curtisa

Disaster! Lament! Arse! The body took a dive off the workbench and landed on the lower horn, digging a dirty big chunk off the tip. The chunk that came off was pretty mangled up and wasn't going to go back squarely in the cavity without resorting to filler, and reshaping the lower horn around the gouge isn't on the cards, so I had to cut out the damaged section and fashion a patch out of some scrap left over from the body blank. Oh well, guess this kind of thing will happen to all of us at some point: Finished sanding it back down to match the shape of the body this afternoon. There's still a slight seam visible around the edges, but it's nowhere near as bad as the jagged gaping hole. I can probably blend the edges of the seam with some creative staining to disguise it further when I get closer to the finishing stage:

Good to know. I've just put together my first multi-laminate neck blank in the last few days and was going to slip in a scarf accent, but couldn't get my head around the best way to secure it while gluing, so I just went with a plain scarf. I did make sure the laminates lined up though.

Yeah, I used your earlier posted method (self-centering drill in the top, drill outer holes thru, flip bridge onto back, join the dots etc) to do the bridge on my SY7, but I still experienced a bit of "drill drift" between top and bottom - the string holes on the top ended up perfectly aligned, but the ferrules underneath were just a little on the wavy side when viewed inline. New method looks interesting, will have to try it out later on.

Question: when building up a neck blank like that with an accent layer in the scarf, what is the best way of building up the scarf? Do you glue the intermediate layer to one of the cut faces first, let it dry and glue up the scarf proper? Or glue the whole lot in one hit?

Neat solution with the thru-body string hole aligning pin. Hope you don't mind if I nick that idea?

Mmmmm, beer...

Yep, that's exactly where I had my last mishap.

If it were me I'd bring the top edge of the upper horn down towards the centre of the guitar a bit, and stretched out a bit towards the nut. At the moment it looks a little like it's "looking upward" for want of a better term.

Had a change of mind with the tuners. The Sperzels I bought didn't match the photo by the seller (wanted small schaller-style buttons, came with larger 3x3 buttons), and Sperzel were being unhelpful in regards to selling me a set of new buttons, so I've shelved the Sperzels for a future build and splashed out on a nice new set of Hipshot Griplocks. Time to give the Tunerhole-o-matic a run. Drill the first hole with an 8mm brad point to get things going: Then the indexing pin goes into the baseplate and start leap-frogging until no. 6 is drilled: Do another pass with a 10mm bit to counterbore the holes for the tuning machine shaft (you can see the indexing pin poking up into the adjacent hole): All done:

Belly cut and heel shaping done: Trem inserts, ummm...inserted: Using the big bastard pedestal drill at work to do the jack socket. The "clamp" is just offcuts of timber glued/screwed together to make a giant set of jaws that can hold the body at the correct angle while the drill goes down. First pass is with a 20mm forstner bit to a depth of 25mm or so. Leave the body clamped where it is and switch to a 12mm twist bit for the remainder. The result is a nicely aligned counterbored angled jack socket:

I'm using a router at the moment, but only by necessity as I don't yet have a bandsaw. Currently I'm using a two flute 19mm dia flush trim bit which has down-shear cutting blades. I find that the worst spots for tearout are around the tips of the horns and inside the cutaways. Usually I can minimise any nastiness by applying more downwards pressure on the workpiece and doing several lighter passes as I approach these areas on the router table (maybe compensates for less mass in the timber at those skinny points, less chance for chatter leading to the bit munching into the wood?), but I suspect that you've got a more sensible approach using a shallow bit in multiple passes. Any tearout I've had thus far has been manageble with a bit of careful sanding to reshape the affected area.

I agree. Really like the combination of woods and shape of the headstock. If I may offer a suggestion I'd recommend you change your method of securing the headstock when planing the thickness down with the router. It's only going to take one miscalulation in placement with your router - at best you'll destroy a perfectly good router bit and the piece you're working on, or worse end up with a very messy injury. Ask me how I know (thankfully it was the former for me, not the latter )

I like this softer version of your carve, almost Ibanez S-ish. Body in the background looks thicker than your usual circa-30mm. Special order? Looks like it might be undergoing a minor surgical alteration too?

