Southpa

I guess some folks should go back to school or read up on all their old chemistry notes. The idea is sorta sound but the reaction can't be controlled very well. For those who forgot their basic high school science classes, or haven't taken them yet, MOP, abalone, corals etc. etc. are basically made of calcium carbonate, a form of limestone only made by marine critters. The right concentration of hydrocloric acid will react vigorously with CaCO2. Easy enough to do it in a shallow glass container. You might get the basic shape but you would have to have a base handy to neutralize the reaction.

Jigsaw here as well. I usually cut about 1/8" outside the line when roughing in and then fine tune it later with a palm sander, rasp, handsanding etc.

I don't know if this belongs here because it IS tool related ...or in the auction rant section, because there is a pretty good stream of invective for this particular unit by the owner. Read this... its funny and maybe something we can learn from. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=20781

Sure you can! Thats why they have that adjustable feature anyway.

The base of my fingerboard sits almost level with the body of my guitar, ie. surface of the fingerboard is about 1/4" above the body. So you have your bridge adjusted all the way down and your action is too low? Simple to raise the bridge so long as there is enough post left. I have a TOM roller bridge. String contact on the bridge saddles is about 14mm off the body, no problemo. Is that what you are after? If you raise your bridge the 5mm you need and run out of post then obviously you have your posts are inserted into the body too far. If that is the case, sink 5mm plugs into the holes and you should be where you want to be. Remember to account for truss rod adjustment as well.

Neck angle is too shallow means bridge must be raised, too deep , then it must be lowered. Can you shim the neck to change the angle, that is, if its a bolt on neck? You can adjust the TOM anywhere you want to achieve your best action. Just make sure it won't go out of bounds. If you raise the bridge and still have lots of thread left on the post left then it should be ok. The whole idea is to set it up so you have full access to your range of bridge adjustment. My last guitar had a relatively steep neck angle (4 degrees) for a tune-o-matic. I had to countersink the bridge into the body to compensate as I couldn't make ANY neck adjustments because it was a neckthru guitar. If the bridge mount posts are too deep you could insert plugs into the holes to raise the bridge as well.

You could try mixing some rosewood (or whatever your fretboard is made of) dust with hard setting glue, pack it in and smooth out afterwards. Gotta be careful when pulling frets. If they tend to be difficult I heat them up a little with a soldering iron in case there is old glue holding them down. A good fret puller is a set of end nippers with the end ground flat.

I would use a woodrasp, WITH the grain, and varying sandpaper grits from 80 to 400. Draw out both edges, where the bevels begin, on the guitar with a marker. ie. top and side and don't do over the lines. I stress WITH the grain because you don't want to tear out any wood by going across the grain.

Oh, I "got it" alright... whatever...

There is always a way to make a comeback. Just make a plate to cover that massive hole you made and mount all your knobs and switches on that. And stop the madness from entering your work domain.

Nothing wrong with experimenting. The only thing that could go wrong is experimenting on open areas of your guitar. Use scraps of the same wood from cutting the body, if available. If you are refinishing a guitar then experiment on areas that will later wind up being under the pickguard or otherwise hidden, in case things go wrong. I refinished this guitar with clothing dye, the dye cost me 3 Cdn dollars, and then clearcoated with rattle can auto laquer. Thats how the whole creative process works, being innovative enough to come up with something new and different. If you like the color of pickled beet juice (sort of a faggy coral red) then by all means open a jar and have at 'er! It makes a good solid stain, I just don't like the color.

I cut the body for my SG the other day. It's amazing how well you can plan things and then screw it up with the very FIRST cut. I had two bookmatched pieces of Honduras mahogany, both 42" long X 2" thick X 10" wide. What did I do? I cut them right across the grain first, not realizing I could have salvaged a 42" long X 4" wide piece from each board for neckthru necks first. Now I have these two irregular shaped blocks only 17" long. I feel so stoopid. I guess they could be used for some sort of narrow bodied guitar, or they might be big enuf for the wings on another neckthrough...barely.

Welcome to the board! Anything in possible. You could strip it right back to bare wood and start over, with black laquer, grain filler, clearcoat, whatever you want. Or you could roughen the existing surface and paint over that. I would do some research first and find out the nature of the existing paint or clearcoat. If its laquer then you might want to follow with similar material.

Those specialty tools aren't really necessary. For fretting I tap them in with a small hammer, level them with a sanding stone or bastard file and crown them with a triangular file. Those tools cost a fraction of the expensive "specialty" tools Stewmac carries to do the same job. You can crown a fret with only a few swipes using their 70 dollar diamond fret file but I can only see it being a worthwhile investment if I plan on using it more than 2 or 3 times a year. You can save money by learning how to be proficient at using the less specialized tools. A fret crowning file is designed to do only one thing, crown frets. I have a lot more uses for my trusty triangular file.

