ihocky2

You have the ideas and the bug. That's the first step. I thought about and planned and looked at my wood blank for a year before I made my first wood chip. After that much thinking, you are already in ankle deep. While most people do not make a perfect guitar their first time, it can be done. The most mistake seem to happen with finishing, and since you do that at work it shouldn't be too bad for you. I would definitely say go for it. The worst that happens is you have a very nice guitar that is still what you wanted and should still sound better than most of the stuff at GC. I would buy the compounded fretboard since it is very difficult to make without the proper tools for it which are rather expensive. If you have a luthier willing to help out, have him help you with any work you still have to do on the board, and difinitely have him do the fret work. The tools alone will cost as much as a mid-level Les Paul. Just take your time with it. The best advice I got off this board that helped me a ton was this. When things start going badly, stop immediately for the day. Give yourself time to cool off and think things through. You might lose work time, but you won't destroy anything either. Once one thing goes wrong you'll get frustated and lose concentration and make more mistatkes. So it is much better to just stop. I also found keeping a big hammer and some scrap 2x4's around helped me calm down as well.

Try the search feature.

Take the nut off each piece and slip a drill bit through it. Soon as you find one that slips through and rubs, go 1/16" bigger.

The idea sounds good to try, but there are a few problems in your design. First, the time frame is way too short. 6-7 weeks is doable for a first build if you had a few hours a day, but not 40 min. Second, 1/2" is going to be ungoodly heavy. A piece of 1/2" x 2" x 16" will weigh 5 pounds. And that will only make the back end. So you are looking at about 25 pounds just to make the side. Plus hardwear and sheet metal you are going to be around 30-35 pounds for a guitar. And people think Les Pauls are heavy. You will need to weld the top and bottoms on, and I am not sure if you have welding experice. Plus you'll probably still need internal bracing to support the top and back. As a first project, this is going to be VERY difficult to produce something usuable. And especially in your time frame.

I'm no expert on glass (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express, sorry had to be said) but there are certain types that are very strong. It all depends on the type of glass, how the nut would be made, and how it is supported. I wonder about something like safety glass like they use in car windows or office buildings. Pyrex would be the prefect type to use I think, you sould just have to fit the sting slots during the forming process, and not by cutting them in. When thinking of new ideas, there really are no bad ideas. They might be too costly to be worth while, they might be too dificult to do, but rarely is it a stupid or bad idea. Guitars and pretty much everything else around us is here because some asked "I wonder?" or "What if"? 50 years ago people would have laughed at the idea of making cars with plastic body parts, and look at how well Saturn did with it.

I don't mean to sound too harsh, but from your responses it's pretty clear that you are new to the electronics and don't have a feel for them. And it also sounds like the guys who did the work don't have too much of a clue either. Your best and safest bet is to take it to a reputable shop. They will be able to figure it out quickly and easily. Learning how to do your own repairs is a great thing, but if you don't have enough electonics knowledge, you can really mess things up. For the time being I would take it to a shop (and not the orignal guys) and then either take some basic eletronics classes or bare minimum read Eltronics for Dummies to get the basic ideas and priniciples.

Why not just make the neck a little thicker and incorporate the extra thickness into the fret board area? Just carve it like normal and then cut like a 1/16 or so flat so it feels like the fret board.

Does it have coil taps or coil splits? Generally humbuckers are split. All that is doing is taking the signal from only one side of the pickup. On 4 conductor humbuckers all they do is basically cut the wire that goes from one coil to the next and attach leads to it. You then have the choice of what you do with those wires. A true coil tap has a wire that connects somewhere in the middle of the coil winding. It will basically cut the resistance and sound of the pickup in half. A coil tap seems to be be common on single coils, but isn't limited to them.

I've tried to joint to pieces with a hand plane and just didn't have very good luck with it. I got them pretty close, but not right on. Then I switched to sandpaper on a flt table and a perpendicular fence. Some people, jsut aren't very good with hand planes.

