NJD

I like what you've done to the f-holes! it's gonna look good - looking forward to this

try someone like http://www.photobucket.com - once you're signed up (FOR FREE) it's as simple as uploading your pictures to it and then they'll appear in your gallery. you'll see 3 different boxes below each picture, the top is the plain old link and the bottom has the tags ready so you can just copy what's in the box (starts with [ img ]) to get a photo that'll show up on forums such as these! happy uploading!! P.S. forum rule is 1 photo per post, then just link in to the rest (by copying the link out of that top box)... you'll see what i mean

Now I have so many pieces of lovely wood lying around, scarf jointing is my next move. I can get a scarf jointed neck out of the rest of my walnut blank, and even get a decent heel out of it. I also have designs on ripping down the middle of my bubinga blank to squeeze 2 necks out of it: I have a sharp low angle block plane that should lend its self well to facing up a scarf joint; I’ll saw it by hand with my tenon saw because I can keep far greater control of the cut in each direction.

It's ok you can breathe now, there is a light spot at the mo (that’s emphasized by the flash and the por lighting in the dining room) where the angles change, but no - it's a 1 piece

Tonight was a night of scraping and sanding, but my headstock face and neck face is level, and damned pretty. As my sandpaper wore down and a finish began to form I realised just how nice a piece of walnut I have Fron another angle with truss rod and CF I also cleaned up my body blank only to find FIGURE on ONE side of one of the planks! The sad thing is it has shown on the worst side! Where I have a gash from a slipped blade on the joiners thicknesser on the adjoining plank... So I have a dilemma on my hands - do I go for the uniform grain of the better face or show this figure off but only on one half?!!??! Damn...

Hah!! never takes long for us to mount up does it mate?? where in cardiff are you??

Lol, I see your point of view - those big machines are very clean and quick, but I do want something to hand too. I have that option for big jobs but just want a tool around for the odd 2 minute job on a Sunday when I have 5 mins to myself - I don't want this bandsaw to replace slipping my local joiner the odd £5 for a big neat job just be there when I have a jig to knock up or a neck or body blank to rough out.

Very true, the blocks nearest the camera just came away due to one pice of walnut getting stuck in the thicknesser (that did all 4 side at once... I WANT ONE) it had about 2 mil missing from the gluing surface - it's away from the area that's going to form the body anyway. The top one had stuck though...

Ah wicked! It's not normally my kinda thing but I’m really feeling it so far looking forward to futher progress

Hmmm, I dunno – I don’t mind begging stealing and borrowing every once in a while for something big but I work full time and the only friendly joinery around doesn’t open on weekends. Plus I wouldn’t want to end up being 'that pain in the arse that turns up to cut a piece of 2 x 4 for some jig' every Thursday lunchtime.

Here’s the pics I promised Neck, rough cut – for some reason the cut on the front of the head stock isn’t square, it’s the only cut that isn’t but it’s nothing 20 careful minutes with a block plane won’t sort out! Body blank, glued up (clamps coming off in 10 minutes) http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b222/humbuck/image003.jpg

BTW Thanks for the archtop tutorial Setch, i'm looking forward to putting that into practise!

Just got back from my local and friendly joiners, my neck blank has been rough profiled and my body blank has been faced, thicknessed and jointed!! Can’t wait to get home from work to glue up!! The anticipation is now physically killing me. As I haven’t got a home bandsaw anymore so I’m planning on using my laminate trimming router bit to take a number of shallow passes on my body blank with an over-sized bearing following the profile of my body template, and take it down to almost final size on my belt and disk sander, finishing off with my scrapers and sandpaper. The joiner also put me in contact with a spray finisher, so I’ll have a chat there and see if he’s willing to shoot the nitro for me. All in all a more productive than usual lunch hour (Pics tonight)

I'm down in Pontypridd, near(ish) Cardiff in South Wales

Hmmm, so for body and neck roughing a timberwolf blade seems to be the way to go?

I do have the odd book on guitar making lol, My Collection I can see where you’re coming from on the string thru front… I will no doubt be building a sister guitar next to this one, as I do want to test a few methods (namely top carving) on some less expensive wood before potentially butchering a very good piece of maple. I think I’ll test a few different techniques and go a few different routs on that, now including string thru. I’ve been paying some serious mind to using that lovely piece of bubinga I have to make a 12 string neck – I think the stupid level of rigidity with the added ‘insurance’ of some CF rods would lend itself well to going quite thin. Thanks for the feedback!! Nathan.