A lot of what you need depends on how resourceful and handy you figure you are. Many of the folks here are building guitars on their kitchen tables with minimal tools and many have fully equipped shops. It also depends on what kind of budget you have. You will definitely find yourself buying specific tools when collecting material/hardware and while you work on your guitar. You can use a variety of tools for shaping wood, the more the merrier. That includes power tools like jointer, bandsaw, router, jigsaw, skilsaw, palm sander, belt sander, drill and all the various sized blades, bits and grits that go with them. Hand tools like wood chisels, rasps, block plane, rabbit plane, scroll saw, sanding blocks (rigid and flexible). Various types and sizes of clamps come in handy. Sandpaper grits ranging from 60 to 400 for woodsanding and then 600 to the finest for finish wetsanding. I use yellow carpenter's wood glue. There are also triangular files, fret files, straightedges, radiused sanding blocks, fret press for fret work. Soldering equipment as well. There are various stains, dyes, paints, clearcoats available and that will include the use of spraying equipment, rattle cans work too. There are a few more items I'm sure I've missed. It all depends on how good you are at using tools in general. There IS a basic methodology at forming all the parts and assembling them, something to think about before starting. Some people fly by the seat of their pants while others plan it out to the last detail including the use of drawings and templates. I like to do my research first and get it right in my head beforehand, but along the way I will usually cut some corners and improvise in some areas.

After the sandpaper I use Meguair's Deep crystal Step 2 polish, its for autos too. I don't know how it compares to the brand you are using but I'm real happy with the results.

Did you cover/plug the holes prior to clearcoat to avoid getting laquer in there? Thats the only way I can think of where water would actually get inside. I've heard of people having similar problems with wood swelling because they left bare wood by protecting those areas. I usually don't bother to cover or plug holes and let the laquer (or poly) overspray coat their inside surfaces. That way those areas (drilled holes, routs etc.) are sealed and protected from water getting in. The holes can always be redrilled later. As it is, I would leave it and let it dry out thoroughly and then figure out some way to prevent water absorption so you can finish wetsanding. Those cracked areas might have to be resanded and recoated, this time making sure you get some laquer on the inner walls of the holes to prevent it happening again. Also, when wetsanding I keep a roll of paper towels handy and usually will go thru 1/2 a roll in one 2 hr sanding session. I mop up excess water often and don't let it sit for very long, while constantly checking my progress. If you are worried about it , make dense paper towel plugs and countersink them into the tuning peg holes. Any water dripping in will be absorbed by the towel, just make sure they get changed now and then.

Setting up a DPDT depends on what kind of output options you would like. The most useful application is for changing distribution of signal from 4 wire humbucker pickups. You can wire them up basically for switching a pickup on or off, or you can wire them up for series/parallel, series/split/parallel or phasing your humbuckers. I have a DPDT installed on my strat for splitting the Seymour Duncan Hotstack (single coil size "stacked" humbucker) I have installed in the bridge position. In conjunction with the main pickup selector switch I now have more output options. Although both DPDT positions are technically always "on" I just call one side OFF = SC (single coil mode) and the other ON = HB (humbucker). Selector switch position | DPDT position | Output ----------4-------------------|-------OFF-------|middle SC & bridge SC ----------4-------------------|-------ON--------|middle SC & bridge HB ----------5-------------------|-------OFF-------|bridge SC ----------5-------------------|-------ON--------|bridge HB

Perhaps that can be avoided by using a UV resistant clearcoat over top of the dye/stain.

Welcome to the board pepso! Do you have access to any Autocad programs? and someone who could plot them out for you? There are lots of LP drawings out there in this format. I could email them to you if you can find a way to view them.

All handsanding for me, except when I'm roughing in at the beginning. I have a Dewalt DA (dual action) sander that spins and vibrates. The end result is little curly-cues left behind in the wood. Sometimes they are hard to see when not looked at the right angle. So I have to be careful to not leave any behind. I've never dropped a guitar yet. I use coat hanger material too but I make sure the "hooks" are long.

Perrrfect! Thanks Weez!

I could have sworn there was some discussion on this earlier but search yielded no results. Whats the deal on getting a similar effect as the Gibson SG voodoo? I got red stain, clear grain filler, dark blue stain and clear laquer to go on Honduras mahogany. I'll be experimenting, but if anyone has a good idea on what sort of order those should be applied it would be appreciated.

I'm currently working on my stainless (16ga) SG pickguard. Stainless can be real fun to work with and its hard to keep the sandpaper clean all the time. But I'm learning. Anyway, I decided to try a little mazola vegetable oil as a sanding medium for smoothing out the surface. Sort of like wetsanding but it has to be worked crosswise instead of circular motion like clearcoats. And you can't jump across grit sizes too far. Lucky I have lots of scraps from the last guitar, started with 320, then 400, 600, 800, 1200, 1500 and 2000. I just finished with the 6 micron diamond compound, am halfway thru the 1 micron and will finish with 1/4 micron. I've got a mirror finish already. I'm using small buffing discs on my Minimite Dremel, it sure takes a lot out of the battery. Can only do a couple passes over the entire pickguard before I run out of juice! I really need a digital camera, progress is so nice these days.

I was wondering of there was a source that had pictures of neck profiles for various well known guitars. I am currently looking for the basic shape of the Gibson SG late 60's. I know its fairly wide and flat but would like to get it juuust right.