DaveMan

I also have the 14" Jet. It is excellent, and I use it for all of my guitar building. Sometimes I wish I had a slightly larger one, but I have no regrets with this one. It is a decent tool and it does the job quite well. I have the riser blocks, so that I can resaw woods. This is great for making bookmatched tops out of a thicker board. With a bigger saw I could resaw really large slabs for one piece bodies, but this one works fine for everything else I do. I do find that it gets a bit tight trying to make long horns on basses. A really deep cutaway gets the body bumping against the backside of the saw, and I have to plan my cuts a little bit. I always do my cuts on the outside part of the blade, having my scrapwood inside the saw, but with a really long horn with a big curve at the end, I can frustrate myself a bit if I don't plan ahead. I also use the bandsaw for most of my other cutting, including necks, fingerboards, headstocks etc. I don't have a table saw, but I do have an old radial arm saw. I know I haven't used the Arm saw in over a year, so my last two guitars must have been built without it. Funny, I never missed it. Dave "If I use a sound proof finish, then nobody can hear how bad my playing is!"

I prefer a 3 saddle bridge. I like actual Fenders, or the ones that Stew-Mac sells. (I buy the cheaper version, and add their compensated saddles) Simple, and they have a nice sound. If you are playing rock or pop, you might want to look at a six saddle bridge. It is a bit easier to adjust intonation with these, although it's not that bad with the 3 saddle bridge. THe 3 saddle bridge feels a bit more solid to me when I'm playing and bending strings, plus it works well with a clean bridge pickup to make that "Tele Twang" that defines the instrument. If you want the classic Tele sound and feel, then the three saddle would be the way to go. A lot of younger players (and some older ones too) play Teles with the six saddle bridge and swear by them too. I have tried the Gotoh and WD six saddle bridges, but they never had the same feel for me. Good Luck, Dave

I was using the same print screen trick. I opened picture it publishing, and saved the screen shot of the guitar with the Print Screen button. THen I pasted it into picture it, and cropped away the stuff I didn't want. Not real clean, but the only way I could figure out. Looks like we all did it the same way.

I use a large hand plane, and I put my two boards to be joined together , face to face. Then I plane both edges at once. If I am careful to have the plane level and square (I use a fence for this) I usually get a very nice joint.If all else fails, I take a big flat straightedge, and put some fine sandpaper on it,and give each edge a touch with that. That usually cures a tiny imperfection, but I prefer not to glue to fuzzed up wood. My router isn't big enough to try joining with it. Just my approach, Dave

I think I used the print screen key last time I tried saving. I'll check it out tomorrow and see if I can remember.

I like the punchy rhythm stuff myself. Favorites include, Frankenstein, Detroit Rock City, American Band, Jailbreak, Eighteen, Don't Ask Me No Questions, Call Me The Breeze, most of the hardcore outlaw country stuff (Anything by David Allan Coe) Lots of the old uptempo classics. I like them because I play sober, and I think it's fun to watch all of the people who've been sitting drinking all night jump up and try to dance after a few too many. Other really fun songs to play; Aqualung, Hocus Pocus, Mississippi Queen, No Sugar Tonight. I'm more of a rhythm player, so I like to hook in tight with the bass and drums and kick tail. Almost forgot. ZZ-Top La Grange, Tush, and Cheap Sunglasses! Smoke on the Water once in a while.

Looking nice! I took a strat from rough cut to contoured and rounded off the edges with sandpaper once. I never want to do that again. You have more patience than I do. (Now I use cabinet scrapers and I can do a whole guitar body from rough cut in an evening without even plugging in a power tool) Keep up the good work, and keep posting pics as it goes along. Dave p.s. I have discovered a truth to guitar building. the guitar aquires "Mojo" through labor, blood sweat and tears. When you get done with that thing, you are going to have so much work into it that it will have to sound great! If nothing else, you will be totally in tune with it.

I have a Snarling Dawg Wah. Not too bad, pretty agressive at the higher levels. Not good for subtile effects, but if I want a screaming distorted Wah to shoot down alien spaceships with, I have it. Actually they make several verisons, frome a mild bluesey one to a heavy metal type. I will probably end up with a Cry Baby some day, but for now, this one does okay. I just have to keep it turned down a bit.

