ihocky2

400 is way too aggresive in my opinion. You can use it, and you can remove the scratches from it, but 400 cuts so fast that it makes it very easy to sand through. My last two builds I started at either 1500 or 2000. It went pretty quickly. If you want to get it level fast and then work up, I would start around 800 or 1000. The idea is to use the finest paper possible so you have less chance of deeper scratches. If you can start at 2000 it is great, because those are very easy to remove, but if you need to do some average leveling, 800 or 1000 will save a lot of time, and is still easy enough to remove scratches.

That looks like a rosewood fretboard, so please correct me if it is not. What size fret slots did you use, and what is the tang width of the frets. It may be possible that you used wire with a tang that was too thick and introduced backbow into the neck. By using wire with a thinner tang you can eliminate that. This is not saying that is absolutely what the problem is, but depending on your numbers, it could be a possible cause.

I haven't used cherry yet, but it is on my list of woods to try. There are some people here who have used it and said it has a great tone, and cherry is known to be very nice to work with. I have a pile of poplar, ash, mahoganny and maple that I have to at least get half way through before my wife will let me go to the mill again. So the cherry is going to have to wait a little longer.

I am always amazed by your knack for designing great looking pointy guitars. Once again you came up with a really nice design, I wish I could up with as many as you do.

I see until yesterday this thread was over a year old. And I have to say in the last year I have really gained a new love for hand tools. There is no way I can match the speed of a drill press and router to make cavities. Nor the speed of my thickness planer or jointer for the initial removal of saw marks and excess material. But if I have the time I will grab a plane everytime. And when I am going for that light tight joint, I grab the #5 or #6 everytime. And I have gotten to the point that I can take a board off the table saw and get a tight joint faster by hand than with the bench top jointer.

Well instead of spraying it with the mix thinned out more, I think everyone is trying to say spray a thinner layer on the guitar. Instead of going to a full wet coat that is not far from running, try spraying a coat that is medium wet. Just enough to get a layer that will flow out and no more than that.

A few frets here or there, and I would say it needs to be leveled better. But with it being all of them my first reaction is to say the action is too low. But you said you have raised the action pretty high and still have the buzzing. So I am pretty well stuck at this point without having it in front of me to tinker with.

I can't see it being anything with the pickups. On every guitar, when you pluck a string is vibrates in an elliptical pattern. More parallel to the fret board, but some perpendicular to it. Unless you had very low tension on light strings and pretty strong magnets in your pickups, I highly doubt that the pickups are causing that much of an effect. 3 single coils are usually not going to have that strong of a magnetic field to cause buzz like that.

Well the first thing I see is that you are just using a ruler and don't know if it is precision ground. Unless you specifically buy a precision ground one, it won't be. Normal home depot straight edges can be pretty darned flat but you will never see a 1 or 2 thousandth dip by eye. But that one or two thousandths can be the difference between a buzz and no buzz. Since you asked what neck angle does, I would also suggest doing some reading on that. I know which bridges usually need a neck angle and how to figure it out and what it does, but I am not very good at describing it, but it has beed covered on here many times. At least a quick and dirty idea though is picture a tall bridge like a TOM. The action will be very high at the bridge end and normal at the nut. That strings will angle towards the nut which is lower than the bridge. By creating the neck at an angle it basically moves the neck to be pretty close to parallel with the strings.

I really like the way that turned out. Great job. P.S. Welcome to the addiction that is guitar building

Sounds like your covred pretty well then. Just wanted to make sure you had all of your bases covered. Some people never think about the not so obvious problems, such as coolant on the machines, and wanted to make sure the machines he has access to are acceptable. Good Luck with the build.

defintely not enough in one can to finish the body. I would lay down at least three more cans worth. Aerosol cans shoot a very thin mix of lacquer so it takes a long time to build. And like Mikro said, poly will not stick to nitro.

I like that so far. The burning with the burst gives it a unique look that I like.

Not to sound mean, but how much experience does your dad have with this stuff. I work in a machine shop and deal with engineers all the time. What they say can be done and what can be done in reality are usually pretty different. I run SolidWorks all the time but have never had the training on contouring like you would use for a Les Paul top. Depending on what types of products your dad works with, he may have not been trained in this type of design work, so it might be something difficult for him to do. if he has been trained in curved contours, then he should be just fine. Also, does he do work in a metal shop. I have access to 5 axis cnc mills, but would never think of taking one of my pieces of lumber near them. They are covered in oil and cooling fluid as well as steel chips. These are all things that can very quickly ruin a project by causing flaws in the finish.

What is the string height at the nut? The cape will remove the nut from the equasion, but it may be one of the problems.

If it is both your plane and spokeshave that are clogging I think the problem is definetly in you setup. More than likely just too deep of a cut. Search Google on how to set them up.

3M makes some good products. I have found them at National Auto Stores.

Looks like it went pretty well for you. Definitely not the first technique I would recommend. Firdtly because of safety, secondly I would be worried about gouging into the wood.

A draw knife can work nicely for rough removal of material for a neck. But once you are getting even remotely close to final I would go to a scraper or a spokeshave. But really I can carve out a neck in about an hour with nothing more than a half round rasp, spokeshave and scraper. I don't really see a fraw knife as necesary.

Seems like a fairly simple order, try Warmoth.

Funny I should check back on this thread right now. I have Nightwish playing right now, I think Lagoon is the current track. Emppu is a fantastic player and I really wish they still had Tarja. Annette sounds too much like Amy Lee which is just to generic of a voice.

If you know anyone that works at a machine shop ask them to get you a broken end mill. They are either very high quality tool steel or carbide or ceramic. Any of those though work like a dream for burnishing. I got a broken shank to a 3/4" end mill that is solid carbide. A little on the thick side but it was all that was around at the time. I drill a hole into a dowel and epoxied it in to create a handle. Works wonderfully. Better than a drill bit or screw driver.

Go to the Ultimate Guitar website. They have a download in a DXF file of the RR.

I like the look of tha flamed maple, but I have to admit that carving into the alder for the arm rest makes it look kind of cheap. Maybe a shallower carve would have worked better, or if the top is a veneer, pressing the veneer to match the carved contour. Sometimes the contrast of the carves into seperate layers works nicely. But in this case, I donl think it does.

I do it both directions. I tend to get lazy and don't feel like unclamping sometimes so I just change the direction of my cut, pushing versus pulling and get equal results. But I must say, once you get the hang of a spoakshave they are a joy to use. Next thing you need to learn is the proper use of a scraper. When I started into the world of hand tools, the scraper gave me the most grief. But now that I have tamed the beast, I love using it and would be lost without it. It is the simplest tool, but the amount you can do with it is astounding.