TripleFan

Fantastic work! I especially like the look of the worn hardware. May I ask if you got the trem that way or did you treat it to get that look?

In the end I cleared the neck with 4x2 coats and scuffed it after two weeks with 6000 grit of StewMac´s 3M Polishing Paper. Feels pretty good but it´s not exactly what I want. I´ll try progressivly coarser grits until I get there. The final task was to make cavity covers from 2mm aluminum and paint them black. After half a week curing time I put on copper shielding foil and put them on the guitar. DONE! Specs: body shape: Ibanez RGA body wood: alder scale: 670mm bolt on neck: maple with bubinga fretboard: maple headstock: maple 3+3 with volute fretwire: NS extra jumbo bridge: Schaller Wraparound 455 tuners: Wilkinson EZ-LOK pickups: Seymour Duncan Blackout electronics: 3way-toggle, Vol, Tone finish: body Clou Füll- und Hochglanzlack; neck Clou SprayTec satin clear binding: white, body, fretboard, headstock I´m pretty happy with the result. Sound and playability are very good. I especially like the unplugged sound because its very open sound which has quite some bite. Amplified the actice pickups dominate of course. Here I like the clean sounds in particular. In HighGain-Mode I´m a bit torn. The sound really cuts through without being harsh or brittle. I miss a bit of that deep punch however; it seems that this guitar is more for lead playing than the ultimate rhythm machine. On the other hand I have to admit that I´ve yet to dial in my amp on the guitar. All in all I´m not really sure If I like these active pickups. Whether it´s that they compress more than passive pickups or if it´s just their voicing I can´t quite say. Playability is fine. Maybe not as good as on the best guitars I own but not too far away! I definitly can say I made a step in the right direction and I´m getting there! I chose the slightly longer scale to make down tuning a bit easier. It doesn´t impact playability but you can tell that there´s noticeably more tension on the strings. The worst dissapointment is definitly the clear coat. The paint fell into the pores even after three weeks curing time. Additionally it looks cloudy in some spots. Admittedly I put on the paint with a roller instead of spraying it as written in the manufacturers instructions. Nevertheless I hoped for a better result; above all taking into consideration that the guitar already has the first tiny scratches while the clear is called "nano antiscratch". I´ll definitly redo the clear eventually. The satin clear I used for the neck is alright. Again there is no way to let the paint build up - at least not with one can. The satin clear looks nice however and time will tell how good it will hold up. The color of the body looks really good in the sunlight - exactly what I hoped for. With artifical light it looks a bit dark however and the grain gets lost somewhat. This all isn´t that bad like it may sound. I´m very satisfied with the result but there points I can improve and I´m aware of them. All in all it´s a nice guitar with some minor flaws but I´m proud of it nonetheless!

Yeah, meanwhile I finished another guitar with an alder body, maple neck and SD Blackouts and it sounds quite OK. I´m not sure if I´ll ever be a complete fan of actives but on the other hand I still have to dial in my amp on them. All in all it seems that this wood/pickup combination makes a good lead instrument and then that´s what the KH-2 is all about. Yesterday I took neck templates from my 1992 RG. I used some kind of epoxy putty to take the shape. This stuff conforms nicely to the neck and dries pretty hard. I use some thick veneer as base and cut in the neck shape with oversize. I pack the neck in saran wrap and place some of the putty at the desired fret. Finally I stick the prepared veneer into the putty. When the epoxy has cured I trim the overhangs so that they are level with the fretboard edge. I also thin out the putty to 4-5mm and finally label the templates. Consequently I shaped the neck today. First I rasped the curve of the volute between the apex and the first fret. Then I shaped small sections at the 1st, 4th, 7th and 12th fret. These sections were then easily connected with straight cuts. Finally I finished the volute between the first fret and the apex. Additionally I marked the neck to body transition on the backside and started to rough it out. The tools I use for this work are just rough, medium and fine rasps. The fine rasp is a hand-cut one comparable to the dragon rasps StewMac sells. Awesome tool! Now I give the neck a few days to settle in case it moves a bit. Then I can continue work on the fretboard.