1) Hands, and hand tools (Planes, scrapers, knives, files, sanding blocks, etc) 2) Bandsaw. 3) Router I tend to spend a lot of time with planes and cabinet scrapers too. I like the finish better than just sanding.

Sopabarstrat, No offense taken on the body bag jokes. If I am going to discuss 1001 home uses for rejected body bags, I had better have a sense of humor about it. (BTW, they are great at Halloween, man. Fill them with straw and pillows in the right shapes, and decorate the house and yard. ) The Questioneer, If you can afford the arbor, it is a handy tool for anything that needs to be squeezed or pressed. You will want one someday anyway. If you can really afford it, the "Jaws" things are even slightly handier, as you can move them around from fret to fret without sliding the whole guitar back and forth. I used the vise method because I didn't have any better tools, and it worked well, but it was slow and cumbersome. If I had to do it now, I would mount the vise at a 90 degree angle, so that I could keep the guitar laying on its back. This would make it easier to see and support the guitar while lining things up. My way took three arms and four letter words sometimes. I had a couple of frets that fell out and landed on the floor before I got pressure on the thing, and I had to support the neck with one hand, while tightening the vise with the other. If you buy the Stewmac cauls, you might want to revive my C-clamp experiment. The only problem I had was that I used fairly narrow maple cauls. By the time I got them affixed to the C clamp, they started to crack up under the pressure. They needed to be attached to a wide surface like the vise face to work well. (Thicker cauls would have done the job, but before I made them, I got a real press.) I happened to have a huge C clamp (about 15 lbs or so) with a fairly fine thread and a foot long handle to torque it down with. I don't know if a lesser C clamp would drive a fret home or not. (Maybe those wood clamps with the two threaded rods and wood jaws would work here?) Good luck, Dave

A bit off topic, but a lot of guys in the Model Car hobby use Food dehydrators to cure their paint jobs. THis is on styrene plastic model cars, so they have to be very careful of too much heat too, lest they end up with a '23 "T" street rod looking like a Picasso painting. I wonder if a larger version of a dryer could be made, using slightly heated air, and lots of circulation. I would be scared to stick a Nitro finish anywhere near an oven. I used to have a carousel microwave/convection oven with a 150 degree setting for bread raising. I use to cure model car finishes in that, but I never had the guts to try laquer in it. I am too attached to my eyebrows! My parent's house uses a woodstove for heat, and I always take my necks and bodies over there to dry them. I usually put them in the room next door to the room with the woodstove. The combination of slightly high room temperature, lots of air circulation and low relative humidity seems to cure them fairly well. I make sure that the bodies have gassed out for several hours before doing this, as I don't want to fumigate my folks, wear out their welcome or blow their house up! If I paint them during the day, I usually take them over at night, and hang them on a stand. I don't paint in the dead of winter here due to my booth being uninsulated, and not very heated, but Spring and Fall are good painting times. ANother reason for letting the bodies gas out for a few hours is dust. They need to get past the tacky stage before they enter a dry environment with lots of air circulation, or they end up with a fuzzy matte finish!

Gary Thain was a great bass player. My first Rock and Roll album as a kid was Uriah Heep Live. Still one of my favorites. If you really want to hear some cool bass work, check out the old Keef Hartley Band stuff. Battle of the NorthWest Six is a great one. Thain really hits it on this album. (I think the other one he really nails is "Halfbreed") The best part of "Live at Leeds" IMHO is the second CD with the playing ot "Tommy" Entwistle is all over this one. Moon is drumming on the very edge of magic and madness. and Entwistle hangs in somehow, and makes it all fit together. Scary stuff to listen to even by today's standards. Moon's drumming on that album still puts my blood pressure up into the "Not safe for an old guy" zone.

