Acousticraft

The shorter the scale length the less tension they have. Check out Stew Mac http://www.stewmac.com/fretscales The less tension would mean more string vibration so I guess a little more clearance is needed on short scales. You need to raise your strings until they only buzz if you hit the strings hard. My last axe I built was 25" scale length solid body, and they do feel soft with 10 gauge strings so on my 24-9/16" scale ES335 I am constructing at present, I think I will go to 11 gauge strings to raise the string tension.

I draw out my guitar body shape on a piece of light cardboard set up on a drawing board. Make sure you work off a centreline along the body length, so everything is equal and symmetrical. When you put your pattern on your wood line up your centreline with your glue joint line. Then the position of the bridge, where the fingerboard finishes, pickup cavities, switch mounting holes etc. are all accurately marked out so you can transfer measurements directly from the plan and also draw around it to mark the shape. Doing it this way you can play with the body shape on the drawing board until it is aesthetically appealing to the eye before you cut into or glue any wood. I also draw a side profile using the height of the bridge at its lowest setting so neck angle can be calculated. If you do this you will gain a better understanding of how all the parts will fit together. Otherwise trial and error can be expensive. Actually necks are not as difficult to make as most non-luthier types think. The cost of buying one neck would buy me enough wood to build about 3-4 guitars. Mahogany is an excellent wood as it is so stable and easy to work.

Don't waste your time with anything apart from a single truss rod in a curved routed channel. The string tension of electric strings is way less than acoustic of the same gauge. D'Addario give string tension on their website. I make up my own truss rods. On the first acoustics I made I used 6mm threaded rods and I put the same into my first electric and found it was hardly tensioned at all to keep the neck straight. On my current guitar, an ES335 lookalike semi-hollow body I am working on, I have used 5mm bright steel rod and threaded one end about 30mm. The other end I bent to 90 degrees and fitted it into a hole drilled into the heel block area so it cant turn. This is the first time I have tried this and is a quick and easy method of anchoring the rod.

I think 2.5mm is certainly easier to bend than 3mm especially if it has a tight curve for a cutaway. I dont think I would go any thinner than 2.5 as the guitar looses to much stiffness.

You would need a selection of different angle wedges to go under a binding cutter attachment to keep the router bit at the right angle. Looks like it would be a pretty tricky job though. It would take a CNC machine job to do that properly and accurately I would guess.

Look at the Stew Mac site as they have diagrams for different switch and pickup options.

I need to do that to on the ES335 semi-hollow body I'm building at the moment. I guess I will drill a hole from the bridge pickup cavity to the bridge bush hole and feed a wire through then drive in the bush. Is this the way it is normally done?

Thats the beauty of lacquer. As it shrinks the surface will often improve and smooth out a bit. Is that an EMG select pickup?

I'm a bit confused by your post. Isn't an Ebony fingerboard supposed to be black, so why do you need to change the colour? I know it is often not uniform in its black colouring, so it is usually dyed black for that reason.

I talked to an knowledgeable guy in the store where I bought my Pre-cat lacquer. I asked him about the water based lacquers and he mentioned the whitish finish and that it is a softer finish so they have stopped stocking it and only sell the solvent based lacquers for their harder more durable finish and rapid drying / curing time. This is the reason I use a particular brand of pre-cat as it does not contain isocyanate's which are pretty nasty chemicals without the proper respirators / spray booth extractor fans etc. Hey anyone using a HVLP gun and how do you find it?

What grit do most people use for sanding after all lacquer coats has been applied for finishing, prior to polishing and do you use soap and wet sand?

I have sprayed a couple of guitars with Microcat 1220 pre-cat . This is a Mirotone product from Australia. It gives a hard, fairly tough surface and dries really quickly so you don't have to wait long to lightly sand between coats. I just use a ordinary suction spray gun with a 2 hp compressor, probably a tad small but is OK. I was looking at a gravity or HVLP gun but the costs for the semi-hollow are mounting up so I don't want to outlay the expense at this time. I am no expert by any means and am looking to improve on my finish. I use a 50 percent semi gloss finish as it hides any slight imperfections better and doesn't show up finger marks. One acoustic I added a black tint to the lacquer and sprayed the neck, back and sides with the top clear and the other acoustic had an all clear finish. Any pro painters or furniture finishers share any good tips re gun set up and spray pressures, techniques etc? By the way I have built a jig so I can mount and rotate the guitar mounted between headstock and end pin. I figured I can do most of my spraying in the flat position and turn it as I need.

