ihocky2

The issue with the cheap base plates is not so much the metal they are made from, a lot are made from steel. Steel is relatively cheap. The issue is that the knife edges are not hardened. They were down quickly and you develop tuning issues after using the trem. If you want something cheaper, search around the Jackson and Kramer and other companies that offer Licensed FR's and see which are the decent ones and pick one up on eBay.

Where have you played a guitar with no truss rod before. For the last 100 years any decent guitar has some type of truss rod, even if not adjustable. The only ones I can see not using one are the cheapest on the market, and that's not really a guitar to make any comparisons to.

It should suit fine for the time being. The one area I find RO sanders useless is on carved tops. They are too agressive at times and depending on the carve have a harder time getting into the contours.

Here's one I did last summer.

This sounds similar to what the one lumber mill here offers. They call it Thermo Lumber, so far I've ash and poplar offered. They offer it as a substitute for pressure treated. It does not contain all of the nasty chemicals, so it is a more eco-friendly option to lumber used for outdoor projects. It even has that chocolatey color. If it is the same thing, then it is not really sealing out moisture but more preventing the wood from rotting. How much of a difference it makes on a guitar neck, I have no idea.

Easiest way to get square sides and to clean up the shape it to make a template. Get some 1/4" MDF, the stuff is real cheap and easy to work with. Rough cut your shape and then with files, rasps, sandpaper bring it in to the final shape. A great trick is to hold it up against the sky to look at the contour, flat spots or points stick out really well. Then double face tape in place and use a template bit to route the edge to the correct shape.

The VERY first thing you must do before going any further is to stop dead in your tracks where you are right now. Get a copy of Melvin Hyscock's book on How to Build an Electric Guitar. Read it cover to cover, then read it again. After reading it, 95% of your questions will be answered. The questions you are starting with are the most basic and can be found pretty easily. Generally on this forum, these types of questions are answered with "Use the search function". Read through this forum and the tutorials, read Melvin's book. Then you will have a much better understanding of how everything interacts and how guitars truely work. Then when you have questions they will be a lot more refined and to the point and you'll get a lot more and more direct answers.

Have you looked at Warmoth yet? They usually have Schaller locking tuners and sell them as individuals, so you buy as many as you need.

I love the mahogany on this build. Very nice colors in it. How close are you to being out of bubinga?

Buy a half decent hand plane. Half the cost of a crappy jointer, easier to sharpen, quieter, no dust, and you can make straightedges and invisible joints for the rest of your life. The Lowe's lumber is not going to be as straight as you probably want.

You're in the same boat I was several years ago, heck for the most part even to this day. Do I dream of building guitars for a living, hell yeah. Do I think it will come true, probably not but I am still going to work towards it and have a great hobby and a ton of fun along the way. My wife loathes everytime I have a design program on the screen because she knows I am working a guitar design. She also knows that if I am working on a design, it will turn into a guitar in the near future. Like you I have nowhere to go with them, but I still want to build them. So the only alternative is to sell them. The first few go up on eBay or to small local stores for reasonable prices. My name is not Leo Fender so there is no way they will sell my guitars for the same price as a decent Fender, even if my quality surpasses Fender or Gibson (which is not really that hard to do). For the first several all I seek is to recoup my costs and enough money to maybe buy a new tool, or some new saw blades or get bits sharpened. Check out the other thread on commisions, it will give you a lot more answers.

Before, it give you a lot more room work around. Once the body is on, it's tough getting at some of the areas.

The finish turned out great for a first build and the overall look is great. I'm glad to see you kept going back to repair your mistakes instead of just settling for them as they were. The best way to learn is from your mistakes. I admire that you are willing to admit your mistakes on your first build. It shows that you are level headed and know you are not perfect and are willing to work to get better. Keep working on it, you can only get better. And from this as a first build, you have a nice place to start growing from.

+1 to everything said above. You have to remember that your costs doing this as a hobby are a lot different than as a full time business. My time is worth something to me, but I am building as a hobby, so I would be spending my time on it anyway. I am not concerned what my hourly rate works out to. If I was running a full time business I would analyze my costs a lot further than I do now. There was a thread about this not very long ago. See if you can find it, it got a few pages long and had a lot of good info.

Beautiful work there Jon. This is definitely one of, if not your best yet.

