curtisa

Ready to rock:

AKA what I got for Christmas. Neck - one piece bolt-on Body - chambered Pickup - single coil hand-wound Electronics - on-board preamp Time to rumble: \

Nice to see a larger field of entrants this month, and a lot of quality work on display from everyone. Excellent work all round.

The cases of those mini toggles were never intended to have wires directly attached to them. Whatever method you're using for cavity shielding (paint, copper tape, aluminium foil) should be all that's required to ground the case of the switch. If it's absolutely necessary you can solder a wire to one of the washers that are usually supplied with the switch and slide it over the shaft (ooooerrrrr...)

Titebond can be bought from Carbatec, who have stores in NSW and do mailorder. There are probably specialised joinery shops in your area that sell it too. Even down here in Hobart I was able to locate a store that had stocks of Titebond I, II and III in various sizes on the shelf. I think I paid $15 for a 500ml bottle. A quick interweb search shows that Nover and Co are the distributors for Titebond in the Newcastle area: http://www.titebond.com.au/distributors/index.htm#nsw I have a sneaking suspicion that there's probably no real performance difference between Titebond Original and Selleys Interior Aquadhere. Was thinking of doing some quick glue strength tests in the near future to check it for myself. Regarding wood, befriend your local timber stockist, particularly small private operators. Just last week I bought a piece of stripey-grained blackwood big enough for a body from a small timber store for $40. There's nothing saying you have pay for the import costs on a piece of alder, ash or mahogany for your builds. There are all sorts of native timbers that perform excellently in guitars. Check some of Mr Searls work for examples of QLD maple, Vic/Tas blackwood, Vic ash. Lots of others to choose from - silky oak, Tas oak, jarrah, wandoo, gidgee, blackheart sassafras, myrtle, sheoak, musk, celery top pine...

Nothing wrong with using a spokeshave to rough-carve a top. Both of these carves were roughed in using a Stanley spokeshave, except around the horns where the curves are just too tight to fit it in: You will find after the first few draws of the blade across the timber that it will want to work in certain directions with minimal chatter and tearout, sometimes in directions that seem counter-intuitive to what's considered "proper" (eg working perpendicular to the grain as opposed to parallel). Sharpness is essential, and regular touching up will keep things flowing smoothly. Maybe it's not as good as the Ibex finger planes, but it works nicely for me.

Spent the last few days building a framesaw in between clearcoating SY8. I don't have enough space to fit a bandsaw large enough to resaw tops, and I'm not adverse to a little hard work, so I've given the oldskool method of resawing a shot. Put the saw through it's paces for the first time last night and resawed a 450mm x 150mm x 36mm block of myrtle in about 30 minutes. After I clean up the cut faces I should have two 14mm thick bookmatched pieces. I've just slapped some varnish on the saw and am now waiting for it to dry. Also waiting for the postman to deliver a more aggressive blade and will see if it works any differently to the one I currently have fitted. Will post pics once the varnish dries.

Neat idea! +10 points for ingenuity

Thanks guys. That is indeed the natural colour of Tasmanian myrtle. Do a Google search to see lots of other examples of the colours you can get - burgundy, orange, salmon pink, pale brown are common.

First wash of clear. Always a good thing in my book. Finally get to see what the final colours are like, and feels like I'm on the home stretch:

Cobra for me too. It's the Ford GT of LPs.

Thanks Scott. I've still got enough from the original myrtle slab to do another 3 tops. Nice stuff to work with too, pretty similar to maple. I initially started with a cove bit to set the carve depth leaving 3mm of myrtle showing at the edges, but the top I've used wasn't thick enough to give me the carve depth I was after, so on a whim I took the rest of it down with the spokeshave, scraper and sanding block. Nothing really special about the method - I guess go slow and check how it's looking frequently is the best way to describe it.