I finally got back to this build. The old fretboard came off nicely with an iron and a sharp putty. After truing up the surface of the neck and filing down the trussrod a bit everything was set for a second try. I opted for one of StewMac´s EIR boards. The wenge fretboard I prepared again had some fret slots which where just a hair out of position. I might use it for a bolt-on neck, this way I can throw it out without too much loss if it doesn´t play properly. The Stewie-fretboard arrived readily slotted with a fender-style nut slot and a 12" radius which I changed into 16" right away. Before I glued the board to the neck I took down the area in front of the nut slot to form the ledge for the lock nut. The area around the fretboard was protected from glue spillout with masking tape. All went well: the board is even without voids or other irregularities. If something had went wrong I´d been in trouble: the thickness of the neck is already spot on and there´s not enough wood left to remove the board and level it once again. On the pictures the neck was already cut back to the taper of the fretboard with rasps and files. Finally I took down the remains of the nut slot with a chisel and drilled the holes for the lock nut from the backside. This is it with the temporarily mounted lock nut:

Today I started clear coating the neck. I put on two coats fifteen minutes apart followed by a second double coat two hours later. Now I´ll let it cure overnight. Tomorrow I´ll scuff it and take out some small runs before I put on two more double coats. Depending on the outcome I´ll then scuff one more time and spray a last coat. I read that a satin clear usually is sprayed on and left as is. With my projected approach I hope to battle orange peel without the need to sand and polish. That´s how the neck looks at the moment:

The last few days I made a replacement fretboard but again ran into trouble. This time the I had severe tearout while tapering the board. It was my own fault however as I tried to take off too much material in one pass. I think I got it fixed pretty good. There´s hardly any trace seen from the top and the side. I think I´ll glue it on within the next days. In case it goes wrong once again I´ve already ordered a EIR board.

Thanks RAD. It looks pretty good from a meter away like on the pics. Up close it´s obvious that it´s not a professional paint job. Unfortunately the finish still kept sinking into the pores a bit. It´ll have to do for the moment... Anyway, the maple boarded neck should have settled by now. Therefore I want to move on and finish that sucker. Prep sanding is mostly done including scraping between the frets. I already redid the headstock binding some time ago. The finish I planned is a 2part satin clear rattlecan finish. Can anyone offer some advice how to finish such a clear coat? I read that the final coat is sprayed on after level sanding and left as is to achive that semi gloss. Is that correct or should I consider another course of action? Sand and buff? No buffing? MicroMesh? Steel wooling?

Well, now I can definately scrap the fretboard! But first things first... I started to glue the fretboard. To hinder the trussrod rattling I put some foam in the channel. Before glueing them I trued neck and fretboard on some sandpaper taped to a flat surface. Since the neck settled less than one tenth mm in the last year trueing was done in just a few minutes. Next I taped two hardwood bars to the neck which act as clamping cauls. This way I can concentrate the force along the outer edge of the board and can at the same time avoid to distort the neck during clamping (as long as the clamping base is flat and even). Then I put some masking tape on the trussrod, spread glue on the neck and finally clamped down the fretboard. I used a solid aluminium beam with a piece of plywood on top as base. The plywood helps that the hardwood bars don´t fall in the channels of the beam Additionally I placed a piece of insulation foam under the locking nut ledge to get even pressure in that area.. When I took the neck out of the clamps 24 hours later I sighted along and immediately spotted a backbow. A short investigation showed the reason: the fretboard split down the middle!!! Now I can look how I get the fu...r off... This is the second time the board split on me like that! I wonder: I´ve never seen wenge cut like that when used as a fretboard. Could this actually be the problem; is wenge too fragile to be used as fretboard when cut like that?

Inspired by a thread in a german guitar builder board I decided to mill out the faulty fret and patch it up with a leftover piece of the fretboard. I taped the fretboard and two support board down. The boards also act as guide for the router bit bearing and are alligned that only the damaged fret is routed out to the depth of the fret slot. This is the result after routing and the thicknessed patch. You can still see the remains of the wrong fret slot. This is after I glued the patch in and sawed new fret slots. The grain alligns pretty good. Even on the side you can hardly see that it´s patched. I hope the scratches on the surface will sand out. Finally I started to route the ledge for the lock nut. I didn´t route the whole area because this would interfere with the holes for the fretboard allignment during glue up. I´ll have to finish this by hand with a saw and a chisel after the fretboard is glued to the neck. The setup for the router was basically the same like when routing out the damaged fret. After all I´m still a bit undecided if I should use the board. There are a couple of slots that are off by a few tenths. Time for some measuring I guess...