Side dots in, neck thickness started and new blackwood headplate attached/shaped: Planning the neck carve. Drawn in some guide lines to work up to: Happiness is a pile of wood shavings: Carve done and sanded to 180 grit. Will probably give it another quick adjustment just behind the volute, there's a flat spot centred behind the nut that could be softened a little:

As Demonx suggested, get yourself a full drill set. Better yet, get a full metric (1mm - 13mm) and full imperial sets (1/64 - 1/2). Far cheaper in the long run than buying singles. If you're going to get any single drill bits, save your cash for brad point drills as you need them. The router bits I find myself using the most frequently are inverted 1/2" diameter flush trim bits with 19mm and 28mm lengths (good for pickup cavities, neck pockets, trem cavities, control cavities, smaller template work etc), regular and inverted 3/4" diamter flush trimming bits with 38mm length (good for body outlines and larger template work), and a 38mm long 1/4" straight bit (perfect for Allparts trussrods, control wire channels, pickup cavities when used with a pattern ring on the router etc). Also nice to have is a small set of forstner bits, good for removing excess timber prior to routing, or counter-boring neck screw ferrules and output jacks and the like. Straight away there's about $300 worth of bits before you get started though.

Looks can be decieving. The neck pocket is right up against the neck pickup route, but the pocket is routed about 3mm deeper than the pickup cavity, giving a stepped lip between the two. Ha!. I've rebuilt that thing about 3 times. New tops made out of old floorboards, new nuts and bolts, reinforced threaded cranks. I really should invest in a proper workbench. More progress. Trem cavity done: Fretboard being radiused on the Radius-o-tron. The router sits on a tray that has curved rails underneath, which in turn sits on another tray that sildes up and down on rails parallel to the neck. The curved rails on the top tray give me an exact 16" radius provided I route to a depth of 20mm below the level of the top tray. The finished radius then only needs a light sand with 180 grit to get the tooling marks out. About 45 seconds to rough-radius a neck:

Thanks Wretched. I have a thing for headstocks that have slightly softened corners, gives them an angular look without being too "pointy". Neck out of the clamps and fretboard trimmed to shape. While running the router over the fretboard with the trimming bit it revealed a bit of a knotty void on the treble side just behind the 2nd fret slot. Not very deep, should fill and sand back OK with a bit of sawdust and clear epoxy: Gratuitous dry-fit shot. Starting to look like a banjo. Note to self - might need to paint the shed door soon...

Clamps! The fretboard is tacked in place with some 1.25mm brads - two in the nut and one in the 24th fret slot. I clamp the fretboard to the neck beforehand, align everything and then pre-drill the nail locations with a 1.2mm bit. The brads then get driven into the fretboard before applying glue to both faces. With the brads locking the wood in position I can clamp away willy-nilly without having to worry about the two pieces sliding all over the place under clamping pressure:

I concur. Care to share your method of achieving that finish?

I see. Same sort of thing as stick-on logos for commercial vehicals, I take it? And the build-up of clear coats must blend the raised edges into the surrounding surface? Keen to see how your airbrushing comes out, BTW. I have an airbrush somehwre under the house, but have never really used it since my WW2 model aircraft-building days from years ago.

With the lighting in that first headstock photo I initially thought you'd scallopped the headstock - a sneaky optical illusion! Sorry to sidetrack for a moment, but can I ask how you're doing your logos? Stencil? Decal? Something else?

Mmmmm...carve-top tele with attitude. Between this and andyt's metal tele, I forsee a singlecut in my future...

First hiccup. I failed to take into account that the extra depth of the headplate would shift the nut line forward once it was planed to the same height as the neck face, so I had to remove the blackwood headplate and cut a new one. I'll attach it after I have the fretboard in place so that I can plan the headstock thickness properly. That'll teach me for trying to squeeze a sneaky hour of workshop time in after the day job. Still, I managed to get the overall headstock shape done:

Remove the tuner, wrap up the button and the body with PVC tape so as not to marr the surface, and gently bend it back into shape using pliers/vice/whatever. It's already unusable - worst case is you'll have to buy a new one (or full set), which you're looking to do anyway. On the other hand it may bend back fine and you won't have to get a new one.

Thanks Osorio. My jig ideas are available for stealing at your leisure.