Asdrael

Cheers for the advice (and thanks for the videos!). The sanding preparation was definitely sub optimal as I had a not so straight surface and a disk that teared during the sanding. I had to play around it. When you mean damp rag, do you mean actual water or the solvent of the dye/neutral (I'm using angelus so it's an organic solvent)? I am starting to think about the second try and see what I can do better with it. I did a quick scrub with 0000 steel wool yesterday and it did exactly what I wanted to the contrast. Now the black could be a bit more deep so I will try out your suggestion for sure. Here it is after some limited steel wool - I think the contrast in the purple part improved a lot and the fade got better also:

Well, I just done with a raw first stain try. This was the process, in order: - One large band of 50% diluted purple - One small band of pure purple at the edge on top - Take some of the wet diluted purple rag to merge the dark into the diluted purple - Take some of the clear dilution solution to merge the diluted purple into the black. Overall I am pretty happy with the results. I would like a tad more contrast in the purple (which I may achieve with a tad of steel wool) and a darker edge (which I may achieve by either a second or thicker coat, or naturally with the finish I will use). The gradient however is in my opinion great. It is too wide for my use though so I have to work on that. Next scrap incoming in a week

Not going to lie, half way in I thought this was going to be a circumcision story. Nice build plan tho. Seems more solid than your buckle.

I think it looks good as it is now but before committing it might be worth trying out a finish if you plan on a transparent one. I think alder and Maple will react quite differently and you might have a hard line than you wished for.

Looking good! I really like that bridge, I think it's better than the hipshot.

Damn you went all Bob Ross on me. Interesting though, thanks a lot. I like that Ultramarine one... You might just have given me a theme idea for my next build, thanks a lot! I was also thinking of doing a base with 50/50 black/purple. Let's see, I still have some time left before I have to finish the actual top to try stuff out, and hopefully will also have enough scrap from the top itself to make sure I have it down to a T.

Thanks again for the -as usual- golden advice. I was also hesitant. I watched quite a few BigD guitars video and went back and forth, looking at my "gold standard" again, and I decided on black for my first try. I really want to enhance the figuring in the purple and try to make the contrast in the non purple part almost over the top. I figured black would be a good start. I am not ruling out other options such as a brown or brown/black base if my first try doesn't end up conclusive. I would like to avoid more advanced mixing techniques for now because hey it's my first stain and I basically have no clue what I am doing Yep! I have both left over TruOil and some sample cosmo for this exact reason. I am hoping it won't be too bad on the purple, I don't want to go acrylic finish. My piece of maple for the top is actually very whitish (even more so than my test plates) so I am hoping it won't be too drastic. Cheers!

Yesterday evening was neck shaping day! Both my favorite -it feels like you go from woodworking to luthery and there is a guitar emerging- and most hated day -it's really a make or break kinda work-. But it was overall a good day in the shop After finalizing the headstock shape with a bit of hand sanding, I started by flush sanding fretboard and neck. I was a bit timid with the router and a little glue was still visible. So I just took my leveling beam, glued on some 240 and went for it. All went well and I could even remove the "mishap" I had the other day. So just a matter of removing the bulk of the neck with a bandsaw before moving on. And now it's just about the facetting method. I went for a D shape (19.5mm at 1st and 21 at 12th approx) and took my time. I wanted to be precise with it. Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step3: St Step done with the faceting (the lightning makes it look asymetrical, it's not though): Hand for scale: I am really glad I did like 8 neck on pine before to optimize the workflow and feel more spontaneous on it. So even though this is only my second guitar, it's more or less my 10th neck. The big difference is that holy crap noone told me how both hard rosewood was, and how nice it was to work with as it reacts great with every tool. As long as you wear a face mask, it's a joy. And in case anyone is curious about the workflow: - draw line - tape line with thin masking tape - remove what's between the lines with, in that order: Shinto the bulk, thin rasp till almost hitting the tape, sanding beam until hitting the tape, card scrapper to make the face flat. I am very happy with how it turned out. The piece of rosewood is very nice too as it has purple hues (yay for theme build) and somehow has a lighter stripe along the middle spline. I am going to let the neck rest a week or two to let it get any potential tension out before I fine tune everything and make the volute. The heel will wait until the body is ready. Bonus shot: first try with Angelus stain on figured maple. I sanded the piece to 320/400, then raised grain, then 400, then applied a good coat of black dye. I let it dry overnight then went at it with a random orbit sander with 240P. I think it looks mostly ok, but there is a bit of unevenness. This I think comes from the fact that the piece is not perfectly flat so the sanding is not homogeneous. The white line at the top is some vinyl masking tape I was trying out for this which seems to be perfect. I think it's not a bad first try, and I am hitting exactly the contract I wanted: it goes from almost black still to natural maple, which should be a hint darker once the finish is on it. I think that beside a flat piece, improvements could be made by lowering the grit on the orbital sander to 320 to have better control. I am also wondering if I can maybe prepare the entire piece with the random orbital sander to 400P (and only hand sand with 400P lightly after raising the grain to knock the fibers off) to have a more homogeneous preparation. Tips welcome for this. I will try the color on in the next few days and it will be tricky and likely a bit ugly to most of you but hey, my build