After almost a year I finally got back to this project. The next thing I had to do for quite some time was the fretboard radius. First I had to make two 'skids' for the router. I usually use beech for them because it´s reasonably hard and readily available in your local home improvement store. I cut the strip in two pieces the width of the router base. This piece gets taped to a flat base (a leftover piece of a kitchen counter top in my case) additional strips left and right for the router to rest on. The router is screwed to a piece of plywood with a nail as pivot point and one more piece of beech as spacer. Now I can route the needed radius in several passes. The finished skids get screwed to the router base, the fretboard is taped to the radius jig and I can route in 5 - 6 passes along the fretboard. Out of the jig the radius and the surface are already pretty good! Next I glued in the fret markers. That´s not too spectacular because they´re only boring 2mm plastic dots. Fill the hole with CA, stick the plastic in, snip off, next. After the CA had dried I pared them off with a chisel. Where I screwed up: On the outer edge of the fretboard I moved the router in the wrong direction and got major tearout. This calls for a lesson in advanced fill and patch up technics. Next time I have to remember to move the router in the other direction. Also taping the edge might help. Later my girlfriend spotted that the 10th fret was out of allignment. I tried to fill the slot with dust and CA and resaw it but messed up big time!

Last week I polished the body. I went up from 1200 grit through the various MicroMesh grits all the way from 3600 to 12000. In the end the clear coat still looked cloudy and blotchy and had a fair amount of tiny scratches (I tried my best but they wouldn´t show up in the pictures). The next day I went to it with buffing wheels and polishing compound. I simply clamped my drill to the work table and put the wheels in the drill chuck. At first I was a bit anxious to burn through the clear or to send the body flying through the work shop but it all worked out without any problems. After a few minutes with both coarse and fine compound the scratches and the cloudiness mostly went away. The surface is still a bit uneven and obviously I wasn´t able to sand out all of the pores where the finish sunk into the grain, but for my first try at clear coating I´m more than satisfied. Next time I might alter my finishing schedule: after filling the pores and building up the coats I´ll give the finish time to cure and sink back. Then I´ll even out the surface and put on the last coats with approx. 50% thinner. I could imagine this might fill the last pores. Additionally polishing a clear coat with more thinner supposedly is easier. This is how the guitar looks a the moment. The neck is not the final one but the one with the kingwood fretboard. As soon as the maple boarded neck is cleared they´ll get swapped. Playability is rather nice taken into account that the frets aren´t leveled yet and the guitar is hardly set up. The neck with the maple board got straightened out in the meanwhile and will be clear coated within the next weeks. Then I can finally finish up this guitar.

Haha, sorry MuffinPunch, but it went back into the scrap box. Actually my girlfriend didn´t like it as much as you guys obviously do... I´m finally finished with clear coating the body. In about three weeks I´ll start to polish and assemble. Well, hopefully that is... Actually I planned to prep sand the neck (the one with the maple board) this week and clear it during the weekend (matte 2part rattle can clear). Instead I noticed that the neck developed a solid upbow. When I lay a straight edge over the frets it gaps nearly 1mm in the middle! Damn, I just don´t get it! This neck was dead straight during all build steps (I wrote down all the measurement and movements of the wood in my previous posts). I checked and rechecked on every occasion. The only thing I could think of would be that the fretboard wasn´t completely dry before I used it. Now it may have shrunk in the relatively dry winter air forcing the neck into an upbow. Does that sound feasible? I´ll try to heat/steam the backside of the neck and clamp it down to a rigid metal beam. That´s the only possible solution I can think of right now. Are there any other possibilities I could try?

Haha, don´t worry guys! It´s a reputable german tool vendor.

I dyed the sides and the back and put on the first clear coats. I´m really satisfied! Fortunately the patched up pieces next to the binding blend in reasonably well. I masked the front so that I don´t get any dye and clear on it. Next I´ll damp and sand the front. Then I´ll mask the back and the sides, dye the front and put on the first clear coats. I do it this way because the clear dissolves the color of the front and I don´t want it on the sides and the back hence I sealed them with clear and will mask them. After I have three or four coats of clear on the front I can take off the masking tape and sand the body. After that I can proceed clearing the body.

