Asdrael

Looks awesome, in love the colors on the burl! It should turn out great with the finish is on.

Yesterday was a good day!

I decided to go for the neck / body combination so first, I wanted to route the neck pocket. It seems like I needed 2 layers of tape to have a tight joint with the template, so I did a test on a scrap.

Success!

So after removing the bulk on the body with a forstner bit (maple, even flamed, is so hard when compared to ash I didn't realize), I went for it.

And... success!

It doesn't quite pass the "I can lift the body with the neck in place" test but close enough. This leaves room for the finish and will be a bolt on. For a set neck, given wood glue expanding the wood, I think it would actually have been perfect (maybe next build but then with a longer tenon).

The butt looks good too. Except that I was *very* conservative with the heel so I have a lot to carve out now.

So chisel, rasps, files and scrapper are on the menu.

And once done, I can finish shaping the neck.

Rather pleased with the results! Only at 120 grit now, but it goes from a flatish C to a D higher up. Exactly how I wanted it.

Now I knew I had the last part I really do not like to do. Radiusing the fretboard. And 2 hours something left. So I made a jig to make sure I was dead center on the entire fretboard length with my sanding block:

And...

Down to P2000!

I made a small booboo, as the neck thickness is slightly under spec now (18.9mm at 1st instead of the 19.5 or so I was initially aiming for, same difference at 12th) due to the radiusing. Not the biggest deal. I will lose a bit again going up in grits for the back of the neck, but will get some back with the finish. The neck shape is really nice tho. It also seems like I might have to touch up the fret slot depth but I was anticipating that anyway.

All in all, a good day. And I have all the things I don't like behind me now, so there is that

17 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

It's a bit blotchy but otherwise the left side looks like a good start.  Much less sanding required and the subsequent dyes will darken the dark spots anyway. Unless of course you tried to apply dye to the right half as well, in that case it's a failure, the only positive thing being that you didn't try that on the actual build.

The dye was applied "evenly", as in no effort was made to have different sections. But hey i am fine with learning. I need to look it up but it felt like th Angelus black was miscible with water.

On 5/7/2024 at 11:49 AM, ADFinlayson said:

 

If you haven't already then I recommend wiping the top down with a damp rag just prior to applying the black, so you're applying black to a damp surface, it will help the black to penetrate the top further

So I gave it a shot according to your tip (at least I think so). Wet the top then apply the stain.

This is after a *heavy* application of black. The piece wouldn't take more. So either I messed up or the Angelus stuff doesn't like this approach. Was worth a try though! I have a ton of scraps left too.

You guys are too kind. Thanks so much, means a lot.

Yesterday evening I got the ok to go for an hour at the workshop. Long story short:

I was a bit scared removing the clamps -even if nothing got stuck - as one left. Major dent in the back of the body. But luck was on my side and it is right where the cavity will be. One free important less right there: also use a back plate when clamping.

However: Perfectly centered and an almost perfect glue joint. The tip of the top horn might have a very very small line showing but I not too bothered. I am more bothered by the small mishap during routing preparation on the same horn as I dented it, but it should sand out nicely. Note: being mindful of the grain direction combined with a great routing bit makes routing a dream.

Also I was lucky as hell with the grain on the swamp ash. Those lines...

The contrast is also really nice. The roasted swamp ash will get much darker and the maple a bit darker with the finish and that should go with the neck nicely.

Next stop: neck pocket and more neck shaping!

An interesting evening yesterday! No real mistakes though so that's a plus.

I wanted to start working on the body to get a decent reference for the heel later on to finish carving the neck. I have never glued on a top though so I took it slow.

The first step was to prepare the surfaces for the glue up. I had to do it by hand because our random orbit sander seems to be badly out of balance and just wiggles like crazy. Anyhow, roasted swamp ash looks crazy good.

It's even better wet, it gets really darker - almost chocolate like. I think it will match well with the rest of the guitar.

Same treatment for the top - till P320.

I wanted to position everything and secure the alignment with screws. It felt logical to me, and has worked the best for all my laminations so far.

