flush routed the edges then out the binding channel in. I toyed around with using a beautiful looking piece of 12mm Marri (a Western Australian hard wood) as the top in a last minute substitute with the Tassie Oak, but in the end decided against it because of the weigh... the 12mm top weighed more than the oak and blackwood together for the complete body! I'll save it for another time when I have the tools to turn it into a 3mm veneer top! Ha ha. Photo attached just for the hell of it. Onto needing a little advice though please, my next step is to route the neck pocket. I'm trying to calculate out the required angle and I'm coming up with different numbers to the online calculator I found. Can I check my assumptions? So I've got a 25" scale length (635mm) Clearance of string over the 12th fret I'm using 1.8mm The Schaller documentation says the bridge goes as low as 13mm above the guitar body, and has 20mm long adjustment screws, so I've used a bridge height of 18mm - I figure that gives me 5mm up or down adjustment while leaving 10mm of thread engaged I've assumed the top of the frets are 10mm above the top of the body at the 17th fret, which should sit the bottom edge of the fret board about 2mm proud of the top. I'm calculating all that out as needing a neck angle relative to the body of just a smidge over 1 degree; but the online calculator is giving me about 2. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I'm trying to make sure I understand this before I cut, rather than blindly follow the online calculator. Thanks in advance!

Thanks guys.

So progress has been ticking away slowly, but I'm really happy with how it's going. Both the control cavity covers are now shaped. I've left them as a tight fit for now so I could press them into place and sand them flush with the rest of the back of the body without them moving around on me. I also had a feeling I wanted to do an inlay in the body to match the fret board inlay. After much laying out of pieces, procrastination and mulling over, I decided to do it. Very glad I did, I'm really happy with how it looks. I also played around a little with some Tru Oil on the back of the cavity covers, just to see how it looks, and it came out great, the timber looks like honey! Next step from here is to loosen up the fit of the control covers (at the moment I've got to push them out from inside, so I need them a little looser before I glue the top on) then I get to move on to glueing the top on! Realistically, this is probably all I'll get done now until the new year. Being in Australia, we're lucky with our covid response having being very effective and interstate travel being back on the cards for Christmas, so we're looking at heading to see my parents who are desperately hanging out to see their first grandchild for the first time since he was 4 days old!

Ha ha, thanks Bizman!