Prostheta

A jointer is a power planer with an adjustable fence which allows you to plane at an angle to one of the existing faces. In your case, you would clamp your maple back face to face ("unbookmatching!") and run the gluing edge over the jointer, keeping the large face tight to the fence. The planer (if set up well) will give you a perfect 90° planed face you can glue.

I also use the jointer to true up wood for body blanks, thin out neck laminates (after attaching to other pieces of wood for safety!) and true up the top face of necks ready for adding the fretboard.

I would do that after thickness planing anyway as I deem them to be "coarse" tools which shouldn't be relied on to work less than 1/16" from the final cut, so to speak. One incidence of tearout and the piece needs to be worked around or scrapped! I prefer to thickness plane, and if possible get a better levelling cut from the jointer before hand sanding same as yourself. Same results, all said and done. I just spend more on the tooling as I have less time to put in the elbow grease!

You beat me to the mark there Setch - that is a great jig man. I just wish I had more space in the workshop :-(

I don't use my router to achieve anything closer than 1/8" to "real size" now because of tearout (plus, I'm too lazy to figure out which directions to rout to avoid tearout!). I prefer to trace around templates with a 1/8" tip marker, bandsaw to the outside of the line and spindle sand to the inside of the line.

Apologies if the humour went awry there ;-) It's always an irking thing for my wife.

Anyway. Hand painting and stencil sounds like a good plan because you're guaranteed to get the real deal as opposed to something that emulates it near as damnit. I'd use acrylics myself as well, especially the non-toxic waterbased ones such as the ones Games Workshop used to sell (I'm not a customer BTW).

When I did loads of painting (wow, it's like, 17yrs now....) with those, you'd generally find me sucking the paintbrush in my mouth and excess paint wiped on the back of my left hand. Saliva doesn't affect the paints finish, and the "other stuff" in saliva keeps the brush in a nice tip. Just make sure you choose nice tasting paints. Inks used to suck so badly.

You might find you'll need to prepare the surface well otherwise the paint will be "sucked" from the brush by the wood and you'll drag a dry brush a lot more. Either that or you'll end up applying paint thick to get good colouration. Sanding sealer applied to the body should prevent this.

I can't vouch for the taste of Chunkielad's Createx paints however - suck em and see!!

Huddersfield is a little further afield from us down here in Lincoln (I'm a Hull lad though). You can always pop down to use my jointer if you need to true up your boards :-)

That's lovely quilt for sure Al man. I love wide quilt as opposed to tighter waves.

I really do wish I didn't keep giving myself router tearout problems on the guitars I want to finish naturally so I could do that :-(

Never seen that Strat design before - looks pretty cool since it's on raw wood.

Indeed. A very interesting possibility, and it seems easier than cutting an acute angle into wood perpendicular to a narrow face. Well, at least for me it is. I presume that given some good thought into the mechanical stability of any joints in that area, the possibilities are endless!

Interesting Setch...how would that work exactly?

I hope you didn't waste a project or made scrap because of the join. Keep us posted on how your scarf joint work goes! Always good to watch progress.

Heh ;-)

Does vinyl accept sanding sealer over it nicely? I would worry about the edges not "building up" and getting knocked off when it's sanded. The graphic looks like the wood underneath is showing through. Perhaps using a similar technique, but using water slide decals? I bought some awesome inkjet printer friendly waterslide transfer paper from a US eBay seller for a couple of quid which you "seal" after printing with lacquer. It might be possible to sanding sealer the body, apply transfers and add further layers of sanding sealer or clearcoats.

Jigsaws follow surface plane material you're cutting, and since the blade is under no tension at the bottom of it's movement you'll quite easily cut too far into convex curves and not enough into concave as the blade eases out of the curve at the bottom slower than the top. All I can say is to cut slowly and surely else the blade will take it's own path and angle. A bandsaw relieves this tension somewhat and produces better results as the tension is kept above and below the cutting point.

Oh yes:

+ wooha on the bandsaw!! make sure it's set up well and you have a new best wife.

Your best source is behlen.co.uk as most of the products are the same as what Stewmac supply.

Oh yes, I got a disciplinary and post deletion just for being humourous about the difference between Finnish and finish. My wife is Finnish and it gets tedious when we see it being mis-spelled. I'm sure you appreciate the idiosynchracies of humour being "UK-ish". I got a b*l****ing. Obviously Yorkshire humour isn't transcontinental.

Where in the UK are you from? If you're local, maybe I or some local denizens could help out.

Surface glueing area on a scarf joint is so much larger than a straight 90­° fit....