OK, the finish on the sample piece sunk a bit into the pores so I´ll wait one or two weeks longer after the final coat. In the meanwhile I installed the binding and started to prep sand the body. I cut the binding channel with this "Sloane" purfling cutter thingy and a chisel and the result came out as usual - butt ugly... Next time I´ll build a routing jig like the one StewMac sells or I´ll paint on a fake binding. I tried my best to fix it and hope it´ll blend in when the body gets dyed. The worst parts are the outsides of the cutaways.

Thanks Avenger, that´s exactly the kind of information I hoped for. I presume that refers to clear coating with cellulose lacquer? Is there really a chance to wipe off a coat of 2 part paint with a rag and solvent?

Yeah, I think that would be your american equivalent. It´s "Edding" for us germans.

I recently finished a clear coat test sample. I prepped the wood as usual: sanding up to 240, damping and sanding with 320, dying and clear coating. The front was dyed with a permanent marker ink. Using a refill bottle and a cloth worked reasonably well. The back was left natural respectively colored with generic wood stain in "light oak". The clear coat is a 2part polyurethane paint: "Füll- und Hochglanzlack" by Clou which I brushed on. I built my coats as follows: 4 coats sanding 3 coats sanding 2 coats sanding several times 1 coat with subsequent sanding The first coats were brushed on without thinner. Later on I used more and more thinner; for the last coats I thinned by nearly 50%. This is a preliminary result photographed in daylight. Afterwards I layed the sample away for at least a week to let the paint cure: The brush marks are very noticeable. The color is exactly what I hoped for. As a nice touch the clear partly dissolved the blue ink so in the end I worked with a tinted clear coat. After a week I started polishing. After wetsanding the last clear coat with 1200 grit I worked through MicroMesh grits from 3600 up to 12000. I finished off with swirl remover by Menzerna and sealed it with some automotive wax I had lying around: All in all I´m satisfied for, let´s say 80%. The gloss is superb and the clear coat seems pretty resistant. I pretty much nailed the color shades I wanted or at least know by now what to do to achive them. What I´m not completely happy with is the surface itself. The thing glosses like crazy but it just isn´t level. I think I simply messed up the sanding between the coats. The reflections are distorted which indicates unevenness. Unfortunately it doesn´t show in the pictures. I think part of the problem might be that in the begining I used 3M Finishing Paper which, like MicroMesh, to me seems better suited for polishing than for leveling. Even with moderately coarse grits like 400 and 600 there seems to be nearly no cut. Later I used generic wetsand paper which did the job noticeably better but had to be changed more often. At another point I ran into surface contamination which resulted in cratering and required a pretty aggresive sandback. Finally I sanded through at one spot (not in the pics). Surprisingly this happend with MicroMesh6000. At the moment I´m thinking if I should give painting with a roller (?) a try to achive a better, more level surface and make level sanding a bit easier. I´d like to hear your experiences and thoughts about clear coating with brushes or rollers. Additionally any hints about level sanding are more than welcome.

The next step was to establish the neck angle. I read some time ago that Edge trems work best when the guitar features a slight neck angle. This information is backed up by an old installation guide Ibanez released sometime. After all this is also backed up by my Ibanez guitars which also have this slight neck angle. For example my RG7620MBOL replica has a 0.4° neck angle which allows a pretty good action and at the same time puts the knife edges at level with the body. To replicate these 0.4° on the neck blank I taped several feeler gauges to the backside of the blank in a certain distance to the heel. The blank then rests on the edge of the heel and on the gauges. The height of the stacked gauges and the distance between the heel and the gauges set the angle. I taped scrap pieces as spacers on both sides of the blank. The whole package rests on a flat work area and gets clamped between two wooden strips. These strips in turn get clamped to the surface and serve as the rest for the router. Finally an additional strip is clamped on top to stop the router from damaging the area where the fretboard will be (not in the picture). The whole setup worked like a charm. But just at the beginning of the final pass the depth stop of the router failed once again leaving me with a bad gouge next to the fretboard area. Additionally at this point I had already dropped the blank to ground chipping a piece of the headstock. At this point I decided to leave it alone for the moment. Because the angle was already established on the front and the surface was even except for the gouge I taped the blank face down to the jig and routed the back parallel to the front. Then I flipped the blank over and made a final pass on the frontside (don´t forget the stop block for the fretboard area). Fortunatelly I had a few tenths leeway left. The front is now finished to size while the back has 1.5mm excess which will be trimmed once the wings are glued on. What is left of the gouge will be taken care of by the neck pickup cavity. The last remains will then hopefully sand out. The final pics of the neck angle and the fixed headstock:

