mattharris75

Since you live near Dallas there are bound to be a number of places where you can get hardwood. Heck, if you go for poplar you can get that at your local Home Depot. There's a pretty sizable Texas crew on this site, so one of them should be able to give you a hand. You might do better to post that in a thread with a more location specific name, so if local guys see it they will be more inclined to look.

OK, finally got a chance to take a few pictures of the work i've done. Routed the fingerboard taper flush with the sides of the neck. Planed another laminate piece smooth and cut it out to create the control cavity cover, and got nearly finished with my pickup cover which is made out of a leftover piece of the neck laminate. Also did some other small things, roughed out the neck pocket template, working on some practice finishing options, etc, etc. I also added a little more contouring to the body using a rasp and surform. That was good practice for the impending shaping of the neck, and a whole lot of fun as well! The rasp is quite rewarding to work with. Here's a mockup of where everything currently stands: Here's a picture of the pickup cover. I still have to do the finish sanding and drill the holes for the pole pieces. This little sucker was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be. And finally, here's a pic of the cavity cover. I've still got some sanding to do around the edges, obviously, so that it will slide into the recess smoothly.

I would think you'd be alright even with a translucent color, depending on how dark it is. Natural is really the only time you'd ever particularly notice it I think.

Since it sounds like you are not doing a translucent finish, i'd go with poplar. I've got a MIM poplar Tele that sounds quite nice. Poplar is cheap, sounds good, and since you're painting colors on you don't have to worry about the greenish streaks or lack of interesting grain.

Yeah, I think that would look cool if worse comes to worse. I'm using a leftover piece of my neck laminate to make a pickup cover, and I think it's going to look really sharp.

Then just route out an area roughly the shape of the bridge on the back and fit a contrasting piece of wood in there and turn it into a feature. But with calipers and a drill press I don't see why you would have a problem.

In this thread Quarter has a couple of pics of his art deco lap steel guitars that he finished with tru oil. They are part mahogany, and he explains his process briefly.

I've seen a few examples where it appears that if, after the first coat, you wet sand with the tru oil you can use it to fill the pores. I'm contemplating trying this on my walnut build.

Awesome, thanks for the info, that's good to know. I'll have to give that a try. Cool looking guitars as well, very Art Deco.

Quarter, That's a nice looking finish on that lap steel. Did you do any type of grain filling to the mahogany? Or was it just many layer of tru oil + sanding to get it to look like that?

Yeah, I use metric when I can, it's much simpler. But a lot of the reference dimensions i'm using, like nut width and scale length and pickup dimensions and all that good stuff that you steal from other resources to simplify planning, is all old school. So no metric on those.

Those calipers are awesome! I'll have to get a set of those. I hate having to do conversions between decimal and fractional, those would be a big time saver.

I've decided that rather than testing out a black grainfiller i'll prep a board of walnut, with both some heartwood and sapwood for the full color variation. Then i'll stain it black and sand back so it's only in the pores, then use the clear grainfiller I have. Then i'll tru oil on top of that and see how it turns out!

Sorry, I was referring to the solid one, but thanks for the info.

Where are the pics of your sons short scale?!?!

Yeah, I was thinking more walnut than wenge. Is that the wenge guitar on your website you're referring to? If so i'll take a look at that, it's better than nothing anyway. Any opinions on how this might look? Also, what was the finishing procedure on that wenge guitar? It's obviously very low gloss. Is it just grainfilled and sanded smooth, or is there some light oiling going on?

Rich is right on. On the tools in particular, i've found that i've spent as much on tools as I have on actual parts for the guitar (and i've got more to go.). They add up fast. And that's not including any major power tools, which I already have access to. That's just specialty tools, router bits, sandpaper, and other small things. It's amazing how it adds up, just be prepared for it.

So nobody has any familiarity with doing this I take it?

Nope, but I bet somebody here does. Might have better results on that query if you put it in a separate post.

I'm thinking on the fingerboard, couldn't you just get a few small pieces of MOP and cut them to fit in the empty spaces then glue them in. If done well I would think it would look just fine.

Why are you going to stain the board? Looks great the way it is! Sucks about the inlays, but I don't blame you for not starting over.

Google is your friend... Or just check www.musiciansfriend.com. There are a number of different models with different wattages and speaker configurations at different price points.

So when do we get to see the finished product on your sons short scale? I'm looking forward to seeing how the tru-oil turned out on the walnut. I'm contemplating the same finish on my walnut guitar.

I was doing some test finishing for my wood pickup cover i'm making and put some black stain on walnut and then sanded it back before applying a tru-oil finish. I really liked the way it looked. It appeared as if the black was only left in the pores of the walnut, similar to grainfiller. But this was only on a small piece of wood, not a large enough area to get a good idea of what it would look like on a guitar body. Plus I would like to actually fill the pores in the body to give it a smoother appearance. Has anybody tried a commercial black grainfiller on a darker wood like walnut? And if so do you have any pictures? I'd love to get a better idea of what this might really look like before investing in a can of black grainfiller.

Wow, nice looking finish. Makes me re-think whether I need to lacquer my guitar. What was your process for the tru-oil? How many coats, when did you sand, what grits, what did you buff with, etc?...