I had a quick session yesterday, I wanted to finishing trimming the fretboard and shape the headstock. So I took the router out to flush cut the fretboard: This went without major issues. I just had a very slight tilt when routing around the 3rd fret bass side which made a "dent" into the fretboard. This will be mostly sanded flush and shaped when I do the neck carve and radiusing, and further fixed when I glue + wood dust the fret ends (it's at the 3rd fret slot). I also had minimal tear out at the 22nd fret (see picture below). This will be gone by the time I am done radiusing and rolling off the fretboard. I am happy the nut side has no damage at all, I was scared of that. The only issue was that there is an overhand for the fretboard past the 24th fret. Which I obviously couldn't flush cut with a flush bit. The file was starting to irritate me but I found my best friend just hiding behind the neck! It made short work of it. Now I could go back to the file and round up the corners: I then shaped the headstock using a spindle sander mostly. The very fine and last details will be done a bit later on. Since I was at that stage, I went for the tuner holes. 10mm diameter, easy enough, even though the pillar drill we have has a slight wiggle. No tear out, except a very very little piece on the top left of that image. Will be covered entirely by the tuner so no big deal. I could finally check how it was all looking and if the fretboard didn't move during glue up. As it stands, it's close to perfect. Not enough to see any tilt. In the little time I had left, I went to the laser cutter to make a humbucker template: And a test for my side project: Now I really need to find some clamps to glue to top onto the body properly...

Really like how it is turning out!

Hi babe. Glue up went well. Everything is where it should be and alignment seems close to perfect. I will know more when everything is cleaned up and routed but I have no reason to worry (yet). The neck is now resting in my guitar room, intimately getting to know the fretboard while it all finishes to dry in a proper environment (if that's what you call german weather right now). Can't wait for the next steps!

Hah I see how you do it now. The way I did it didn't require to drill anything. Slightly hammer the nail in, cut it, and use whatever was poking out as a "secondary nail" since the cut made it pretty sharp (sharper than the actual nail actually). Good idea tho.

Yep, I'll do that for the next one. The funny thing is I had the pins at a tad over 1mm at first and then redid them thinking "I don't need much that it'll just make it hard to press". Hindsight 20/20, live and learn, etc

I managed to squeeze in some building time into a busy work travel schedule yesterday evening. Yay me. That was the order of the day: put this together. This time everything was fairly well prepared so not difficult. One rod goes in after the other first, with a line of high viscosity superglue in the slot, some tape to protect the surface around it from squeeze out, and some sanded-flat toothpicks and clamps to make sure the pressure is good. One rod ended up VERY slightly proud of the surface, one slightly under. This is due to the two rods not being the exact same size and another issue I tracked: the depth gauge of the caliper I use is 0.3mm "recessed" so the readings are wrong. I will need to take this into account when moving further. Funnily enough it also explains why everything was ever so slightly off with my first build when it comes to depth. Anyhow, this time around, the slightly proud rod is fixed by scrapping it until flush. For the one slightly recessed, I decided to leave it as is as the wood glue would fill up the sub 0.5mm gap easily enough. I also added two drops of silicon to the truss rod channel, as this particular one has the ends slightly bigger than the actual thread. I wanted to make sure that even with zero tension there would be no rattle. As it was my first time placing an already slotted fretboard onto a neck blank, I went back and looked at a few videos on locating pins. I do not think having it every so slightly out of alignment is bad (will basically make no difference at the bridge, at least none that setting up the intonation can't correct). I didn't like so much the toothpick / nail / side dot tube through the fretboard as it requires drilling blindly through a crack prone fretboard into the space between the carbon rod and the truss rod. So instead, I used the thinnest nails I got, put them on the neck, cut them off slightly proud (keep that in mind for later...) and used them as invisible locating pins. It worked wonderfully well in the dry run I do before glue up. Time to tape the truss rod and go with the glue! I also prepared the rosewood and ebony for glue up with some 320 sanding and some naphta to remove the oils. This gave me a glimpse of what the PME was going to look like and holy shit. If I don't mess up the stain on the maple, this might look awesome. So during glue up, I faced a stupid issue. While the locating pin close to the nut was fine, ensuring the "vertical" alignement or the board, I couldn't for the life of me put the fretboard in the heel pin. I do not know why. So I had to realign manually with the glue deciding to make everything slippery. Took me a bit but I think I did it as good as I could using my eyes, the routing template, whatever I could. Then I pressed down to repin it, clamped it with hand clamps for 5 minutes, then switched to the full clamping for the night. Next time, I will simply not cut them so short (see I say next time already, as if I had already planned a third build). I use an MDF board slightly wider than the fretboard, with one thickness of tape alongside the border + a length of foam to make sure the pressure is well distributed with a slight overpressure on the edge. Provided nothing moved, it should be perfect. Bare the slight amount of tape that stuck around the nut (yay for chisels afterwards). Anyhow, this is the status and will stay so till tonight: This went faster than I thought, and I forgot the dxf file to laser cut the pickup template and the side project I have going on. So early night. I will take it off the clamps tonight, let it dry and settle for at least a week, route the fretboard sides, carve the headstock and rough carve the neck next. Then it will get at least another week to settle during which I will glue the body.

