NJD

East Asians have been using red and black lacquer forever, so personally I think it’s a very sympathetic touch on a guitar with an oriental pattern! But that’s just my view once again – very fine work, I feel inspired

That looks good to me - make sure you have the tuners before you cut it out of the wood though incase those top two are a little too tight - nothing like having the hardware there to check for fit

If you want the string spacing to be straight, I’d suggest starting out by drawing the string lines, then the tuner positions, and adjust your headstock shape to accommodate I find rough drawing headstocks to scale on paper first a good place to start - and then 'cadding things up' from there

I think you're right about the neck being 4 degrees from what I’ve read here, I’d guess that angle on the body is about 3 degrees though to give the strings the tiny bit of extra clearance needed at the bridge - if it were parallel, the strings would only have the fingerboard's height from the body (plus the action) across the tops of the pickups and to the saddles.

As the pickup rings are cut as wedges it makes me think there is a greater agle on the neck than the body

How do you propose to shape the recesses for the knobs and switches etc?

That is awesome, i love the way you've matched the scratch cover nice work!! is it wall paper or something? lol, i don't mean that to be an insult but i know that's what Fender used for the old pink pasley teles

i know damned sure i've seen that pattern somewhere before though!! but can't think where

Just out of curiosity, on a PRS double cut away, doesn’t the carved top meet a flat plane on the body where the neck, pickups and bridge are?

Lol, yeah - quite literally!! Nice smelling stuff too though and you've got some pretty slabs there... 50 mil!! My god! That’s some thick blank! Hats off to you mate! Happy milling!

I am just about to have a word with soundwoods to get my hands on a 1” blank of flame maple as a topcap, so I’ll be carving an archtop for the first time ever too – I’m excited but scared witless at the same time, Setch’s tutorial has given me some confidence but we’ll have to see if it’s well founded :|

So far so good mate, I LOVE PRS’s!! I have ambitions to make one myself one day - so are you going full walnut or are you having a topcap on it? I’ve got walnut on the go at the moment and I have to say I love it to work with!! but I tried routing my body shape out like you're doing and it cocked up big time - luckily it's my own design so I have a degree of 'artistic licence' on my side

oh no, there's still plenty of oppotunity for me to screw up my inlays coming up!!!

here's the board minus the tape - needs to have the binding radiused and needs cleaning up but this should make things clearer

Another productive afternoon:

The fingerboard is no longer a blank and the ebony binding is glued on (awaiting drying)…

The neck and headstock are now both shaped, and I can understand when people say it is the most enjoyable and rewarding bit (save playing it once it’s finished)

So here goes:

Another one of the neck

The fingerboard all glued up

So far so good… I’m almost at the point where I can shape the radius into the neck once my headstock is shaped! I’m not particularly looking forward to cutting my pre-fret slotted, pre-radiused fingerboard, but once those 3 things are done it’s time to blow some mega bucks on maple from my supplier.

Do you mean that you have a pre-sawn fretboard or a ready made neck or something? You can work out the scale length on something by measuring the distance from the 12th fret to the nut, this distance is the same as from the 12th fret to the bridge.

If you're askin about where you make the cavity then it’s relative to where the strings hit the saddles on that particular piece of hardware - the best way of working that out is to have the piece of hardware in front of you - things will make boatloads more sense that way.

Melvyn's book is ace, if nothing else it will clarify the procedure when building a guitar and exactly why things are where they are and why they are there in the first place.

Happy building!!!!

P.S. if you cock up – hardware and electronics can be removed!! And if you have a bolt on neck and something’s not right with it that you can’t rectify it’s easier to make a new one and bolt that on instead, than it is to remove a set neck and fix a neck-thru. Same goes for the body to a degree.

I’ve read on the data sheet for Rustins Plastic coating not to use Sanding Sealers with it, but I want to produce faux binding.

Would it be acceptable to thin down some of the Plastic coating and use this instead of sanding sealer to ‘seal’ the sides of my maple prior to staining the top PRS Style?

Alternatively the write-up on the manufaterer’s website for this stuff: Zinsser SealCoat™ Sanding Sealer boasts quite openly that it is compatible with EVERYTHING…

Does anyone have any experience, or advice that may shed some light on my situation?

Many Thanks

Nathan

Double post sorry

I like the Idea of the Behlen Solar Lux stuff - it seems to be pretty close to the Colortone stuff in shades etc... i think i'll run with that!!