Nah, two s**gs and a Washburn acoustic will pay that off nicely.

Gold hardware for definite. You'll feel like you've spent some money for some reason then ;-)

Hell, I think it looks awesome cool.

Get a small piece of plastic (or something that will hold it's form) the same front profile size as your TOM and use a piece of string and a pencil to draw a 16" wide circle (attaching it to something larger helps). You will now have a perfect guide to adjust your saddle string height radius at the bridge. Just string 'er up and raise the height of your TOM so that the first and sixth strings are "at height". Use a file to increase the slot size in the saddles of the 2nd/3rd/4th/5th strings by lifting them out and taking them down a bit at a time till they touch your radius template. Remember to polish and smooth the saddles to reduce breakages and to check your intonation!!

I'm actually quite sold on the 4x10 Trace Elliott cabinet I have with the AH300. I think one additional large speaker would help push the air more though!!

My wife couldn't shift them out of her shop. Nasty cheap things. I guess if you can't afford a better guitar, or you're a beginner then fine. Repair techs and shops find it cheaper to write these guitars off when they're faulty as opposed to repairing them.

Compare them to the utilitarian throwaway boots you go sploshing in the mud around at paintball as opposed to the kickass worn-in love 'em boots you wear onstage, or the sweet comfy shoes you wear in the studio.

Like hessian underwear. Not silk boxers. A fat sweaty chick with bad breath and an annoying whiney voice as opposed to...I could go on...

Good move. A/Bing the amps is best. Take another band member for "moral support" because you wouldn't believe the amount of underplaying people do when trying amps out (guilty also). You want to try it at the volumes you use, on your instrument(s) preferably without a sales bitch waffling stuff you already know or don't need to hear. Make sure you actually PLAY the things :-)

My opinion based on the specs off the sites (don't use this as a basis for your own opinion, but it is intended for you to bear in mind).

AMPEG BA-115

Pros - Tilt-back "monitor style" cabinet. 15" speaker to move lots of air. Pre-amp to power-amp loop for compressor. It's got AMPEG written on it :-)

Cons - No compressor/limiter. Limited EQ. No dedicated effects loop other than pre>power.

SWR LA-15

Pros - Aural Enhancer circuitry (reduces phase smushing). Line out (sound guys best friend!).

Cons - No compressor/limiter. Limited EQ. No dedicated effects loop. Looks like a 20's gangsters pair of black and white spats :-)

Featureswise - SWR. Tonewise? Check em out and see what YOU really think ;-) All the best - I hope you get the amp and sound you want no matter what your pocket is allowing! Keep us informed on how you get on.

It's a shame you can't have the best of both worlds really. I appreciate the monochrome qualities of the original finish, but the vintaged look gives it character. I would actually replace the hardware with gold myself, but that's just me.

I presume that the lacquer has just yellowed naturally then. No going back from that unless you refinish, as I believe has already been suggested. That would be more hassle than it's worth really.

-1 on the stealing of tools. Begging or borrowing is cool though as it keeps everything within the family so to speak. I have knives for the thieves of guitars and tools. Well, thieves in general.

Martin - what is Switzerland like for import duty when buying from abroad? It may be an idea to buy from David Dyke in the UK as inter-European import might be a lot more relaxed. I'm not sure if he ships, but it's worth asking the question anyway. Alternatively, Stewart MacDonald do some good things as long as you don't get sucked into the Million Dollar Man Dan Erlewine™'s tools that will make you into the worlds most out of pocket luthier.

+1 on the bandsaw

+2 on the router

+1 on a good fore plane (12"+ sole)

+1 on bribing local woodworkers (cabinet makers especially!) for usage on their thickness planers/sanders, jointers etc. (although I would recommend the beer as opposed to cigarettes).

If you can get decent well-dried wood, and either make it into a blank yourself or get somebody else to do it at reasonable cost, the rest is open to however you want to take it.

I bought my last three complete blanks from Simo. The other guitar blanks I made out of raw dried lumber from North Heigham sawmills in Norfolk. The thicknesser, jointer and fore plane I bought are indispensible for this ;-)

To be honest, if you choose good wood from the woodyard with little to no inclusion then you can make some great blanks. My Koa Tele is ash, my Iceman is walnut although I use a lot of African mahogany for "other" stuff.

Hey Al - I'm just down in Lincoln, and I've just invested a fair amount in tooling for building guitars. How many more are you planning on making? Nice headstock mod by the way - I didn't like it Strat-shaped :-)

Any chance of pictures? I'm kinda curious.