mattharris75

Well, had my second covid vaccine shot this week, and it wiped me out for a few days. But some progress has been going on regardless. I made a maple/walnut laminated truss rod cover with a 'Z' carved into it and decided that it didn't work at all, so that idea is scrapped. Moving on... I completed the carving of the neck. I will probably sand everything up through a fairly high grit before I actually set the neck, but the shape is more or less complete. Other than the heel area, obviously, which will have to wait until it is glued in. And I polished up the wenge fretboard with micro mesh papers. Wenge is one of those woods that has a bit of a 'whoa!' factor when you polish it. Not the best picture, but it gives you an idea. Next up is fretting the neck and carving the body.

Thanks guys! Plenty of progress today. I got the fretboard glued on, here's this build's obligatory 'all the clamps' picture: Then I got the fretboard routed flush with the neck and went ahead and knocked out the first carving session. Looking solid so far, think it's going to be nice. And a quick glamour shot of how the neck and the body will look together: I haven't mentioned it, but the tenon will be visible all the way to the bridge pickup. I've done the exposed tenon look on a couple of other builds and I really love it when there is a cool neck laminate that compliments the top well.

Solid wood shims are the way to go.

That's 'hawt', as the kids say...

Sunday afternoon progress. Shaped the headstock, drilled the tuner holes, and tapered the neck. The headstock to neck transition needs a little cleaning up, and a little scraping is needed in the tenon area, but it's close. Note that the truss rod is intentionally not flush here, I was just testing to make sure that the headstock overlay was in the right spot to get the rod into the neck. But the route is so tight I was concerned I would have trouble getting it back out if I pushed it all the way in... Next up, the fretboard!

No doubt! I love jigs as much as the next guy, and if I was making 20 of the same thing I'd jig it to death. But when doing one-offs most of the time it's not necessary or efficient.

I disagree Scott, but thanks. I guess the pictures look better than real life! Friday night and Saturday progress... The wenge plates came in at 3.4 mm, and there's no way I was going to be able to bend wenge at that thickness, so I took them down to 1.7 mm. I used a bending iron to bend the volute area and then got it glued up. I used one of my sanding drums from my oscillating spindle sander as a clamping caul, which worked quite well. I then did all the time consuming measuring to get the headplate square and went ahead and cut out the truss rod access, which isn't visible here because I'd already replaced the cutout of the headstock, as it had gotten a little garfed up in the gluing process. A couple of notes. You can see that I glue my templates on top of tape, as that makes them a lot easier to remove, and I don't have to pull out the mineral spirits to get the Super 77 gunk out of the wood grain. I cut out around the template after gluing it down, just because I'm going to be sanding up to the template. You can also see that I use bamboo skewers, normally used for cooking, as my alignment pins. I like the size of them and how easy they are to sand flush when you're done with them. And then the easy part, cutting out the headstock. Also you can see in the previous picture that I went ahead and cut out the circular area in the top of the headstock first. It's just rough cut right now, but all the glue joints are good. Tomorrow I'll get it to more or less final shape using the spindle sander and then cut the tuner holes. If I have enough time I'll get to the next steps of getting the neck taper done and gluing on the fretboard....

As Drak said, you definitely do not want to use BLO or Tru Oil (which is BLO plus some other stuff) as your clear coat. Spraying lacquer is a great option, but if you're not comfortable with it you could also do a few coats of shellac, which you can wipe on. Mix it up yourself though, it needs to be dewaxed shellac. It's compatible with darn near anything.

You could also just grainfill black for a cool look as well that combines black and natural, like the back of this bass I built:

You could always do a trans black finish as well.

The fretboard and other wenge pieces finally showed up today. Got the neck thicknessed with the safe-t-planer. Used it to get the back of the headstock close as well, then the belt sander and a little work with the card scraper to get everything flat. Just about ready to get the headplate and backstrap glued on. Here's the fretboard and headplate. Really happy with the look of the fretboard. Very wide stripes, really cool. Wish the headplate matched it better. The grain on it is much tighter, which is fine, it's going to look different since it will have finish on it anyway... I'm going to try to get quite a bit of work done on the neck this weekend!

Charlie, you're right. This calls for a better mock up... So I glued up and rough carved it out tonight. For the most part I like it. It needs a little more massaging, but conceptually I think it works. The bottom side is uncarved in the mockup, so the whole thing would feel a little more rounded and organic when it's all said and done.

My LMI order will finally be here tomorrow, and I'll be working on the neck for the next little while. In the meantime I cleaned up the general profile around the scroll/cutaway and have been thinking about how I want that to look. I glued up an offcut and did a quick carving test. My thought was to kind of do a gentle carve on most of the top, stopping at the walnut, using it as almost a faux binding. But at the scroll/cutaway area, to be more aggressive. To basically carve the whole thing down to a point as I work my way around the scroll. How's that going to look with the 'ice cream sandwich'? I don't know. Might give me sort of a 'Carl Thomson' vibe... Thoughts?

Thanks guys! Overall I'm pretty proud of this build as it was definitely the most out of the box and complex instrument I've built. And really it ended up looking and sounding darn near exactly how I had imagined. How often does that happen?

Thanks guys! More sanding... I think the 'ice cream sandwich', as Scott called it, is looking pretty good. And the control cavity access has been cut. It's about as small as I could practically make it and still have reasonable access to solder in there. The cavity cover will be wenge to match the fretboard and headstock overlay/backstrap. That is if LMI ever ships my stuff...