Whats kind of funny though, is that if you read Dan Erlwines book on fretting, there are quite a few places he talks about cutting slots with a dremel router bit. It is usually for the glue in method, but he makes it seem like it is so easy. But as has been said, they are extremely thin and likely to break and you need a super tight dremel with NO run out.

HOK also offers a spray can form. Actually it is offer through Plastikote and is the HOK colors, but in Acrylic Lacquer. I used that over Plastikote sandable primer and it worked great. I can't really say how actual HOK paint will work since I don't have a spray rig.

I'll second what Maiden said. With lacquer it is unnecesarry and you run too much of a risk of sand through. I used DEFT and sprayed about 5 or 6 coats of 3 passes and then sanded out any orange peel. Then shot about 4 more coats, gave it a light level sanding (which did not take much off at all). Shot one more full coat and then a light flow coat to finish it up. I think I missed up around using 4 cans, but I had a decent amount of orange peel. Give it at least a month to cure and then polish. Mine turned out great. Nice and flat, smooth, and clear. Escpecially since your using a metallic paint I would keep sand paper as far away from it as you can until you have several layers of clear. You get the nice sparkle from the flakes standing randomly. If you hit it with sand paper, it knocks them over and you get dull areas.

You have to look at how hard the wood is first. Mahoganny is fairly soft for a flat sawn neck, that's why Gibson uses quarter sawn. Even maple can be too soft for flat sawn. Fender uses hard maple or rock maple for their necks which are flat sawn. So you have to be sure of the wood you are using. I am trying to make a neck out of northern ash to see how it gets. I saw that it is just as hard as hard maple, so I am confident in using it flat sawn. But check out how the wood compares to hard maple, if it is too soft, then it could very possibly warp.

I can't speak to all of them, but Krylon, Plastikote, Duplicolor are all acrylic lacquers. I don't know if anyone makes poly primers or not. As for the grain filler, you can put anything over it, but make sure you give it plenty of time to dry. Water based dries a lot faster so unless you are using a transparent color to see the wood grain (which I am guessing not since you are using primer) I would go with water based. Plus it's a lot less toxic as far as fumes are concerned. Also if you are staining wood, remember to stain before using oil based grainfiller since it does not accept stain very well. Water based will, but depending on how heavy it is in the pores, it may not look very good.

While it is not usually recomended to mix brands, let alone types of laquer (acrylic and nitro), I would just say to try it on a test piece. I used Plastikote auto paint for my color layer which is an acrylic and have had no problem shooting DEFT over it. But that doesn't mean it will always work. If you are unsure, always test on scrap first.

I can't really comment on the glossy spots, but the orange peel may or may not get better with layers of clear. Sometimes they fill in, sometimes not. Just keep an eye on it and if it is still there after several coats of clear(enough that you won't sand through) use 400 grit paper and sand the top flat and then keep shooting you clear coats. The only thing I can come up with on your color coat is that either you didn't keep the can shaken enough and some areas have more flake in them or that you didn't spray evenly and that you have either more paint, or more flakes in the shiny areas. But there could also be other causes that I am not familiar with. Those are just my two guesses.

I have read books from Dan Erlwine, Dan MacRostie (sp) amd Melvin Hiscock and everyone of them adjusts the truss rod with the strings tuned to pitch. If you follow the directions properly you will not have a problem. First remove the nut from the rod and lubricate it if it is tight at all. Then adjust the rod. You should not need more than a half turn to get the proper relief. If you need a full turn, there is more wrong than the truss rod can fix. I would find it hard to believe that some of the top luthiers and repairmen are adjusting truss rods improperly. When making adjustments with the capo on the first fret the idea is to eliminate any effect the nut has. So by using the capo, the nut does not matter. As for the action, the nut will come into play. But the distance from the point of departure to the bridge is the scale length. So if you point of departure is .03" into the nut, then you scale length will be slightly longer, but bridges have adjustable saddles, so can move the saddle to get you intonation set correctly. The only place this is a problem is on non-adjustable bridges. If you are playing a song that you hold a note for several seconds you are not going to continuosly pick the string. So why tune like you would? Unless you are on a continuos shred fest and running the length of the neck all night where your notes are held for a second or less, you are never going to sound like you do when tuning. When playing a show, people hear the entire note, not just the first second. Most when recording or playing a show, no one listening is going to pick out the minor pitch change over the rest of the sounds.

