Prostheta

Ive never had a hard time with purpleheart Glueups or color loss I love purpleheart, It puts out great Tone

I know there is a few people on this forum that Hate the stuff (wes for one ) But thats just personal preference

Im working with some Purpleheart right now for an 8-string Im building and as normal all is going well, there are some things to watch out for! purplehear is Very hard on tools and Blades, also sanding can be a real pain in the back side but all in all its great stuff

!!METAL MATT!!

Totally....and any tearout you get is legendary! Six days in the bandsaw, two days on the router table and the rest of the year being sanded

2.375" is a bit over 60mm. That's going to be one wide neck! I chose 56mm for mine and it seems comfortable enough.

As for a slotted and radiused board, you'd be better off going for a 5-string bass board from LMII as they slot to 27.5" (plus a variety of others) and radius to 12" or 16". I've gone for 30" as I think intonation will be MUCH better over this scale....

I've gone for 56mm wide at the nut. It fits nicely.

Thanks David - i've gone down the route of grainfilling back, sanding back lightly and Tru-oil'ing the guitar as you have done. I don't want a gloss finish so all i'm doing from here on in is to build up enough oil till the wood refuses (a lot!) and then hitting it back with 0000 wool and wax.

I've decided to go down the Tru-oil rout, despite wenge and mahogany being oil gannets which will require lots of coats. I'm not risking the health problems posed by accelerated volatilisation of CA and acetone! I actually tested a way of filling the pores black using sawdust and wax which has worked perfectly under the Tru-oil.

I can't stress enough how much worse the fumes will be if CA is cut with acetone!

Interesting....I hope somebody more knowledgable than myself can shed some light on this, more because out of interest than anything else!

As far as finishing PH goes (as per the original question!) a lot of stock seems to be put into "UV resistant" finishes, although I don't think these will be a guaranteed purple-forever solution. I personally would use Tru-oil to seal the pores, plus it would gloss up the wood nicely. For clear finishes, I would grain fill the wood black first to highlight the pore structure.

I can't see how acetone (being a high volatile hydrocarbon) would "stay" in the wood unless it was under pressure or kept from volatilising to the atmosphere. In my opinion, the chances are that the whiteness is from the padauk's natural oils being leeched out of the wood by the acetone onto the rag or whatever was used with wipe the wood.

For using a hand router, yes it is very difficult. I would use a router table.

Oh, and since I didn't like the quality of the photos I took in artificial light last night, here's a followup (click for full size):

No idea as of yet - i'm waiting on the strap buttons from Allparts! Given that the heel is a little further up than "normal" I might try a button there to check the balancing before I consider bringing the heel back slightly.

I use a series 4 Trace Elliot AH300 300w head with a 4x10 TE cab with a compressor pedal in the loop.

I've considered upgrading to a Warwick or Ampeg valve head, but the Trace is more than enough for the metal band I play in and I wouldn't want to lump around an expensive head too much either! At some point I might buy an EHX Black Finger to add some valve grind....

Off the top of my head (having never done it) I would try to poke a screwdriver through the back ferrule to knock out a top ferrule or vice versa.

The wenge is fairly neutral looking, but the oil or wax finish should bring it out nicely. I'm just happy that even strung up, the neck doesn't move at all. Really. it's straight as a die when up to tension. Crazy!

Trussrod cover? Ask Huntindoug! It's a laser cut piece of rosewood :-D

Right, well we're fast approaching the finishing post (no joke intended!).

Another pic

Yet another pic

The central tenon has had the top edges smoothed over slightly, the back has been planed flat and rounded over, etc. The cocobolo was awful to work with (cough, sputter etc.) but looks AWESOME with the inlays. Many many many thanks to Huntindoug on that one!

I still have to round over the top, move the heel up an inch or so and finish sand. I believe i'm going to go for a black Briwax finish although I may yet be talked out of it. The volatility and toxicity of cutting black cyanoacrylate with acetone as a grain filler has put me off a bit.

Update! I queried one of our environmental scientists to confirm what I suspect, and I was pretty much on the ball.

Because of the high volatility of acetone, the respiratory issues caused by CA fumes will be exacerbated, so using a charcoal mask is essential if working indoors. Outdoors, it's probably still best!

Oh, just to follow on. I'm aware that acetone can be used to melt CA glue, but does it degrade the overall effectiveness if used to cut the product for application?