Take some time and read the HOK Tech Manual, you'll gain a lot of information on what you can and can't do from that. Then do some reading over at the Kustom Kulture Lounge. Lots of airbrush work over there, and a ton of good info, more than you'll get here for custom painting. This site is great for building, and general paint knowledge. KKL is all about custom painting, and nothing else. The reason I say to do more research is that there are a lot of variables that make it difficult to say yes you're safe, or no you're not. Several of the Kandy Kolors are known to have bleed through problems, if you are applying graphics over the candy that is information you'll need. Even applying a few coats of clear does not stop the bleed through, it will minimize it but not prevent it. If you are applying graphics over the metallic base before candy coating, that adds a different set of problems. You can't tape over metallics, nor can you scuff sand or level sand them. Being willing to practice and perfect what you are doing is very usefull and will help a lot. But I also get the impression that you are eager to get going and want to dive right in. If I am correct about that, it is going to hinder you quite a bit.

Is there a noticable difference in the look of fossil bone versus regular bone?

If you want to use HOK, use their products from start to finish. You can go with Auto Air, but the cost difference is negligable if you buy properly. Personally I would say based on your questions, stay away from the 2 part polyurethanes, buy some dye and some lacquer and some metallic flake. It is far more forgiving, and from you questions I can see that you do not have a lot of experience with spraying these types of products. It is possible to mix between brands, but you don't know what you are going to get, and most times the results are hindered if not a failure. Even if it looks great today, you don't know how it will be in two years. If you feel you must use 2-part poly's then here is some helpfull info. Check out Coast Airbrush. You can buy Kandy Koncentrates. 1 oz. of concentrate is way more than you need. Buy 1 quart of clear and you can mix some up, add the concetrate and now you have a candy color, for only a few dollars more since you need to buy the clear anyway. Coast is nice enough that you can call them and they will sell primer and ko-seal (which you MUST use) in small quantities as a special order. You have to pay a few dollars for the reduced volume, but it is cheaper than buying more than you really need. Read the HOK manual and follow it to the letter. That will give you all of the info you need as to coat thickness and flash time in between. As for reducing HOK Clear, you MUST use their reducer. Just follow the instructions. You can over reduce, but allow more flash time and use a slower reducer to prevent solvent pop.

Look into the HOK Kandy Basecoats. They give a very similar look to spraying a metallic base and then a candy coat, but everything is already mixed and is easier to spray. Candy colors are slightly different from transparents in that a candy coat will continuosly get darker with each coat and each overlap, where a transparent will only reach a certain color. Candies are much harder to spray and get an even color. Certain colors are worse than others, for example HOK Organic Green is known to be one of the most difficult colors to spray evenly and not get color varitions from your overlaps. The Kandy Basecoats are easier to spray, requires less coats therefore less material, meaning less money. Some people say they can notice a difference in the color, but everyone I have seen that from is guys who paint show cars, so they probably have a better eye for something like that than 99% of the rest of the population. Like Drak said, get yourself something larger than an airbrush. It doesn't have to be anything fancy or expensive, but an airbrush is just too small to get the coverage you need.

Based on what I have seen from House of Kolor, once you pick a system stay with that system. Check the Kustom Kolor Lounge and they might be able to help. But I know that HOK says to stay within the same type of finish from beginning to end.

Here is a little color work I got done this weekend. Dyed the top with a very lite grey, sanded back and then a lite amber mix and then sealed with poly. I will start with the candy colors tonight. The back looks worse than it really is. The finish exagerates the pores. For this one I am just going to build the finish to fill the pores of the mahogany, so for the first two coats it's still pretty rough. But it looks like once it's sanded back, it'll take one more coat and then it should be level.

I should expect colors like that from you Jon. While fuscia isn't quite my thing, I think this would actually look pretty damed sweet in a transparent lime green. Unfortunately neither of those two colors will be used. I'll keep you a little less on edge Scott, it is going to be all transparent colors I'm using. I think I would get banned from the board if I used opaques over quilted maple.

I never thought I would need a dictionary to read posts on here, but I guess I was wrong. But at least I learned something new today. Anyway thanks for the compliment. I ran a few color tests on some off cuts, and the finished product should look very nice. For now the colors will remain a secret. Got to keep people on edge a little.

After a few more weeks of goofing off mixed with random hours of sanding and test painting she is finally ready for paint. Nothing fancy in this photo, but this is the last time you'll see natural colored wood. This is wetted with naptha. Tomorrow night I'll break out the dye and the paint.

This one is looking really nice. I like the choice of dots and the binding. Keep it up.