I really like the pickup choice actually. I think it's a nice combination. I just have never been a fan of the classical tele hardware, I think it hides too much of the top. Just a matter of taste really, some people swear by that. The gold in on point with the stain though, so hats off for that!

Great work (and nice pictures to boot!). Two thumbs up, and that's only because I only have two hands. There are some choices that I would not have made but that makes it even more of a personal instrument and the end result looks awesome so that's what counts. It oozes personality (Side note: how are you liking the p-rails? I am tempted to have a build around those at some point...)

Even though I love most of the PRS wood selection, their relatively frequent use of stained flamed maple for fretboards messes with my brain.

Thanks! I love PME as well but it's not a wood I would use in every build, as it's very "busy" by nature. Also, finding a good looking piece is very difficult it seems. I spent ages looking at what seemingly was used-toilet-paper-grained PME (at outrageous prices) before finding a good source that had a piece I liked enough for the build I had in mind.

More progress! Slower than I would have liked (as usual), but at least it's a steady pace. I had to redo my template for my home made fretboard slotting jig. I had a minimal error (0.265 mm...) as the nut slot didn't take into account the thickness of the saw. This should have been the fastest thing even on the laser cutter, but as I completely cleaned it and set it up properly last time, I had to make sure it was going to be perfect. Anyhow, yes, it's now perfect. Which means that after a couple of rounds on the spindle thickness sander and some hand planing to make sure it was all perfect (god damn I love those shavings) it was time to cut to a rough shape. Queue lots of sawing. I don't know if my technique is bad or is my saw is going bad (ebony is even harder than I thought) but it took me I guess 2 hours to do it in total. Including setting up the height of the cut properly. Slotted, nice depth (the radius won't be too extreme here with 17") and seems to align perfectly with the template. Better than doing it by hand like in my first build. BUT... the ebony decided to crack a tad from fret 22 to 24 on the bass side. I decided to ghetto fix it to stabilize it with superglue and pressing some dust into the crack. Once it's on the neck and radiused, I will do it better. (I sanded it afterwards and it's almost invisible already.) I had some time left so I decided to make a mess. Routing is fun, routing rosewood is messy. But the neck and part of the headstock is routed, I will do the rest by hand. I prepared it well on the spindle sander first to make sure I was as close to possible to the template before taking the bit to it, which was a good idea as I had some minor chipping on the first pass (that was not deep enough to be seen on the second pass). The trick parts like the heel went smoothly too so I am happy about that. I am not sure the template is perfect as I can heel (but not see) some imperfection but nothing a few passes of 180 grit can't take care of. Is it me or is rosewood harder to work with than maple? Between that and ebony, I feel like my neck is way more difficult to work on than my first one. Next stage: headstock shaping, perfecting the neck route by hand, and mating the fretboard to the neck!

It's normal. However be careful that you don't overheat the frets. For what it's worth, you would get almost the same result with a good old rag with Autosol.

