Rick500

I'm covered in mahogany dust as we speak. I love the stuff.

In all likelihood, if it's a Strat type neck, it's 25.5" scale length whether it's 21 frets or 22, so you probably won't have to do anything special to make it work.

You can't arbitrarily move the neck in relation to the bridge. The distance between the nut and the bridge saddles must be the scale length. But, most Strat type necks that have 22 frets achieve that by having the last part of the fretboard hang over the end of the neck so that the neck itself (as opposed to the fretboard) is exactly the same. So as long as there is physically room on the body of the guitar between the end of the neck and the top of the neck pickup for the extra bit of fretboard, and the neck fits properly into the neck pocket, you should be okay.

Welcome. What sort of problems did you have with the latest one?

It depends on the thickness of the neck and the depth of the neck pocket. I made mine a total of 1" thick (neck+fretboard's highest point) at the neck heel (using no neck angle and a Strat type hardtail bridge).

np... I'm a mod on another forum and I know how annoying it can get.

I'm increasingly unhappy with my Ryobi 10" benchtop drill press. (It's not their current model with the laser, it's the older one.) It started out fine but now there's an unacceptable amount of runout. I did use it to fret a neck with Stew Mac's arbor and caul, so I may have caused that myself.

You can joint with the router table if you have a bit with a cutting length long enough to reach the thickness of your stock. Just set the outfeed fence 1/16" or so closer to you than the infeed fence, and line up the cutting surface of a straight bit (preferably 1/2" shank) dead even with the outfeed fence. When you run your two mating pieces through the table, flip one of them upside down just in case your bit is not set at 90.0000 degrees from the table surface (that way one will have the opposite tiny angle of the other one and it'll still joint well). Here's a page with pics.

Theoretically, yeah, I guess that's what you'd do if it was possible. But removing a fretboard and sliding it up higher on the neck probably isn't practical and may not even be possible. For one thing, the fretboard is presumably tapered, as is the neck, so even if you were to manage to get the fretboard off the neck in one piece, the taper is thinner the nearer the nut you get. So sliding it toward the headstock would leave you with a fretboard too thin from side to side, to cover the neck. And the headstock isn't going to be level with the rest of the neck. You'd also have a gap at the body end of the fretboard you'd have to do something with. And the truss rod nut access would have to be attended to. And the neck pocket (if it's a bolt-on) would have to be filled. And you may not have enough body/neck contact to get a good neck joint. You see where I'm going with this... [Edit: I assumed you meant on an existing guitar. If you're designing a new one, then you have some options. ]

You can't move the whole fretboard in relation to the bridge. That would be changing the distance between the nut and the saddles, so the frets would all be in the wrong places. If the scale length is, say, 25.5", the distance between the nut and the bridge saddles has to remain 25.5" (+/- a tiny amount to account for intonation). If you increased that distance, you'd have to use a different fretboard with fret slots placed in the right places for the new, longer scale length.

I don't know much about pore filling, as I have limited experience with it. But to me shellac seems kind of thin for that. Epoxy maybe? Alot of others here know more about pore filling so I'll let someone else speak up on that. On naturally oily woods like cocobolo, the Tru-oil won't dry properly. It just gets all sticky and gummy. But if you apply a coat of shellac first, the Tru-oil dries just fine. Here's a link with alot of info about shellac and oil that I found helpful: http://www.woodworkstuff.net/KfinRude.html And another with a process that sounds similar to Quarter's: http://home.insightbb.com/~jpaquay/oil_fin.txt Thanks for that. Quarter's mahogany and maple guitars look pretty awesome with that finish. I think I'll try it.

I had one years ago, before they stopped production for several years and recently started again. The guitar played reasonably well. It didn't have as many features as the new Fretlights do, but I did find it useful. Don't expect to start from ground zero and become a great player just using a Fretlight to learn, though. I highly recommend two books: Fretboard Logic Vol. I & II (which is all one book) and Fretboard Logic Vol. III. I learned more from those than I ever did with the Fretlight.

Don't know how much you're looking at spending, but check Mojo... mojobodies.com He's a good guy, you can trust him.

How about on mahogany? With the large open pores, would shellac first, then Tru-Oil, be a good option?

I think what you're looking for is a patent, not a copyright. There is some info here.

Yes, you can use a laminate...however thin you want, I would think, provided it's a uniform thickness.

Very nice! I have the run of 1/3 of a 2-car garage and am now officially jealous.

I've seen some decent 1x3 flamed maple at the home improvement stores occasionally (being sold as select maple 1x3 pretty cheap), but I'm not sure it's hard enough to be used in a neck other than as an accent strip.

If you don't mind spending a little more, check out the Carvin B4 kit.

I've gotten all my guitar wood from eBay so far. Haven't found anywhere nearby that sells anything decent except Woodcraft, and they're very expensive for wood. (I can usually get it cheaper on eBay even with shipping.)

That sounds like a great price. I'd jump on it. The mahogany blank I used on the guitar I'm building now, was about $50 and it was just big enough for one Strat-sized body. I have another for the next one that was around $100, same size but awesome grain.

I have to confess I didn't care for the body shape in the first pic. Then I saw it carved, now it looks great! Nice work!

Any special tools needed for stainless work? I assumed it was the same tools, but they'll just get more wear.

Actually, that's a factory Minwax Tung Oil finish; I didn't do it. (It's a Carvin DC145.) They use four applications of oil. They rub it in by hand, wait 5-10 minutes, wipe off the excess, and do the next application after at least six hours drying time. I have used the same finish on one on a kit I built, though I stained it red first. (Swamp ash body.) Over the red stain, it didn't darken noticeably. I used four or five applications (don't remember precisely) of oil finish, 6 to 24 hours apart. There are step-by-step details at this link: http://aias-inc.com/rick/carvin The more applications you do, the darker (slightly...it's not a big difference) it'll get. Four applications over bare wood is probably going to be roughly equivalent in darkening to just wiping down the bare wood with mineral spirits.

Let me know how the stainless fret job goes. I love stainless frets but I figured for my first fret installation I would go with nickel-silver. I'd love to use stainless on the next one.