Let's abolish, stamp out, eradicate and eliminate redundancy! Dave

I made a sort of fretbender because I didn't have the fret bending pliers. I just took an old piece of plywood, and I cut out a half circle of the correct radius on it. I dragged a sawblade around the edge to make a slight groove, and then I just bent the fretwire over it. After my first attempt, I realized that the radius of the bender had to be a couple of inches smaller than the desired radius of the fretwire, so I cut the outside inch or two off, and made another. I ended up with a set of four, all cut out like the stripes on a rainbow. THis wouldn't work so well forthe shred style guitars, as they would need a really large circle. I was fretting old style Fenders with 7 1/2" or so fingerboards, up to about a 10" radius. It's not the fastest or fanciest way to go, but you can make one in your basement in half an hour for no cost. My first refret I bent on a small deskside wastebasket, with a couple pieces of masking tape wrapped around it! Wow! I'm starting to sound like a cheap-o here. I agree that the tools are really nice to have. Now, I use decent tools for most parts of my work. I never would have been able to afford (Or find) most of these tools when I started, however. I am glad that I didn't let that stop me from working on guitars, and fixing them up. I guess I am tossing these experiences out to show that a decent job can be done with homebrew tools. Not everybody can afford to order one of everything from the StewMac catalog. I did that for quite a while, until I could start to afford all the really neat tools. Happy Holidays and have fun, Dave

I am thinking of a French polish for a solidbody guitar. I finished a nylon strung guitar this way a few years back, and I really liked it. I can't think of any reason I couldn't do the same to an electric . I could do this during the winter when I can't use my spraybooth (No insulation in the garage, and a small space heater) My other access to a spraybooth has disappeared. Any downsides to this for a solidbody? I know it's not as durable as laquer, but it's a lot easier to repair and touch up. (I don't drink, so I'm not worried about spilling alcohol on it and marking it.) I was thinking of a real subtle sunburst approach on a maple body, with blonde being used in the center of the guitar, and fading out through amber to a garnet or natural dark on the edges. It would be fairly subtle, as even the garnet stuff isn't that dark, and the blonde isn't totally clear. Would that work, or would it be too cheesy? Should I do that on a darker guitar wood, like mahogany or walnut? I know mahogany can be gorgeous with french polish. Thanks, Dave

I had better clarify. They were NOT used body bags! THey were rejected body bags. I worked quality control for a testing department at one time, and we tested all sorts of parts, products and assemblies. We ended up with a whole truckload of defective bodybags that didn't pass the leakage tests, and/or the puncture resistance tests. It was not my greatest moment in QC work, and I took a lot of heat, because it is expensive to have to recall a few thousand body bags... I was given SEVERAL as souvenirs. They are great for dropcloths, protecting benchtops, disposing of messy things (Paint buckets, roadkill, stuff that was in the freezer during a power outage...) They also protected many a guitar body, and motorcycle or car part during welding, painting, lubricating, sanding etc... On the clear straight edges, I did the same thing after seeing Dan Erlewine's video. I hated it too, so I shot it with a bit of black paint. (I masked off the actual edge with a strip of tape first) Now I like it. The notched side even works well with the backlight as long as the light isn't so bright that it blinds you shining through the notches. Just look for little slivers of light between the frets. Dave