Okay! I'm considering attempting a grain fill with this black CA I bought but it is of medium viscosity and I would like it to be water-thin to seal the pores of my wenge/mahogany T-bird before oil finishing it. Would acetone cut cyanoacylate or are they incompatible?

It's not only more economical, it also makes more sense! There is no PRACTICAL difference in the sound. The difference in savings between wide lumber and standard widths is so large it would cover the price of the neck wood easily.

If you're pursuing making your own guitar then slow down buddy. If you approach everything at this rate you'll end up:

- with no money left to complete the project

- disillusioned about making instruments

- minus a finger or worse

I did six months research before even buying tools. You'll write off a few "projects" before getting close to completing a project, never mind making a playable one unless you have had prior woodwork, engineering or of similar discipline experience. Don't buy the best wood off the bat. Buy cheap else you'll kick yourself when you make that one wrong measurement which writes it off.

Really! Wow, that goes against everything i've been taught but hell - whatever makes my joins better in the long run :-D I'll try my next tenon (second Thunderbird!) without wiping and see how it goes....

Purpleheart seems quite oily/waxy so all i've ever done on it before glueing is to wipe it down with acetone to remove surface oils which might cause adhesion problems. I'd be tempted to grain fill it with epoxy or black CA (did a test on mahogany today - awesome) sand and then finish with whatever you want.

Anyone got any further info on the oil content of PH?

Sounds like you could be SOOL!!

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readart...icles_525.shtml

Opinion is that it won't stay purple unless you refinish it every once in a while, or chemically treat it. I prefer it for it's mechanical stability in neck laminations.

Ummmm.

Please read the rules - one picture per post, no larger than 640x480 and no linking to commercial site's images as this leeches their data transfer which they pay for.

Anyway - guitars. I would recommend buying a couple of books on building solidbodies so you have a working knowledge of why things are built the way they are. You'll need to understand truss rods and the different types (if you're going thin/flat you need a shallow rod), neck specifics (laminations, wood grain orientation, scarf joints, glueing, fretting...) and then the difficult bit. Making the neck stick to the big blunt bit. At the right angle so you get a playable adjustable action all that good stuff.

First plan of action would be to buy/acquire these things as a first priority.

None of these will help you to build a guitar:

- 6"/15cm steel ruler

- 30"/762mm steel ruler

- small retractable tape measure

- pencils

- angle protractor

- calculator

- Make Your Own Electric Guitar by Melvyn Hiscox

- Stewmac catalogue (for drooling over before you get the right ideas easily, and then learn how to buy them cheaper elsewhere as you get better)

By this point you will be able to measure an instrument up and figure out important dimensions such as balance points (top button) neck angles where the body meets the neck (check out a TOM bridge on a Les Paul or something) headstock angles (check Ibanez', Jackson, Gibson, then Fender/Squire....)

Read HEAVILY into tool safety, specifically chisels, routers, bandsaws etc. Wouldn't want you to not be able to play your guitar now would we?

Oh hell, just read HEAVILY. Building the 'ker is just 1% of the work. No more. 99% planning and knowing what you're going to do and WHY is far more important, and will take up way more time!

A 9v battery isn't guaranteed to be flat and it's got a relatively small surface area. A small glass block would be a much better proposition. Something with 1/2 to 2/3 of the surface area of the headstock, otherwise it's to easy to give into temptation and concentrating in one area....

Given that's it's rattlecan paint, you should ideally let it dry for a LONG LONG time because the paint is most likely to still be partially plastic and will move over time. If you sanded it flat and buffed it to a polish and then decided to install the tuners, you'd find the bushings sinking into the finish fairly soon! Trust me....I did this with a BC Rich Mockingbird respray and had to chip out the neck plate....

Baking the headstock at a Texas temperature would speed the curing process up somewhat, but i'm a little shady on the timescales. Just my two pence worth.

Standard E! You don't need to detune to be heavy....Destinstitution on our Myspace often makes people ask what tuning we use....hahaha :-D

I wasn't sure if you guys changed anything. And yeah, that crunchy F from destinstitution sounds a bit lower than standard. Looking forward to hearing the new stuff for 2007!

Leave it natural!

The tuning or the bass...?

Yes it would be, because you might as well keep your €1500 and invest it in something that might make you a better return! If you want to spend €1500 on your own guitar then cool - we've all done that before - but to do it with selling it in mind....just Paypal me your money instead and believe me, it'll go to a better cause and you'd get the same return ;-D