Prostheta

Botanical name, "Eucalyptus Eubludygalah"?

Maple is only light by comparison to the other woods; normally Maple is considered as being one of the heaviest with the other woods (which are heavier) tending to be smaller components like fingerboards, laminates, etc. Still! Very very cool and a spectacular bass.

Agreed. The objective isn't to get past the post quickest, but in one piece. It's a good time to concentrate on finishing up my Sapele skirting boards and electrical outlet surrounds in time for the festive gluttony period and next time around the sun.

I'm going to need to take a short break on both of these guitars. Partially because I'm waiting for new binding to be delivered (the pieces I have vary in colour too much), plus I don't have anywhere safe to do good painting at the moment. The Invaders body needs a bit of sanding here and there that paint has revealed, plus the pearly body needs edge sanding, and binding of course. The paint for pearly will need to be bought at the very moment I'm about to do the painting since it'll be mixed there and then with something like a 1-2 day window.

Ah, we've turned this into a computer fault discussion thread now then? Cool, I'm in....hahaha My second monitor off this laptop started turning itself off randomly thanks to some sort of electrical fault. Percussive maintainence revives it, but less and less. Yet another thing to have to replace. I'm King Sick of e-Waste (all hail, etc). Opening it up provided no good information on whether it's a faulty solder joint (most likely) or a dodgy cap (less likely at this age).

Knowing Trogdor makes me feel old. 12 years ago, and before then I think it existed as a Flash anim? Yiiiiikes

Procrastination in the guise of gathering stones, sometimes? haha

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't force a project to be progressed unless you can genuinely put positive work into it. I've written off way too many projects - or at least put them into a less than satisfactory state - by forcing them forward. One thing at a time, and always with confidence.

Next to the fire extinguisher, funny. Bloody dragons coming in here and burninating all of our jerbs. The veneer work looks excellent! Very clean I'm sure that your step by step considered approach will show in the end of product. Doing only as much as is possible at any stage to maintain control over standards instead of meeting some arbitrary personal deadline should be how all projects are managed. There really isn't any prize for first over the line with making your own guitars....unless you're trying to hit a 2021 GOTM win which is a short deadline!

Damn, that's a tight looking set of radii on there. Did you have much trouble keeping them sharp? They look somewhere like a couple of mm (3/32"?) which is damn hard to do. Well done that man.

As it turns out, I was looking online as to where I'm going to source some parts. I checked out https://guitarpartscenter.eu/en_US/p/GOTOH-GHL-2-Locking-Nut-GD/7646 and they detail the spec of "nut height" at 5,7mm. This is good reassurance that I'm working things out correctly.

I think that if this guitar's spirit animal is a Capybara, then clearly mine is a Space Invader

Regarding the nut shelf, you can see here at 0:53 in that older production M models with jumbo fretwire had a nut shelf. This looks a hair over a mm, but it's hard to tell. The point is that the base of the shelf has a specific relation to the crown of the fretwire. Apparently this guy is a bit of an ass, scooping up guitars cheaply and flipping them at super top dollar after hyping. It's fair enough in some ways, however if he got ahold of my old Mirage for a few hundred and would only sell it for a few thousand, yeah, not that cool now. Another thing of note is how the forearm contour is actually a flat plane with a radiused contour, whereas I dialled in a cylindrical section. This seemed to feel better when matching against the parallel-ish cylindrical section of the rear contour. The way that a Strat has a visual relationship between the two over the side was the driver for this decision.

I'm acutely aware that I am taking very unflattering photos and that once a finish goes onto that Maple, it will look a lot better. I'm unsure what sort of finish I'll use though since this is Maple on Maple. Perhaps Tru-Oil.