Here are a few tips and tricks I have tried over the years. I used to use a regular vise for installing frets. I made a hard wooden caul (Maple) and then bent a small strip of brass over it to keep the fret from denting into the caul I made another caul to fit the back of the neck, and lined it with some cloth to keep it from scratching. Then I just held the neck sideways (Playing position) and stuck it in the vise, between the cauls, and tightened the vise until the fret went in. It was a bit clumsy, compared to the "Jaws" or the fret arbor, but it worked the same way. I usually had somebody hold the neck while I tightened the vise, or vise versa, as it was kind of a three handed job. A bit unwieldy, but it did a better job than hammering did. Another thing I tried was using a big C-Clamp to press the frets in, by attaching the cauls to the C clamp. THis worked too, but it kept bending my caul, as I hadn't made the caul thick enough to be supported only in the center. If I had made another caul, specifically for the clamp, it would have worked fine. I used an el cheapo metal level from K-Mart and milled one edge of it flat in a friend's shop. I thought I was being really original, until I watched Dan Erlewine's video. I used spray adhesive to stick emery paper to it. It did double duty as a straight edge, and sanding block. If you have a friend who has sharpening equipment for hand tools you might have access to diamond stones. Dan Erlewine uses these as levelers in the book, and I think he mentions them in the video too. My Father is a woodworker and has a zillion planes to sharpen. I use his diamond stones (Actually they're made of steel) for leveling the frets. I also have tried automotive sandpaper glued to a sheet of 3/4" plate glass. (Move the neck over the glass, instead of the other way around) (The glass was from a 240 gallon aquarium I was repairing) I don't reccomend the glass method unless you have a good way of checking it for levelness. (I used the string method) I used to use discarded body bags (Don't ask!) to protect the guitar bodies while I was working on the neck. They worked pretty well, and even withstood even the occasional jab with an errant file. One way I used to check a straight edge was with a string. A string under tension is usually very straight, just make sure it isn't kinked in one place. I just used the E string on a guitar to check the straight edges I was considering until I found one that was perfectly straight. I have the fret crowning files, but I also took a triangle file, and smoothed out the corners on a grinding wheel. I think I have used this more than the crowning files. I have used the triangle file for fret ends, and also for recrowning the frets, although it takes a couple of practice runs to get the feel for crowning with the file. I started this stuff before I could get any of the fancy tools, and I refretted my first guitars while I was living in a dorm room in college. I pretty much had to teach myself, and invent my own tools and methods. Some of them may not be too orthadox, but they worked at the time. Some of the tools cost a lot of money, but they save a lot of time. Not worth it for one or two necks, but if you have done a dozen or more, they will have saved enough grief to pay for themselves. I still take the tightwad approach at times, because this is a hobby for me, not a full time business. (Yet!) Good luck, Dave

Zzzzz....... Pop! Snort!... Huh?!? Ok, I'm Awake now! Oops, I was napping and missed the run of the thread there. Sorry about that. I went and looked at the photos of your guitar. Neat looking guitar. I think you should be okay with the new neck mount holes. You moved them inboard a litle bit, which does take away a slight amount of stability, but now you have them into solid wood. The ferrules will help prevent you from splitting the wood, and It looks like you should be okay. I have seen guitars with the offset holes like that before, and it is actually good design, as a straight split in the wood won't involve two screw holes. (Assuming your grain is straight with no runout) You could go to a threaded insert of you do have stability problems with the current setup, but I think you should be just fine the way it is. I always liked guitars with contoured heels, as I get my thumb upthere at times, and a shaped surface is much smoother to move around on than a big plate with four screwheads sticking out of it. (I tend to take barre chords all the way up the neck when I play) Good Luck, Nice looking guitar! Dave

I saw a Tele copy a while back that had a metal plate with six holes drilled in it in place of the ferrules. This might be easier to fit than the ferrules, as you could put the holes right near the edge, and you wouldn't have to recess the indivudual string heads. You could mill one slot for the ball ends to sit in, then drill your six holes behing them. Just a couple fo thoughts.

Fretwire if you are making the neck from scratch... I forgot to have any on hand for my first build, and there is no substitute for it. Good Luck, Dave

I use sanding blocks, planes, spokeshaves, and scrapers. A cabinet scraper is very cheap, and can be very effective. It will not remove material as fast as a plane or drawknife, but it offers a lot of control, and leaves a nice finish. I would reccomend getting a rectangular one, and a curved one. They take a bit of practice to use the first time. (If you can, get somebody to show you how to use it) but once you get going, they are fairly easy. It's one of my favorite tools, once I rough out the shape with a saw, plane or drawknife. Good Luck, Dave

One trick I used once on a laminated neck, just to see if it worked, was to make the middle lamination about 3/4" wide. (THis was a 5 lam neck) Then I layed the middle lam on its side, and routed out the truss rod opening as a slot through the lamination from left to right. THen I installed the truss rod into the middle lamination, and glued the others to the sides of it. The neck is still being played, and a guy is using it in a band right now. (On a different body than I built it for, though) and it is still holding together well. Very stable. It sure was the easiest truss rod to set up correctly, and it seems to be holding up very well. If it keeps on working, I may try making another one like it. Dave