mattharris75

Super clean. And I love the medallion in the volute, very cool.

You guys are better men than me. While I like the final results of sanding it feels a lot like grunt work. 50% of my time goes into getting the project 95% of the way complete, and the other 50% goes into sanding and finishing! 

When that first coat of finish goes on I'll be glad for all the sanding I've done. Until then, it's just a bit of a slog...

53 minutes ago, Drak said:

The alternative method would be to 'flip the script' around by simply using a paint roller dipped in a bucket of glue and apply it by hand.

Like you were actually painting on the glue with a roller.

Once done, you just pour the glue back into its bottle and clean the brush with water.

I honestly think this would be the much easier (and cheaper) way to do things for those of use who are not in a production environment. A small foam roller and small disposable plastic paint pans. Just pour roughly the right amount of glue in there and throw away the pan when you're done. 

It's been a busy week, but I've managed to make a little progress. Unfortunately nothing that makes for interesting pictures though!

I sanded the pickup rings to their proper thickness, drilled the holes for the bridge posts, drilled the wiring access from the pickup route to the control cavity, and drilled the hole for the bridge post grounding. Still a few piddly things to do like that, but I'm essentially down to the sanding now! I can't put it off for much longer! 

I'll definitely ease the edges a bit, but there's not enough meat to the rings to do much more than that.

They need to be sanded down a bit, but pickup rings or no? Thoughts? I'm about 50/50.

The original plan was to go without, but now I'm not so sure. The walnut kind of ties things together. I'll also likely either do walnut or wenge knobs.

Pickup routes... Had to elevate the router over the neck to do the neck pickup route, so a little half inch plywood and plenty of double sided tape and away we go.

Couldn't help myself and threw in the pickups for a quick look. They're not at all in position, but you get the drift. It's all coming together!

I've been researching whether to drill the holes for the bridge posts even or staggered. Due to the adjustability of this bridge I'm leaning toward even at the moment.

That's amazing. Never seen anything quite like it!

39 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

router sled?

I'm sure there were other options that would have done the trick, but I decided to go with what was the simplest for me. And I actually needed a new pattern bit anyway, so it all worked out.

16 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

 

afa bit... well if it was hitting your template... and you had the top cut... would seem like you should be able to put some tape on the guitar, remove your template and gain the width of your template in depth.  

 

If everything had been square it would have been a breeze. Unfortunately, post-carving, that was not the case...

7 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

That blonde stripe at the heel area creates an illusion of more laminated layers! Very stylish!

I noticed that too. I knew that maple was going to be there, but seeing it altogether it really kind of fools the eye into looking like it's an additional laminate. I like it.

I decided the neck pocket needed to be deeper, so I ordered a 1.25" cut depth router bit and added another 3mm of depth to the pocket. Looks like that will work out perfectly. 

So I drilled a nice long 1/4" hole into the heel of the neck for pickup wiring and went ahead and glued in the neck. I roughed out the neck heel to body connection. I may tweak the slope/transition slightly, but I really like it. This is the first sort of 'heel-less' neck to body transition that I've done.  

Next up are pickup routes, bridge post holes, and then a painful amount of sanding!

One vote for the sunburst! 

I love the look of gloss/satin next to each other, personally. Whatever finish(es) may be needed to achieve that look wouldn't phase me at all. I don't have the experience with it to know if there are any caveats, but I know it's done fairly frequently. 

That pickguard is slick!

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one. 

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but progress has been made. Got the last few frets in and got the neck pocket cut. I really wanted to get it two millimeters deeper, but the router collet was burning the top of the template and I didn't feel comfortable lowering the bit any further in the collet. I could probably rig up something on the router table to finish it out. I'm going to sleep on it. I just don't want the bridge to be too high. I've never owned or installed a Gibson style bridge, so I'm in uncharted territory. 

That's super cool looking, I hope your top is lexan or some other clear material to show off what you've got going on in there!

A single picture to sum up today's progress. Finished the carve on the back, installed the side dots, and fretted the neck (except the last 3 frets because apparently I'm not smart enough to calculate how much fret wire I'd need...) So, time to spend another 10 bucks in shipping getting 6 bucks worth of fret wire from StewMac. 

Once I get that fret wire in I'll finish that up, scrape the side of the neck smooth, and work on getting the neck set. 

Scott, I think that's going to work out. The eased edge gives the cover plate a nice organic look too. 

I got about 3/4 finished with the back tonight before my hand started giving out. The horn area will be quite similar to the way it is on the front, except for the transition into the heel. The rest of the back has more of an over-square roundover, it's about twice as wide as it is tall. So not nearly as much carving as the top, but I think it looks nice.

Thanks for the suggestion Scott, I think I'll give that a try.

I'd forgotten how difficult it is to get an accurate fit for the control cavity cover. Not quite perfect, but I'll tweak it a bit more once the back is carved. 

Well, good luck with it, Scott!

Had some time this afternoon to put a nice smooth little carve on the top. I'm sure I'll tweak it some more (until the finish goes on, as I always do) but I think the horn will tie in nicely with the style of the rest of the top.

2 hours ago, ScottR said:

Moderna?

The wife and I get our second shot next week. We've got tickets to see Mike Zito and Ana Popovic and of course they scheduled the second shot for the day before that show.

I hope it doesn't screw that show up for me.....

SR

Pfizer. The day after the shot was the worst for me. Headache, zero energy. I felt a lot better by dinner time that night, but was still dragging. It seems everybody's reaction is different. My parents and sister had nothing other than a slightly sore arm. My wife was wiped out at least as bad, or worse, than I was.

I'm quite a fan of wenge!

So, decided to just make a simple truss rod cover. The original idea ended up looking out of character with the build, this looks much cleaner.

And then I got a start on the carve. Since the horn/cutaway is the most involved part that's where I started. Here's a picture of the test piece along with the real deal. You can see an area where I departed significantly from the test carve. I decided to keep the point tall to match the style of the mandola rather than the more 'Carl Thompson' look of the test. It ends up changing the look of the whole thing quite a bit. I figured I'd try it as I could always easily change it. I'm going to sleep on it for a day or two...

I'll probably have a little time to work on the rest of the top tomorrow.

I'm using the low profile Hot Rod with headstock access in my current build. I didn't go super thin on my neck carve, and have a fairly sizeable volute to help account for it.  There are a number of factors involved in the strength/structural integrity of the neck, but making sure you have as much wood as you can get in vulnerable areas is a good start!