I have used a range of stuff to inlay that I have found in Craft stores. I have used those stick on dazzly silver sequins as fret markers and I also used brass /silver plated jewellery inlaid in the headstock. I have also discovered a 2 part clear epoxy called "Liquid Gloss" in the craft section of Spotlight stores we have in NZ. It is brilliant for inlay work as it files and sands easy and is crystal clear and dries hard. It seems to easily hide any imperfections in the routing as well. It could be used for grain filler as it fairly thin has a self levelling action. I have just inlaid pearl block markers cut from a sheet with tinsnips (works a treat) on a Rosewood radiused and slotted fingerboard and masked around the inlays with several layers of masking tape and and poured the epoxy so it was above the surface level and removed the tape once the epoxy started to set. I left it to cure for about four days then filed off the excess and sanded it flush with my radius sanding block using 100 , 240 grit and 0000 steel wool. Looks really nice and once I have fretted the neck it will be finished with Danish oil. It is easy to apply with a rag and dries quickly. I give it about three/four coats as it soaks in, looks beautiful and makes the grain and inlays really stand out. When the finger board needs a redo after a few years, its easy to sand it with 0000 steel wool and recoat it.

The other option if you want the sapeele look is to glue up the crack and if it shows to badly, then glue on another thin laminate of Sapelle to hide it. This is horrible timber to put through a thicknesser as the grain alternates in direction with each pattern line so it always tears out in places whichever direction it is fed through the machine. I had this problem with a neck I laminated out of three pieces (Mahogany, Maple, Mahogany) and when cut to shape there is a crack on one side of the peg head. I can still use it at a later time if I glue on a thin laminate to hide it.

The shorter the scale length the lower the string tension is, and it feels softer and is easier to bend strings. A long scale is a bit brighter than a shorter one that is described as having a warmer sound. I am using the Gibson scale length fret board from Stew Macs but it is actually a 24 9/16" scale. Look at Stew Macs website and they have all this information on the fret spacing / scale length calculator page. On my last guitar I used a 25" scale length so I will definitely be using 11 gauge strings for my new axe.

Kraut on my last solid body I built, I used a fender style bridge. I routed a cavity on the back and epoxy glued in a brass plate for the string anchors. I then drilled the holes through without using ferrules. I filed a slight lead in groove for the strings and this guitar stays in tune no problem. I am always looking for ways to keep the costs down so this system cost me nothing..The bridge was also cheap at stew macs about $20 and works perfectly with full height and intonation adjustment.

The Les Paul is a simpler shape with a single cutaway. I have seen a post somewhere quite a while back where guy used a router to shape the top. I will see if I can track it down.

Hey Southpa you beat me to it. I have also been using oxy cutting torch tip cleaners to file my string slots for years now. I looked at the price of nut files, too expensive, and looked in my toolbox and fished out a couple of sets of tip cleaners. I am an ex engineer by trade. I cut them with my fret slotting saw first and finish off with the appropriate size tip cleaner file. Works great and very cheap.

Unfortunately there is no substitute for edges that have been machine planed because they end up straight and square. I would never attempted guitar building if I did not have access to a thicknesser and buzzer. It is so quick and you end up with straight and perfect joints. Thats no consolation for those who plane everything by hand. Good luck with the project.

I made my neck to narrow for the fingerboard for the semi- hollow body I'm building at present so I laminated a strip of the same piece of timber on one side. Once it was cut to shape you cant even notice it. One thing hand building guitars does, is teach you how to hide your mistakes and we all have those at times.

I have glued a few rosewood fingerboards and as long as they are clean and dust free there is no problems with the bond. To stop the problem with the fingerboard slipping and sliding all over the place once glued when clamping this is what I do. Get some brass thumb tacks and cut off the heads with side cutters. Align and dry clamp your fingerboard to the neck and by using a thumbtack as the drill bit, I drill through the fret slots in four places, two at each side of the first fret about 6mm in from the edge and and a couple at the last fret slot. I remove the finger board, drive in the pins in the neck so there is about 4mm of the sharpened end sticking up. Then it just a matter of spreading the glue on both surfaces, watching you don't spear your fingers, aligning the fingerboard onto the tacks and gently clamping it down. I have made a clamping board with a strip down each edge so the clamping is concentrated on the edges of the fingerboard where you want that invisible glue line.

Hi there folks, I found this forum while searching for sites that have got information on spraying pre-catalysed lacquers. I live in the northern part of New Zealand and am a High School Metal Technology teacher. Anyway I have built 3 guitars and are currently on my fourth. The first which I sold a while back to help finance a new Vox AD50VT was a mahogany bodied dreadnought with western red cedar top. That turned out amazingly good for a first guitar and played well. The second was a cutaway acoustic/electric dreadnought which is now my practise guitar that hangs on the wall by my computer. Number three is a solid body electric loosely based on a LP shape with over wound humbuckers with coil taps. My current project is a semi-hollow body based on an gibson ES335. The body is completed apart from cutting the binding channels and final sanding. The neck is waiting to be shaped and have the truss rod fitted and the rosewood fingerboard has been inlaid with pearl block markers and bound with maple. There is some great jigs people have made of which most I have made my own version of. I like the fact people make their own jigs and don't buy it all from Stew Macs as Ive seen on other sites. I'm a real do it yourself person and make just about everything I can to keep construction costs down. Just buying the hardware for a guitar adds up. Anyway enough rambling great site people.