(I added one screw in each pickup cavity also).

Now it was just a matter of glueing up. Ash, glue, maple, screws, waxed paper, thin yoga mat, mdf, clampS.

Might have been slightly overboard with the glue there... And should maybe have used a backing plate. So marks may be present... Nothing I can't sand or plane out I am sure.

Next order of the day was shaping the volute. I like it but it stresses me out. It went pretty well this time I think. I managed to have it "sharper" than on my previous guitar. I will finish completely shaping it once the heel is in. The neck should end up being 19mm 1st fret, 21. 12th fret with a D shape once all is said and sanded.

I managed to squeeze in some time to laser cut a top template. I am trying out different control layouts so I wanted something to enable me to just see how it feel - I just have to cut the layout and switch it up, the cavity can stay the same. Roomy enough. Current plan is an Ibanez 5 way and a single volume.

Unclamping the top tonight, work will resume on Friday. I will squeeze in some staining tests during the week though

Looking great so far! Don't know how I missed this topic till now...

On 4/14/2024 at 9:38 AM, Bizman62 said:

While waiting for the glue to dry I attacked my notched "straight" edge. Slammed a length of glue backed 60 grit paper on the dead straight table of the planer and started making some steel dust. Can't tell if it's perfect now, it seemed to warp while sanding the other edge. But it's better than it was.

First, I would not settle for 60 and go for 240 or so. There are then some ways to check. The first two require a perfectly flat reference, the last one isn't as good but is stand alone;

- Drag it on your table, it should feel like it's resisting everywhere.

- Let it rest on the table, take a thickness gauge and try to squeeze it underneath. Then it's up to you what you consider flat.

- lay it on the side. Draw the edge as close as you can. Flip it alongside the long edge. See if it matches perfectly the drawing. Any deviation means it's not straight.

The last solution is that it won't make a big difference really. You are not really going to correct fretboard thickness post fret installation based on a notched straight edge. On a new guitar, it's mostly to check "accurately" if the neck is straight between the nut, middle and 20th+ fret so only 3 points of contact.

1 hour ago, ADFinlayson said:

You've got a lot of what look like drum sander scratchings all along that test piece, in my experience that tends to prevent the dyes penetrating as well, so it will look a lot better on the guitar if you take the time to sand it well.

If you haven't already then I recommend wiping the top down with a damp rag just prior to applying the black, so you're applying black to a damp surface, it will help the black to penetrate the top further and give you a better contrasts providing you don't go too heavy with the purple and don't keep going over it with purple, the more times you go over with purple or water/neurtral to blend, the more it will pick up and blend with the black and kill the contrast. You don't need to go as dark as you might think with purple because lacquer will make it look darker. All that being said, purple is one of the worst colours for fading so it will lighten up over a few months anyway. 

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.

4 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Regarding staining, I highly recommend you to try other than black for enhancing the figuration. Black as such often can look dirty and smudged whereas a dark brown may belong to the natural colour palette of almost any wood, even the palest ones. That said, since you're going for purple I'm a bit hesitant to recommend brown as it may blend with the main colour and the result may end up looking shit - literally. Instead I'd try with elements of purple like blue, red or even pink. Although the figuration often is made using a dark colour, I've seen it made with a lighter hue as well with great results. But it requires proper testing. So maybe starting with pink, sanding back, applying dark blue and sanding back and finally applying the purple might be very vibrant.

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

4 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Speaking of brown hues potentially making purple look dirty, do some testing with the finishes as well. Both TruOil and clear Osmo have a brown hue which can change the final colour. It's not only because of the colour within them, it's also about how they highlight the similar colours of the wood. Even though maple is pale, the real colour often actually is a very light brown. Neutral white maple is a rarity.

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.

27 minutes ago, ScottR said:

I'm presuming the choices you'd had made differently are the pickups and tele hardware?

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...)

11 hours ago, henrim said:

Personally I generally prefer non-figured fretboards as there are already lines going in two directions (frets and strings), and my simple mind can’t handle too many contradicting shapes and forms.

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.