Yesterday, I realised just how much I despise inlaying Maple. Short of cutting everything using a laser or CNC, it's stupidly-difficult to get nice perimeters on inlays. Being a couple of days at about -18C to -20C, I really didn't want to go out to Hobbylinna to buy some epoxy so I used thick CA. That might have been an error. Pantograph setup. 7,5mm pilot with a 2,5mm burr cutter. I clamp the board with the pearl on it in different locations to extract 10mm x 5mm blocks. The template is a 30mm x 15mm scrap of Sapele since this is a 3:1 pantograph. The template was given a little additional allowance (just under a mm) both dimensions to compensate for the runout in the ('king terrible) Dremel's spindle. The pockets were opened out using a 6mm and 4mm chisel until the inlay sits slightly higher than the radiused surface. The big problem as I see it is the limitations in how perpendicular the edges are from the chisel cuts. Even with them being as sharp as I am able to get them, there will always be a degree of compression in the wood, plus tearing and pulling. This isn't ideal. The first photo shows the problem well. The left and lower sides look reasonably good. The right has a small pull where a small chunk of the fibres likely flipped up instead of cut through cleanly. The upper edge will be sanded away until it's flat against the inlays of course. The second photo shows that the edges of the pocket were slightly rounded. The CA filled in the gaps, but the gradient in the shadow implies that the surface crushed inwards slightly during excavation. I don't know how this will look once the entire board is inlaid and then radius sanded. This is still entirely unsanded and straight off the router.

There's no reason to believe that wouldn't sound terrible.

No no, they're tone x's. Arcane symbols of tone.

Each different material works differently as well....even the "same" material from different manufacturers. The ABS I used on my Invaders guitar is very nice, however it soon whites out under stress. The next job is material that I can't even remember buying....let's see how that works! What I can say from this discussion is that everybody finds their method. Hair dryer, heat gun, solvents. You've just got to get your hands dirty and develop a feel for what works and what doesn't, using other people's info as a guide for boundaries. Like @Bizman62 mentions....not starting a fire is a good sign.

Yeah, I've seen that at Gibson multiple times now in different videos. It's great when companies keep staff on long enough to become masters at tasks such as this, however Gibson have famously had high staff turnover in recent years. You just can't do that with staff who need high skill levels like this. I must have forgotten how they use acetone and binding goop as glue. The acetone will soften the binding strip, making it easier to bend. That little nugget must have gotten pushed off the far end of my attention shelf by me piling too much on!

Ah, I see what you mean I mark my progress as I go. Each fret slot I've radiused, plus it's useful to note fret positions. I mark up so many things that it looks crazy at times.

The thickness at the centre of the fingerboard is bang on 5,5mm. Exactly what I was aiming for it to be by the previous calculations. I was thinking it might need to take of a hair more still, but this is already on the nose. Sweet!

Weapons of Maple Destruction After radiusing the fingerboard with the router sled, the fret slots need deepening and radiusing. The tealight candle is a nice cheap source of stearine for lubricating the saw plate in the cut. One quick draw down the candle does 2-3 fret slots. If you worry about remnants of wax in the board, remember to clean it up with DNA. It's all good as long as you don't go to excess. I've made the decision to go to a more sensible fingerboard thickness and use a shelf for the locking nut. I just need to dial in a very specific depth for the shelf, which is a lot easier to do than doing it across the entire board for one small area.

Well, I wouldn't understand negativity coming from here. TDPRI maybe, since the scope of the site seems to be more specific in terms of user location, interests and age group. Don't rock the boat, break any moulds, "back in my day" and all that. Building an instrument or learning the processes are meant to be a joy, and if that's not good enough for some people, meh.

Careful about blowing too much smoke up our own asses man The bottom line is we can be judged by the work we do and the problems we surmount to get to the finish line. Generally everybody helps everybody here, however it takes the builder to make use of that and make it all happen. I rarely reach what I would call a finish line, purely because I enjoy the process and refining technique as opposed to ending up with a guitar at the end of it. Which is pretty weird. I suppose people that go out on runs don't always do it for the medals, if that analogy works. I'm looking forward to hearing feedback from the client. That should be a cool slant and a nice bookend on this project!

That's pretty much my take as well. Combining that with a number of techniques that are difficult to pull off individually....that bend in the top is worth the price of entry alone. I was reminded of Brian Moore guitars because of that. I know Warwick do similar things themselves, but often that's just milled in rather than bent!