So the fretboard and headplate/backstrap still haven't shipped from LMI, which is putting a damper on working on the neck. I got the truss rod installed, flattened the back of the headstock, and started to very roughly work on the thickness of the neck. But without the fretboard and whatnot in hand, I'm not going any further. The paper headstock cutout in the picture is something like the 6th or 7th iteration. It probably doesn't look any different without any context, but it has been repeatedly tweaked! And maybe, possibly, hopefully that's the final shape... Since I got the jack installed (which required cutting out an area and creating a flat spot in the inner cavity for the nut to have a place to tighten down on) I was ready to go ahead and attach the back. It's not completely flush with the sides yet, but it's close. I've got a lot of massaging and carving to do on the body anyway, but other things need to happen before it's time for that. The back is nice match, and just about as gorgeous as the front! I started working on the templates for the control cavity access tonight. This weekend I'll get those routed and probably do a little more sanding on the body. Then I'll be at a stand still until I get my LMI order...

Yep! The StewMac order got here yesterday, and I don't think the LMI has even shipped yet! Unfortunately now I'm waiting on Amazon, as the version of the Hot Rod truss rod that I got uses a different sized router bit than the old ones... Got to get that channel cut before I can crank out the rest of this neck! I was able to go ahead and fit the jack into the side and test fit the controls so I could finalize the shape and position of the control cavity cutout, so that was good. Also, seeing the zebra pickups next to the finish color, I'm pretty excited about how that's going to look.

The good thing here is that if your repair isn't perfect some of it should be covered by bridge and strings, so it shouldn't be particularly noticeable.

Personally I like the headstock shape. And I think the recessed pickup rings are an interesting idea. I get where you're coming from on the neck though. You maybe could re-profile by feathering the neck into the cutaways, but that could compromise the strength of the area. Adding material sounds like a great idea if you can pull it off. I have no idea how difficult that would be with a CNC, but it's well beyond my analog abilities!

I'm not normally a lime green guitar guy, but man that thing is slick!

Thanks Andy! Today's progress. I cut and glued the scarf joint and glued the headstock wings. I'll clean up the surface tomorrow and will then be waiting on parts. I want to get the truss rod and jack in hand before I start cutting for those. Got shipments coming from StewMac and LMI this week. I hadn't mentioned (as I wasn't 100% sure until yesterday) that I'll be going with wenge for the fingerboard and headplate/backstrap. I think it will play well with the walnut and maple. Also, after seeing the headstock printed out I think I'm going to make a few tweaks to it...

Well, since the mandola narrowly lost last month, and I've been encouraged to re-enter it, here we go: Here's my 'gDola-1', a guitar bodied mandola. Top Wood: Redwood Back and Sides: Locally milled Cherry Fretboard: Bloodwood Headplate/Backstrap/Finger Rest: Macassar Ebony Finish: Shellac and Tru Oil Build Thread: Video (recorded prior to the finishing process, obviously): Pictures:

Thanks Muzz! Scott, I'm not sure it's really a highly developed ability, I just always viewed it as, 'Well, that's life'. Sometimes the priorities are optional, and sometimes you just do them because that's your responsibility. And my oldest is 11, and the tallest kid in her class (wish I'd had that problem growing up), and already having early TAS (teen angst syndrome)... She's too much like me. Anyway, more progress. The top is trimmed about 95% to the sides, I'll wait to complete that until the back is on and I can smooth and 'massage' it all together. The holes for the pots and switch are drilled, and the F holes are roughed out. I also spent a little time cleaning up the cutaway area. It's not quite there yet, but it's a lot closer. Everything will change a lot once it's all carved anyway.

Scott, believe it or not I started planing/thicknessing/gluing all the wood for this last Wednesday, so this is only a week of work! I am bound to be sidetracked at some point with other projects I've got going on, but at least this one is relatively straightforward! There won't be lots of pondering and research involved, mostly just hacking on wood! So maybe this one will finish up slightly quicker than my usual multi-year timeline!

After finally finishing my mandola build I decided I needed to build something simple, as a means of stress release, to take my mind of of some big projects I'm working on. Compared to a carved acoustic instrument most things are simple, really... I decided since I liked the design of the mandola and I hadn't actually built a full sized electric guitar in a long time, this would be the direction I would head. Other parameters were to use as much wood and as many components as I already had on hand. I had a couple of pretty excellent flamed maple tops that had been sitting in my shop for a decade, as well as a bunch of walnut I'd gotten from a family member and some maple I'd been given by a cabinet maker friend. The tuners are also a nice set of Planet Waves auto trim locking tuners that I'd gotten a good deal on years ago, and the baby grand bridge is a splurge, as I'd been wanting to build with one ever since I first saw it years ago. The body shape is almost exactly a scaled up version of the mandola, with modifications made to the size of the horn and the way it intersected the body to accommodate the fact that it's now part of the cutaway and not a mandolin scroll. The headstock is highly inspired by the mandola as well: The top, which is a pretty great looking piece of maple: The neck blank, which is a 5 piece laminate of walnut and maple (and which is sitting on the maple body core in this pic): Here's the body core all cut out. A walnut/maple/walnut laminate, which will have the previously pictured maple top, as well as a matching maple back, once it's all said and done. I fudged the inside cutouts a bit, as their accuracy isn't super important. The scroll/cutaway area needs a little attention too, and it will get it once the top and back are on: The top is now glued on as well, but I haven't had a chance to trim it down flush with the body. That and then cutting the F holes will be my tasks for this weekend. Once that's done it will be time for some neck fun! The plan for the finish is to sand this sucker to a super high grit, hit it with some medium walnut danish oil to pop the grain, and do a couple of coats of Tried & True oil to get a nice smooth, warm, 'in the wood' finish. Here's a preview of the coloration. The piece of the top has been sanded to 800 grit, the body off cut hasn't been sanded at all, it's as it came straight off the bandsaw: This should be a fun, and simple, little project!