Walnut tends to be good for a more bassy sound. Thus the reason you'll see it on a lot more basses than guitars as a solid body. If you are okay with a deep sound, then it is fine for a body. I have actually been kicking around a solid walnut Tele with a neck through design just to see what I could get it too sound like. Possibly even a thinline model.

I've gone through a ton of AutoCAD programs and currently run 2000 at home and 2006 at work. (only reason I am not running 2006 at home is I can't find a copy of the disk yet) I also have played around with Inventor 10. Inventor is nice to work with and does things a little easier than AutoCAD. But either way you are in for big bucks. AutoCAD does offer a student version, don't really know what is on it, but it couldn't hurt to look.

I was wondering what type of finish is used the most by hobbyist builders and why. If you use 2-part poly's, do you spray it yourself and do you have a spray booth for it. Noot looking to start an argument about what finish is better or why, or flame anyone for their spraying techniques. More just a poll, to see what tends to be the most common finish used and Why do you choose it? The two guitars that I have built have both been finished in Nitor Laquer. I have used the DEFT brand. I chose this because in test pieces it was compatible with the acrylic laquer auto paints I used. I went with nitro because of reading about drying problems with acrylic or waterbased laquers. I was tempted to use Minwax poly, but was worried about getting the layers to stick to each other or getting witness lines. I would like to be able to shoot 2-part poly's, but do not have the equipment to do it safely and don't want to pay a auto body shop to do it.

It's not actually what the tools the include in the kits are, but what they charge for them. You can by a pair of end nippers and grind the face flush for a lot less then Stew Mac sells them for. Same goes for most of the other tools. You can build fret leveling files for a fraction of the cost that they sells for. Go to home depot, buy a 10" mill file, using a dremel with a cutoff wheel, cut it into a 6" and a 3" section. Then glue to a piece of wood for a handle. About 15 minutes worth of work and about $10 worth of material for BOTH sizes. The fret bender they sell for $80 you can make for about $15. Buy yourself one precision straight edge (which can also be bought at wood craft for less money). Then buy hardware store ones and just check them against the precision one. I almost never use the precision one on building. It would rather mess up an edge on a $8 Lowes straight edge. I just check the straightness before every build. Certain items stewmac is reasonable on like their fret slotting saws, others they rob you on. They make it sound like you need all of these fancy tools that you can get no where else when either you don't need them or you can get them somewhere else cheaper.

Apply heat and it shrinks. The only thing you don't want to do is use anything too hot or it will melt. Hold it over a flame, but not in the flame. Heat guns work great, hair dryers take a little longer and don't work quite as well.

The only problem I see using your schools facilities is when you go to make the neck. They are not likely to have a .023" thick backsaw or any of the tools needed for fretting. Surprisingly, no one has suggested buy Melvin Hiscock's book on guitar building yet. That book is pretty much the guitar building pre-requisit around here. And I will advise that you get it. It will pretty much expain everything in detail that you would need to know. Be fore-warned though, it will be more expensive than you think, and this will not be the only guitar you end up building. The proper tools for fretting alone will cost you somewhere around $100 or more. Plus all of your harware and the time it takes to build.

Dumb question, but if the star is connected to the shielding material to ground it, why would it be bad if the exposed star touched the shielding material. The only thing I see it doing is being a redundent connection.

I'm still fairly new to woodoworking, so this is kind of a dumb question, but what is stickering when you get new wood?