Ok, first of all Hello!! So I’ve been playing with guitars since my early teens, making the odd plywood guitar here, re-spraying the odd Encore strat-copy there… and for my GCSE’s in Design Tech just under 10 years ago I finally made a guitar from stock and from scratch and boy was it bad! At the time of building this beast I truly knew Squat it’s a semi acoustic Les Paul/Rick-esque creation that once had the electrics out of a £10 Columbus ES-335 copy, and the truss rod out of the afore mentioned Encore’s Neck it is made from quilted maple front and back (A grade) and the neck and body sides/bridge block is joinery grade Sapele. The fingerboard is rosewood and the radius is… well… who knows! I basically took a plane to it and eyeballed it– it is left-handed too. Neck Joint Sufficed to say when it was once ‘playable’ (term used loosely) there were a few playability issues – it had no tone just twang. It did for brightness what Phil Mitchell’s Head does for the contrast on your TV (for any UK post readers). The fret slots were sawn free hand and I had no concept of fret levelling, dressing, crowning and the like. But still, I personally love the shape! And the original concept in my eyes has a lot of meat on the bone, and in as much, I decided some time ago to re-master the idea and build a refined educated version. so in the time between then and now I have become a qualified cabinet maker (not my profession though) and read a whole load of literature on guitar building, acoustic, electric and archtop while also sponging info off of the net on the subject and carrying out the odd guitar project here and there. This guitar has been sat on the drawing board for a long old time and a number of alterations have arisen: It will have the arched top I wanted for it in the beginning but didn’t feel anywhere near confident enough to attempt. It will be a solid body guitar The heel joint has been redesigned so the neck sits in to the body much like an SG only with more gluing serface (somewhat like David Myka does). The materials have been completely rethought As has the hardware and electronics So basically same shape body – different guitar I suppose! I have cut a lot of the necessary templates to make a start and have a few tools, specialised and non specialised Templates I have also collected all of the hardware and electronics including 2 Seymour Duncan Humbucker pups Hardware and along with the fingerboard and a few choice veneers for the headstock, I have the body back and neck ready to be jointed/face n edged and bandsawed/routed etc… lovely bita Walnut Body Blank Neck Blank I do also have some Bubinga that was originally intended for this guitar (around 2003 before I bought my own house and became a very poor man with no time on my hands for hobbies) until I realised that unless I had kryptonite tipped router bits and toothed saw blades, and arms like Popeye I was never going to make a decent wearable instrument out of it without bankrupting myself with replacement tools and bits. Also in the 3 years it’s been ready to go one ‘wing’ on the body blank has warped slightly and the guy I knew who worked the blanks to the stage they are in now, no longer works as a joiner – what he had to go through to work this wood is yet another story.. Bubinga Body Blank Bubinga Neck Blank I am going to order in some maple for the cap once I have a guitar shaped body back to glue it to – as I have never carved an arched top before I am going to order in the cheapest 1 inch maple blank I can find as well as the flamed maple I am planning on as to have a ‘trial run’ before tackling such an expensive piece of wood. So that’s pretty much the story so far! Watch this space for developments – I’m planning on taking a few WIP shots and will post them up in the interim should anyone be interested. The final word on this guitar is that I don’t have the room or expertise to apply even a half decent finish my self and I really do want the best for her, so I’m gonna cheat and stain the top myself, take it up to finishing standard (possibly seal and grain fill myself) but then take it to a guy in Swansea of SGL guitars to shoot a professional shiny lacquer finish onto her. Well, if you’ve truly read this far congrats to you! And also, thank you kindly once again for an awesome forum! Nathan.

Oh man that’s some good lookin stuff! What about the headstock carrying the idea on the bottom of the body over? Is there going to be any carving on the top? SG or parker fly style or something? Lookin very good so far!!

Ah brilliant, thanks for the advice Rich! I’ve used industrial bandsaws in college but never even touched on actually tuning them. A guide book or a guide dvd would, I suppose, be a good move when buying a machine then. What blade would you then recommend I try and source?

Lol, if it was up to me and money & room were no object – I’d have a bandsaw I could rip a 1 piece body blank into veneers on!! But alas, back to the real world… yeah, I can’t imagine ever needing to rip stock down from planks or the like, and if I did get to that point my workshop and capital would have no doubt expanded by then anyway. Would you just advise choosing which ever one of the two had a larger capacity then? I suppose at that price they’re both going to be at the same level… I believe they are both good manufacturers(?), I believe they both make 'real deal' bandsaws too

Hello, I’m looking to invest in a bandsaw, purely for the job of cutting neck blanks and roughing body shapes. I’ve been looking around at what I can get for a maximum of about £175 and I’ve found the following: http://www.diytools.co.uk/diy/Main/Product...iProductID=1853 http://www.diytools.co.uk/diy/Main/Product...ProductID=37443 Basically I need something with a cutting height that will take a whole neck blank. There was a thread similar to this where the guy had listed a few that didn’t have the cutting height, he then went on to mention reading good things about the Record bandsaw, but I’ve yet to find a review. Any help in this matter would be much appreciated! Many thanks, Nathan.