Setch

Ah, now it makes sense. You have to view the process as a whole - it isn't hard to put the frets in (provided your prep is good) but it *is* hard to put them in level and even. How well you perform the first step directly affects how hard the levelling and dressing will be, and even how long the fretjob will last. Much like anything else, it isn't the process that is hard, but achieving a good result. Any fool can fire a gun, but it takes skill and practice to hit a target. Also, the difficulty of fretting can be affected by the materials you use. Ebony is less forgiving than Rosewood if you're slots are not perfectly sized. Jumbo frets are more troublesome if your slots aren't 100% prependicular to the surface of the board. It's good that you found the initial process easy, but don't count your chickens until you've actually got the guitar strung up and in your hot little hands

Wow - love the way the binding compliments the blackline figure!

Have you actually played on the neck yet? This is the the only test as to how good a job you did. Even fretwork which looks good can need vicious levelling to tame all the buzzes. If you've played on it, and it looks good and plays nicely - Good work! The jaws tool is supposed to make the process infinietly easier, but it's still a big investment for many home builders...

Are CF rods ruled out because of availability or something else? A Martin style trussrod epoxied into the neck will add a good deal of stiffness. Where you planning a skunkstripe and traditional compression rod? If so you could use ebony or any other very stiff wood for the stripe, though peghead flex might still be an issue... Eitherway, you *can* work around this, and that flame is far to pretty for firewood!

LOL at above.... too true. A lathe is good for round knobs, it's nice to match them to the woods or materials used on the rest of your guitar. I turned these up using padauk and black pickguard material. They are just drilled out with an appropriate sized drill bit before turning them, and push fit on the pots. I don't know how many fittings and removals they'll be good for, but if they get loose I plan to soak the hole with CA and then push them on again once it's dry.

Nice. Great minds think alike I guess, though I'm sure neither of us is the first to do it. I'm slowly learning that almost every idea I get has been done somewhere by someone else

Neck: Laminated mahogany/padauk/mahogany set neck, w. scarfed jointed headstock, and EI Rosewood fretboard and headstock overlay. Abalone dot inlays and Martin style U-channel trussrod. Body: Two piece chambered mahogany body, capped front and back with flame maple and mahogany/padauk/mahogany respectively. Mahogany back is 1/4 inch thick and maple top is a little under 1/2 inch. Double bound with tortoiseshell/cream celluloid binding. Hardware: Stew Mac golden age humbuckers, w. overwound bridge. Volume w.pull pot to cut to singlecoil mode. Pan pot to fade between bridge and neck, no tone control or toggle switch, handturned padauk knobs w.black detailing top and bottom. Chunky chrome stringthrough bridge w.chrome ferrules at rear. Nope - mine is actually setneck, not neckthrough. The padauk stripe is just a cosmetic detail, the back cap was added after a cockup patching a routing tear out. Originally it had a plain mahogany body, with only top binding, and a halfinch roundover on the back. I wasn't happy with the patch I used to hide the tearout, so I ended up sawing off the entire mahogany section of the treble side horn, patching in a new horn from the blank offcut, and then gluing on a new back to hide the joint. The back binding concealed the added back. It set me back about 2 months, but I wasn't happy with previous patch, so it was worth it! I think Drak's prefectionism might be catching

Thanks all for the nice words I don't think any of this months contenders should be dissapointed at loosing to Drak's V - it's a great piece, from conception to flawless exectution, I think we were all destined to be also rans. I will be finishing my project up and resubmitting next month, see y'all then ....aaaaw crap, then I'll be up against Lex's bass.... I'm doomed...

Looks nice, but I'd open up that treble side cutaway - it looks pretty cramped for upper fret access.

Aagh! I thought I'd dodged a bullet by not going up against Lex's beautiful bass, but I totally forgot about Drak's cursed Coco-V... Grrr! Nice piece Doug, you got my vote. I'll try and up some more images with finish on, hopefully this afternoon. I should also admit that the electrics are still unfinished, so I don't know whether I can still really run legitimately this month... *** Edit: Here's the latest pics.

Yes it is. Look again, and you'll see he applied a few sealer coats before joining the neck and body, then glued it up, and sprayed the vast majority of his finish with the two joined.

Thanks J' - it's built from scratch. I used the Kevin thomas's LP junior DC plans as the basis for the body, but the top carve, neck and hardware positioning are all my own. I moved the neck a little further into the body to strengthen the neck joint so I could add a neck pickup, and shifted everything else around to accomodate this.

Aint that the truth. I'd also like to note that a lot of people think that being in the process of building is the same as having built. Whilst having a project underway may give you significant insight into some of the processes you've used, it *does not* give you expansive knowledge of guitar building. That only comes with having completed and played your instruments - that's the test of whether your techniques and abilitites are actually sound. Even then, you cannot offer any insight into the longevity of your gluejoints, finishes etc until the instrument has been subjected to a few years of playing... This isn't about elitism, it just that people can go to any number of places to get babbling, untested assertions about what makes a good guitar. The point of difference which should make places like this better than harmony central etc, is that people are actually basing their assertions on empirical evidence, not heresay and manufacturer half truths...