Somehow I seem to have misplaced my copy of Slayers "RIB" but I get what you´re saying. Normally I favor darker guitars into a more middy/bright amp. On the other hand I have a mahog Epi LP Goth with an alder top and I like it´s sound especially for its snap. I´ll give the combination of maple/alder/EMGs a try anyhow and see where it takes me. Back to the work. Next I drilled the holes for the tuners. I marked the locations, center punched them, shimed the headstock and drilled with a 10mm drill bit. I asked my girlfriend to lend me a helping hand because holding the neckthru blank, aligning the drill and finally drilling is pretty awkward for one person. I didn´t drill the holes completely through because when thicknessing the headstock in the next step I`ll expose them anyway and avoid tearout at the same time. To thickness the headstock I taped it to a flat work surface face down. Then I clamped two wooden strips to the neck and the surface. This keeps the neck flat and square and prevents any movement. Next I taped several boards next to the headstock for the router to ride on. Had I arranged the strips with a little more forethought they could also have served as a rest for the router or at least as a stop to avoid routing into the neck. I thicknessed the headstock with my usual surface trimming bit. Then I started rough shaping the neck and the volute. Usually I shape the neck at the 1st, 4th, 7th and 12th fret using a ordinary halfround rasp. Then I use the rasp to "join" this points. Cleaning up with a scraper and some sandpaper and that´s it for the moment. Now I´ll wait a few days to see if the neck moves due to released tension. This shouldn´t be a problem with a laminated neck but I experienced some problems with backbow on my last two necks so this time I´ll give rough shaping the neck before glueing the fretboard a try. I also shaped the volute with a halfround rasp and sandpaper. Later I´ll use a sanding drum to clean it up. On the neck I left the area between the 1st fret and the peak of the volute flat because this hopefully will spare me some headaches when clamping and glueing the fretboard.

Maybe I should change the thread title, haha Yeah, I know it´s no real copy of the KH-2. I just took several design features of the ESP like the the control layout, reverse headstock and the maple/alder neckthru construction (a combination you don´t find on any Ibanez) and transfered it to the RG shape. Thanks WezV and Westhemann for your heads up about the pickups and the wood combination. I´m aware that the alder wings will influence the maple sound of the neck somewhat. But if I´m not completely mistaken alder is rather bright in itself as is the EMG81 hence my fear the guitar could be too bright. I think I´ll give it a try. Nothing easier than changing the pickups if I really should dislike the sound. I´m really curious however since I´m used to mahogany guitars played through my Mesa rack. We´ll see... Thanks Zeljac, so do I...

Received mine last week. Works like a charm and to call it blemished doesn´t do it any justice. Apart from two minuscule scratches it´s flawless! Thanks very much Spoke! Now I just need to replace the screws with metric ones...

Thanks jmrentis for your comments. I actually packed the wrong slot with wenge dust and wicked in some waterthin CA as you suggested. I´ll keep the trick with the electrical tape and lighter colored dust in mind for the next time. But it´s not so bad. The wrong slot is very shallow. The board will lose another 0.5mm thickness during radiusing. I think this will remove most of the wrong slot and the remains will be hidden by the fret. OK, after finishing the fretboard for the moment I got back to the neck. I started to mark the trussrod location and the through holes for the lock nut. I drilled these with a 4mm drill. Next I flipped the neck over and flatened the area where the holes emerge taking care that I don´t harm the volute. Then I countersunk the holes with a generic 9mm drill bit. What I wanted to achive is that the drill centers over the 4mm holes due to its conical shape. The flatened area should help the drill bit to bite. Later when I´m shaping the volute I can use a regular wood drill bit to bring the countersunks to their final depth while also producing a nice flat ground. After that I put the fretboard in place. I affixed it with two small nails in each the last fret and the lock nut area. I chose the lock nut shelf instead of the first fret because the lock nut is directly above the peak of the volute which gives me a little more meat to work with without worrying about breaking through. Additionally I rough cut the headstock and routed it to shape. This was a bit scary because the headstock doesn´t provide very much place for the router to rest on. Then I started routing the trussrod channel. I use my trusty jig for this because it works as a fence over the whole length and I don´t have to worry about hitting the headstock with the edge guide. I used a straight router bit for a flat ground where the anchor pieces of the trussrod go. This poses no problem because these are in the reinforced areas of the volute and the neck-body transition. The rest of the channel is routed with a radiused bit to reduce the notch effect. Unfortunately I totally screwed up the trussrod access on the headstock. On the one hand its width is uneven and one wall touches the hole for the lock nut. Next time I´ll use a 8mm router bit instead of trying to achive the same by moving a 6mm bit. On the other hand I routed too far into the headstock instead of lowering the bit within the channel area. Because of this the front wall of the access area is pretty jagged. At least the fretboard hides most of it and for the rest is taken care of by the trussrod cover. http://s237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...m/P1040459m.jpg http://s237.photobucket.com/albums/ff206/T...m/P1040461m.jpg