One more day in the workshop! This time around I tried to plan everything better to be more efficient. The goal was to get the neck ready for fretboard glue up but I didn't quite manage due to a jig having to be redone... Anyhow, status at the start of the session: So first, I had to take care of the overhang of the headplate. Easy enough with a file and a hand/blockplane (which is quickly becoming my most satisfying tool to use): You know you are done when you have nice double scoop of chocolate and vanilla: And a nice result. The glue line is not perfect, but I am fairly satisfied with it (it will be under the fretboard, and that's on a 10° angle). From the sides it looks perfect though. Macro shots: After realizing my truss rod routing jig was not good for that blank (blank was too narrow, the jig kept rocking), I had to go shopping for a piece of wood and redo the jig. Not a big deal, jut cost me 90 minutes and 7,50€. Still... Anyhow, queue some routing: With a good end result: For what it's worth: this time around, I tried another type of truss rod. Still double action but not entirely wrapped - it's supposed to be extra low profile. It's also metric. I like the low profile bit, the only issue is that while the start and end are basically cubes and fit perfectly, the threaded part sit very slightly shy of those. Meaning that when I push at the ends, it's all flush and perfect, but in the middle, there is a small flex. I will likely address this with a drop or two of silicon. One mistake I did is that I either didn't secure the depth stop for one carbon fiber rod (this time around 3x6mm) or I measured the thickest one before routing. For some reason one rod was 5.9mm, the other one 5.6mm thick. I like to route a tad deep, so I routed approx 6.3mm deep. For one side it's on point, for the other it's slightly too deep. Not deep enough that I am going to bother putting a veneer on it, but still. Not a perfect job. As I was getting late and wanted to let the wood relax before securing the CF with glue and moving on to the truss rod, I decided the best course of action was to start removing wood. First step: headstock thickness. Aiming for 14.5-15mm before any final sanding. Now with a made-up thickness sander / volute shaper: It does the trick nicely: I just had to do a pass on the bandsaw to roughly shape the neck so I could let it rest before moving on next time... Status: I am digging the headstock shape to be honest (thanks again for the feedback on the other topic peeps!). And the rosewood as a neck feels awesome unfinished already. Surprisingly tightly grained and smooth, even just at 320grit. With some wax it might feel even better than a classical tru-oil maple setup.

Shiinyyy. Looks great. I really like the front of course, but the back is the highlight for me, I really like how it turned out. I guess I have a soft spot for black limba

I resorted to using ones with plastic pads on them. They are soft hardish and don't seem to mark anything. I'll keep your advice in mind though, as I will be shopping for clamps soon. I need "deeper" ones to glue the top to the body. Talking about glueing, I went in tonight for a short session: I wanted to put the headstock laminate on to be able to start on the neck building proper next time. Queue some handplaning on the scarf (I'm doing the "second method" for the scarf joint, I think it's much nicer to look at). Look at those shaaavviiinnnggssss Yep, looks like the joint is good - macro shot time: One laminate prepared in position: Now glued in and waiting in its corner... After trying a few different locating pins method, I think the toothpick works best for me. So that's the takeaway for tonight. (Also, I used a tad too much glue. But better than too little!). Now I have to route the channels, prepare the fretboard and try to figure out how I am going to glue the top on the body. Pretty excited to move forward with this!

What he said. You guys should write a tutorial, for me the finish part is the most confusing one and it's really hard to find good and trustworth ressources. A lot of people claim "yeah do whatever it will work out!" but I found it to be pretty far from the truth.

So, day 1 in the workshop. I had not a lot planned and wanted to see how it went just cruising along. Well, not-so-surprisingly, the second build goes much faster. I am not scared of every single thing touching the wood, I have some clues how to go forward or even fix stuff so now I just go and do it. There is still some apprehension when doing real cuts but I have been checking 3 times every cut. I guess that will never go away. Anyhow, I had the time to do a complete scarf joint and organize the next few sessions. I still love my scarf joint jig for the bandsaw (that I also can setup and tune pretty well now, thanks Youtube binge watching): It gives pretty much exactly what I wanted, that is 10° with an almost flat surface: A bit of hand planning later (quite a lot actually, still not as good as I should be with that tool), here is the status: Since it all went way too fast, I didn't have what I needed to start on the fretboard. Instead, did some spring cleaning of the workshop, and installed the new spindle sander: This will help with shaping, preparing before routing and thicknessing the headstock / fretboard. Which should happen next week and after I glue the headstock cap. Anyhow, I love handplanes. I tuned mine well enough and this makes me happy: Just one small mistake done today, which shouldn't be a big deal: I insist on using MDF plates to spread the pressure when clamping the joint but given the relatively small surface, I should rather simply go ahead and clamp it down directly. The plates, as I positioned them, amplify any little angle difference between neck bit and headstock bit and could result in some badly pressured spots. There will be lamination, and according to my drawing there basically won't be any strength on it, so the worse case scenario is a slightly unsightly seam on the side of the headstock. Live and learn!