I think this will be my entry, assuming I can get the final buff out and fitting of the electrics completed before the end of February... Specs are: Chambered mahogany body (2 piece) capped with Flame maple top and mahogany/padauk/mahogany back. 3 piece laminated neck (mahogany/padauk/mahogany) with scarfed head and EI RW fretboard. Abalone dot markers & double bound body with Tortoise/cream binding. Stew Mac golden Age humbuckers (overwound bridge) splitable with a pull pot for volume. Pickup selection by a blend pot (no tone control, not selection toggle). Chrome stringthrough bridge.

You can get away with very little. I remember a thread on the MIMF where a steelstring builder discussed using thin board which where *nearly* completely cut through by the slots, and Fender did a similar thing for a while with their thin laminated rosewood boards on curved neckblanks. Provided that you compensate for the thin board with a slightly thicker neck I think you can go pretty much as thin as you fancy.

John Catto's templates (not plans) are available for free from the MIMF library, you will need to register as a member to get them, but that is also free I cut the neck angle with a plane or a router on angled rails before I carve, but after I have cut a rebate around the perimeter of the body to dictate the final carve depth. I did a photo essay a while back on guitar.com's repair board - Here you go.

No need for a template - just make your mortice and tennon the same size. Since the body only has to work with one neck there is no need to use a 'standard' measurement like on a bolt neck, so cut your mortice, make it as neat and accurate as possible, then cut your tennon to the same dimensions - easy

Titebond is easily available in the UK by mail order - I get mine from Aminster Tools. It may be tricky to get from High Street shops, but that's the case with almost all decent luthiery materials.

Well, there's your problem right there. Try making that 3 days and you're less likely to encounter a problem. When gluing large flat areas with a waterbased glue, common sense dictates that you allow a massive amount of time for setting - the glue in the middle is basically sealed in by wood or more glue on all sides, and like any liquid in a sealed container it will take much longer to dry!

What Frank said You can always remove a bit of bow when you thickness, and any that is left should be easy to force out once you clamp the top on. Maple is a bitch for cupping/bowing etc so this kind of behaviour is to be expected. The top of my blue guitar (see Avatar) was cupped more or less exactly as you describe, and that came out fine.

You can either do a full width tennon, which is essentially a bolt on with glue, or a narrower tennon like a Les Paul. You will not find many dovetails used on electric instruments, simply because they are uneccesarily complex compared to straight sided mortice and tennon joints. I've only ever built set-neck guitars, so I can't really compare the two directly, but I would imagine you want to aim for closer tollerances on a set neck, since you won't have any finish on the neck or pocket like a bolt on. I pitch for a joint which is tight enough for the body to be picked up by the neck without glue, and this has worked for me so far.

Amen, or as some guy said - "Ah, to be 17 again, when we were all 10 feet tall and indestructable". Wear a mask. Don't spray indoors in enclosed spaces. Doing what you are doing is just begging to be poisoned or blown up, especially if you use electrical equipment in a room full of paint vapour and propellant, both of which are highly explosive when dispersed in air. At the very least you run the risk of developing a serious allergy to your chosen finish, and possibly any number of common household products as a side effect. I know it's against the site policy to be rude, but I don't care in this case. Failing to follow the correct precautions when using dangerous materials makes you an idiot, endorsing your dangerous practices on a site where others could read it makes you an irresponsible moron. Brian, apologies in advance if this breaches the sites terms, but I take serious exception to users here encouraging others to risk death or serious injury.

This may be a good time to add 'Never cut towards yourself' into your book of wood working phrases & sayings. It isn't as snappy as 'I've cut it three times and it's STILL too short', but it will help you stay attched to your fingers...

Frank, I followed pretty much that exact train of logic for previous fretjobs, but I haven't experienced any problems with the unattached fretboard technique. Yes, the board will backbow, but the caul it is taped to keeps it dead flat throughout fretting, and the bow is easy to push flat with one finger - it is totally removed from the equation when you clamp for glue up. The trade off is not having to support the neck whilst you fret. Basically, your fretboard is flat and true, with the front and back parallel. As such, gluing the board to a dead dead straight neck, can only result in a straight board. The order I did my last neck was: 1. Taper neck and board with the same template, clamp in position and drill positioning pins at 3rd and 17th frets. 2. Remove board, and clamp neck to a flat 2 x 4 to rough shape the two ends with a rasp and scraper. 3. Glue neck to body, route for neck pickup, using the still square neck shaft to clamp the pickup template. 4. Inlay board, dress flat and polish inlays with a radius block and varius grades of sandpaper. ( this is when I would have added the binding if I'd used it on this neck). 5. Fret board, flush trim and bevel fretends. 6. Glue on board, using the positioning pins to get it prefectly aligned. 7. Shape the rest pf the neck, joining the two ends with longs flowing spokeshave strokes. Like Franks said, I'm not going to question any method which has proved effective for other folks, I simply wanted to address Derek's statement that you 'always' want to glue up first. That is a tried and tested order, but it isn't the 'only' way.

I still don't get this - how thick is your doublesided tape? The 3M stuff is thin, and holds much better than any of the thicker tapes I've used.