Same here: it took me a while until I realized that I know your guitar from the gearbuilder.de board. I finally made some progress on the fretboard. Because I design all my guitars with the help of a CAD system it´s very easy to extract a drawing of the fretboard with all the dot markers, fret slots and most important the center line. After I triple checked all the fret positions with a precision rule and a magnifier I cut out the front view of the board and taped it to the soon-to-be fretboard. Then I extended the center line and the edges from the paper to the wood. First I drilled the fret markers with a 2mm drill. This is quite easy since the positions of the dots is determined by the paper template and I don´t have to mark them seperately. I also roughed out the taper of the fretboard with a scroll saw. I didn´t cut to final width this time. This way I have a safety margin if the wood chips when I cut the fret slots. Because I roughed the taper out before cutting the slots I have two unslotted leftovers which I could use for a fretboard binding later on. After that I started slotting the board. I used a leftover from an old neck as guide for the fret slotting saw. I thicknessed the piece to 21mm. This way I should achieve a uniform slot depth when the part that holds the blade starts to ride on the guide block - at least in theory. Well the depth of the slots didn´t come out completely uniform. It´s alright but far from perfect. It´s no biggie however since I plan to nip the fret tangs and fill the slots with wood dust and CA. The slots also seem a bit narrow. More in the range of 0,5mm than 0,6mm. I´ll probably have to widen them a bit. After I pealed off the remains of the paper template the board already looked rather OK except for one slot where I didn´t butt the saw against the guide block good enough. Fortunately I realized my mistake after the first few strokes so the false slot isn´t too deep. I packed the wrong slot with wood dust and put CA over it. However this also wasn´t a complete success. The CA ran under the protective tape and made a general mess and it also took unusual long to harden. Looks like I´ll have to revisit this one if it doesn´t look any better after radiusing the board. Hopefully the fret will hide this mess. Finally I started to bring the board down to its final width. I started with joining the pencil lines I extented to the wood in the beginning. When doing long straight cuts like these I usually use a straight piece of transparent acrylic. Because the piece I use is rather big I have a straight guiding edge and enough support for the router all in one - what looks messed up in the picture is the protective foil not the guide edge. I taped the the acrylic to the fretboard so that the straight edge lines up with the center of the pencil line - at least that´s what I try to do. I clamp the whole lot to the bench and cut the board flush with the acrylic. Finally I cut the overhang past the nut and the 24th fret. I´m quite pleased with the result so far. The accuracy of the board´s width is within 0,2mm at the nut and the last fret and the position of the fret slots is within ±0,25mm.

I decided to use wenge for the fretboard to match the neck stringers. I started thicknessing the board with the router. I replaced my old router with the worn guides with a new one so everything went fine. Well at least until I tried to lift the fretboard from the doublesided tape. This was when the brittle wenge board nearly splitted in half along the grain! Fragile SOB...! Well, after I took my time swearing I opened up the crack by careful bending, applied some glue with a toothpick and some more careful flexing. Finally I clamped it. After it had dried and I cleaned it up with a scraper and a chisel it didn´t look half bad. To remedy the last traces of my mishap I thicknessed the board once again - but this time I used less doublesided tape! I´m quite happy with the result. The board´s thickness is 6,0 - 6,1mm now. When I radius the board it will finally be thinned down to 5,5mm.