evilbetty

the 2 humbuckers were taken from a warlock and the bridge is a tune-o-matic with rollers ,the tuners are wilkinson all hard wear in black ,of corse lol so everything looking good from here off to start the paint side of things,

so a few processes i had to do before i would paint anything ,first one was sealing the wood with a wood sealer,i found the mahogany very open grained so need several coats of sealer to help fill the grain and seal it off,i used a water based one as i was going to use auto paints to paint it ,first time i used the water based sealer but it worked well and im now using it everytime i have bare wood to deal with thats going to be painted,

so heres a few at the paint shop getting ready to be sealed, i used 2 threaded rods between 2 stands to hold it up while

i sprayed ,

then a check of all the parts being used make sure i got it rite!!! so put the bridge humbuckers and tuners in place for a final check before i looked at finishing it

then the fun bit out with the router and rip out the 2 humbucker cavitys and the bridge pin holes and also the string thru ferrule holes , then it was looking something like this

here you can see that taping method i use to do a very tricky curvy bit ,this was tight as and almost a slight design flaw as the shapes were soo close it was going to be tuff to get any paint in there, thats why i made the bat head shape only half the thickness of the neck and not the full thickness ,this allowed me just enuf room to get paint in to the very very tight circled areas!!!! was still hard but managed to pull it off

many hours of sanding and got it pretty smooth and even,

crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

quite happy at how it was taken shape at this stage!!! awesum to see something ive scribled down on a bit of paper turn in to something real!!!!

still heaps to go but making great progress at this stage,

next was a mater of finishing the wings and smoothing them into the neck and basicly getting every thing sanded smooth an nice

then out of the clamps and dryed lets see how it came out ...................

so head stock shape was done the wings done neck angle ruffley sorted and the bat head shap at the neck end also done ,so next the hard part hahaha actualy it was a little fidley but to help line up the wings with the neck i used 2 small wood dowels they helped alot!

heres the wings being glued and clamped the hell out of it ..........

heres the headstock ruffly shaped came out ok too

once was dry had to level the sides nicely ,look at my cool neck suport lol,

so that looking pretty good i went to the head stock and started on that with my choosen shape,

to make it work i had to add wood to either side of the paddle,

heres a shot of the wood glued and clamped

and with the wings sitting beside the neck it looked like this kinda sweet i thought ;-)

then had to cut the bat head shape on the end of the neck.........................

cheers mate yeah being careful this time around not just going all crazy,measuring and double checking and cuting shapes and geting visual aids helps alot to be able to see the direction im going ,

so having the 2 winds semi done i primed them and let them sitt for a while, i then turned my attention to the neck ,had to do several things to it first to make it usable, first being the neck angle,now the way i did this i know its not the right way but it worked for the first guitar with the same neck so i thought id do it again since i knew what the go was,

so added a small wedge to it and ended up with ........................

i also routed out a controls cavity and drilled the jack hole ,and the pot holes ,also a channel for the from pickup wire,as pointed out by the lovely moderator here from my last guitar ,cheers for that!! it worked a treat ;-)

and again a steward mac neck thru,i love the quality of these things , i think my next build ill have ago at carving a neck ,still working up my skills and confidence at this stage tho, we will see ,any way heres the s m neck,24 fret eboney fret board paddle headstock ................

so next was a bit off carving and sanding and shaping,i learnt from my last guitar its a good idea to get as much of this done before you stick them to the neck,i know alot of people will disagree with this ,but for me personaly it works very well and makes life alot easyer later on,so thats the method i use and probably will stick to it,,as far as the carving and shaping goes i also found a real easy method of just drawing your shape and masking it off where you dont want to carve and then ripit up by hand ,with files and sand paper, this masking technique is very similar to one used in auto refinishing industry in which i work so know alot about paint and finishes,it works very well and i recomend trying it out can get precise shapes using it,well i think so any way ,and proof is in the pudding so heres a few shots,

and heres the 2 halfs laying on the card board shape ,after ruff cut out ...........

heres the top wing blank with extra added ,when i was doing this i thought it was the dogyest thing ever how ever i also made a second piece using the same joint method and i clamped it to the table and swung a hammer on it as hard as i could ,in a sort of violent rage to test the join ,amazingly it held up!!!!

and carrying on that idea i made the wing templates the same way ,used them to draw around and cut the shapes out of mahogany ,the top wing was a bit of a pain how ever as i didnt have a piece long enuf,and couldnt just buy another piece to cut 1 wing out from,so i had to add a small section to the blank to give me the size i needed ,i did this by using wood dowels and alot of glue ,it was clamped and let to sitt so a while, then i fitted up the wing template and cut that piece out also........................

and just to make sure i made up a perspexs head stock of the shape so i could test the tuners and there positions! worked out well as i needed to change it a tiny bit,but i liked the idea of having a scale model of sorts to help me visualise the thing ,so thats what i did ..................

awww yeah and the head stock went thru a similar design process till i found one that i could use,learning from my mistakes on the last guitar with the tuners i made sure they were going to fit in the right way and work

heres another with it along side one of my old warlocks