Do you have a scanner and someone who can make large prints?

http://www.amazon.com/Electric-Guitars-Enc...TF8&s=books

I think that's as close as you'll get - if you like a guitar and can find out it's scale length you could make a reasonable blueprint from anything - but this book is an excellent reference for guitars old and new.

If I was you and I had designs on building myself a 'popular' guitar (fenders, ibanezesereses, gibsons etc...) I would look to buy a singular set of templates from one of the companies listed here in various posts.

Alternatively, come up with your own design!! Push the boundaries so to speak!!

i see a dog/bear/dragon with paws outstreched jumping forward with flames coming from behind... but that's typical for me lol

OMG!!! Thta is purely amazing!! Are you going to let us in on how you managed that one then Drak?

As I can not get my hands on ColorTone wood dyes in the UK anymore, I have been searching for an adequate alternative to dye a maple topcap as on a PRS but the only thing I’ve found is a spirit based NGR dye stain seen here http://www.behlen.co.uk/Merchant2/merchant...gory_Code=DYEST

Will this work as a direct replacement when popping the grain with a dark colour and sanding back, and also faux binding?

many thanks,

Nathan

P.S. The Yellow colour one is just an example - they have pretty much each colour that Colortone have

During the positioning of the top block on a Hotrod Trussrod, will sitting it under the middle of fret one (see pic) work? Or does it specifically have to be under the nut?

Many thanks in advance once again

Nathan

PRS Man said:

"I have used the hot rod and I put it under the nut and had no trouble."

i don't really want to take the access cavity futher into my headstock so if it isn't going to have some negative effect i would prefer it positioned futher into my neck like the pic above

Tonight I have further shaped my body back and drawn in the rough position of the bridge and humbuckers (that I cocked up and have rectified after taking the pic) ready for the delivery of Forsner bits for cutting cavities and voids, plus a good selection of sandpaper for good measure

I have also got one of the stages that had scared me slightly out of the way – I have routed the trussrod channel.

Neck with rod

Detail of top end block positioning

Made into new topic

I only see one problem with it. From what I understand, CF rods are only effective if they are epoxied into their slot. If you put them on each side of the truss rod, it would be extremely difficult, even impossible, to epoxy them in satisfactorily. However, this is all just conjecture.

I'm quite confident that with shims and clamps I can glue the CF rods in place with gluing surfaces on the outer and under edges (see pic below)

One thing that come to my mind:

I have showed in an old thread (through an experiment with three different neck blanks) that the resistance to twisting is dependent of the distance from CF to the center line of the neck (do a search if you are interested). The greater the distance, the higher resistance against warping. Then again, most people don’t use CF to prevent warping, so you might be perfectly all right.

Ah, i didn't think about the warp factor (boom boom) but as you say, that didn't really count as a main reason for installing CF in the first place but thanks for bringing it up .

I had plans to rout out my CF rod and truss rod cavities today and epoxy the CF in place too, but I realised that I have the wrong sized bit for routing my CF cavities!! it's oversized (unless they are meant to have a LOT of play!!) after a lot of thought I think I may be able to get around the idea by:

Routing the trussrod cavity, then widening it to the depth of my CF rods and then epoxying them into place so that the truss rod can sit in between them...

Like so:

What are people's views on doing this? Will it, in your view, cause any detriment to the trussrod's functionality or bring about other issues?

Many thanks in advance,

Nathan :D

Well, it’s been a long hard day in the shed/workshop today but we finally have guitar shaped wood!!

I have to start by saying my 2 favourite pieces of kit right now are my Safe-T planer and my disk/belt sander.

Safe-T Planer

My neck and headstock are thicknessed perfectly (even though they’re still in the rough) with only one slight slip up when I accidentally tilted the neck under the blade taking it off the drill press table.

Headstock

My guitar body was a bit of a challenge, and almost cost tears, I started by routing the body shape with the plan of routing all the way through but my router bit was slipping in the collet, so I took over with the jigsaw. A small amount of reshaping, and a few prize minutes spent over the belt sander and all was well!!

Body all shaped

Tare-out

I had plans to rout out my CF rod and truss rod cavities today and glue in too but I realised that Stewmac sent me the wrong sized bit for routing my CF cavities!! They are oversized (unless they are meant to have a LOT of play!! Aargh!! So it seems work is on hold and the overseas taxman is going to be rubbing his hands together once again

EDIT: I couldn't have been paying attention at the time - it seems that stewmac don't do router bits for the narrower CF rods, can anyone suggest how i make channels for them?