Body carve done. Decided to try something a little different this time round and deliberately carved through to the back all the way around the edges giving it a nearly-sorta bound look. Might work, might not. But willing to try: Headplate in matching Tas myrtle getting glued:

The method I use is to have the neck and neck pocket done before I mark out the location of the bridge. That way I can tweak the bridge location relative to the position of the neck, rather than try and work the other way around. I'll have the neck built to a point that it can be fitted into the neck pocket and the fretboard slotted, and temporarily install the neck on the body with clamps. With hardtail bridges I wind the high-E saddle all the way out as far as it will go without it popping off the end of the screw, and then back it in a bit. I'll then take a steel rule and measure from the high-E nut line to the breakpoint of the high-E saddle - that's your scale length. You will probably find that in order to intonate the high-E properly once the guitar is finished the saddle will need to be wound back further still. Don't use the low-E saddle to measure your scale length. The thicker wound strings invariably need to have a longer scale length in order to intonate properly, and will always have their saddles wound back further away from the nut. As long as you position your bridge with the high-E saddle breakpoint located at your scale length, and also perpendicular to your centreline, the exact (measured) location of the mounting screws becomes irrelevant. Just drill them where the bridge sits, making sure it's all square and centred. RAD does some good photo-essays regarding hardtail bridge installation. Browse some of his S9 build threads and you should be able to see how it's done.

Skipped ahead a bit without taking any pictures, sorry! Neck is carved. Frets knocked in and polished. Recently purchased a 1 ton arbor press, so this may be the last time I use the hammer. Also whipped up a fret bender out of offcuts of perspex and whatever else I had lying around in my parts drawers: Test fit. The fretboard has had a few coats of oil which explains why the colour has deepened so much compared to the previous shots. Body carve is about 90% done. Still need to add a headplate - I have a couple of myrtle offcuts leftover from the body which I've set aside.

What you've drawn there is essentially just the Ibanez All-Access Neck Joint. It's not often you hear many people complain that the neck joint on an Ibanez RG or S feels like it's going to give way If it were me I'd move screwhole "B"to the left a little more just to spread the load distribution a little bit more evenly, and green screwhole "C" up and left a bit more away from the edge.

Based on your recent flurry of activity, you do more in 6 hours than many of us (myself included) do in a month!

Love the combination of woods on Drifter. The contrast of the walnut on the back in that front-on shot almost makes it look like it's being shadowed by its evil alter-ego. How are you finding the low angle headstock? I was under the impression that low angles can accentuate behind-the-nut sympathetic string ringing while playing?

Wee bit more progress this weekend. Spent most of my time toying with a new neck clamping idea for securing the neck while performing various shaping and routing tasks. Came up with this Meccano-looking thing. Needs a couple of tweaks still, but seems to do the trick. There are two rubber stoppers on each rail that grip on to the sides of the neck when the screws are tightened. I gave it a test run while doing the tapering of the neck with the router sled and it held everything nice and tight without any slipping. Next task is to add adjustable height screws so that I can raise and lower one end for tapering jobs without resorting to sticking offcuts of aluminium at one end to get the base to tilt, as I did here (just visible at the bottom-left): Volute. Nothing fancy here. Celery Top Pine has a wonderful spicy aroma while being worked though:

Existo got my vote. I voted for your earlier incarnation of this axe when it was up for GOTM a couple of months back, and this version is still one of my favourite takes on a LP singlecut. Honorable mentions: Demonx - loved the understated combination of timbers used. My only criticism is that to get around the steep exit angle of the strings behind the nut you've had to run the strings around the tuning pegs anticlockwise, which (unless I'm missing something, in which case I apologise) the tuning buttons will have to turn opposite to normal in order to tune the strings. Beautifully put together nonetheless. Crow - interesting take on a Tele-hybrid. I've got plans for a tele-style build in the future myself, so I'm always keen to see other people's interpretation of classic designs. The grey maple top seems a bit washed out, but perhaps that's just due to the lighting. Well done everybody. There is defintitely some stiff competition this month.

How about series/parallel switching instead?

Sadly not anywhere near as tasty...

Position markers epoxied in: Trimming. I've used a thin piece of aluminium sheeting to protect the fretboard while I'm cutting off the excess. The saw is one of those crappy flexi-blade things you can usually find advertised as "razor sharp" (yeah, right!) in a $2 shop: Sanded flush. Not quite as clean-looking as I'd hoped, but I think the idea has got legs, and I'd certainly give it another go on future builds:

I guess time will tell if my method will continue to work. So far this is the only body-routing job I've been able to test it with. My limited experience suggests that it may have cured "router munch" in the parts of the body I tended to have trouble with. Then again I may have just simply gotten lucky this time? Of course I don't mind...ahem..."practising" on a few more builds Position markers drilled: Just waiting for the glue to dry on these before I get going on the inlay: