Andyjr1515

Haha - just re-read that. Thought you meant the headstock the same colour as the body. I must concentrate harder...

I did give Matt that option - there was enough offcut to do that - but he wanted black, which is fine.

Not much done today, but I have got most of the rest of the bits - certainly enough to do a quick mockup to check if Matt wanted to go with black or metal pickup rings. He's opted for metal. The bridge and rings are chrome ones here from my bits box - the nickel ones are on the way. Also, the other bits are not yet positioned, but it gives an idea of how it's starting to look: So tomorrow's job will be the pickup chambers.

I will NEVER forget about that shrinkage, Mick! I'll find the photos and post them...

And so to the swifts! They haven't arrived yet in real life but should be here in a couple to three weeks. So in the meantime, I'll have to make do with Mother of Pearl ones. Normal stuff - cut out with a jewellers saw: Then outlined on the plate in pencil and the chambers cut out with the same Dremel + precision router base as with the fretboard crowns: Glued in with the c**k up-hiding ebony dust/epoxy mix. Sanded off and done: Next job - before gluing the fretboard on once the truss rod has arrived (which was supposed to have been today) - is to cut the pickup chambers while I still have a flat-top to the body. But that job is also waiting for the pickup rings that were also due today. Maybe tomorrow Ditto, I will rout the recess for the back cover, again, while I have a flat top to be able to clamp to the workbench. And then, I reckon the fretboard is ready to glue on. So, it all depends on the postie from now on...

Time will tell, especially when it turns out banana or propeller-shaped, @Simon. To be honest, I don't think it make much odds which way round you do it. My hunch is that the epoxy will act a waterproof membrane, but my choice of sequence itself was more about practicalities in getting a completely flat and bubble-free /gap-free bonding. This was made much easier by being able to use bench clamps firmly clamping the ebony/veneer assembly onto a toughened glass sheet (an old glass shelf that is sitting under the maple in the photo). That is much easier than trying to get as good a joint of veneer onto a set neck - difficult at the best of times but especially given how much the veneer itself warps when you add glue. The result is that now, when I glue the assembly onto the neck, the veneer cannot warp at all and so I will have a completely flat surface gluing to a completely flat surface. Well, that's the theory anyway. That said, time will tell, especially when it turns out banana or propeller-shaped...

I love this hobby! Unlike, say, hang-gliding or mountain climbing or white-water rapids rafting, you can try new and different things in relative safety First - and it is related - if you want to see something that holds me personally in awe and makes me weep in my beer in equal measure, then spend an hour watching this video. And if you are a guitar builder or woodworker or craftsman or anyone who likes seeing someone at the top of their game, it is well worth the hour: Deep inside the video the guy said something that sent firecrackers off. He epoxies his fretboards. And he does that because epoxy doesn't wet the board and make it expand. Ever had a new guitar where the fret ends start getting sharp after a few months? The reason is that the fretboard is shrinking in width. And often, this is because the moisture from the wood glue made them expand in the first place. And they can carry on shrinking for YEARS. Almost immeasurable, but enough for the sharp ends of the frets to re-emerge. So why do most of us use woodglue? Because then - if you have to - you can remove the fretboard intact by applying heat. I've been asked to do that a few times - generally to replace broken trussrods. If it's expoxied, then generally the only way is to plane off the old fretboard altogether and start again. So what is the new thing I'm going to try? Well - this fretboard is going to have the maple veneer demarcation to give me the fine white line between the board and the neck. So the plan is: - epoxy the board to the veneer = no shrinkage of the fretboard - then Titebond wood-glue the veneered board to the neck = the ability, if ever necessary, to remove the fretboard in the future. Who knows if it will make a difference, but it won't do any harm as both methods are perfectly sound in their own right. Here is the veneer being applied to the back of the fretboard: Meanwhile, the headstock plate has been cut from a super piece of jet black ebony from David Dyke: And that, too will have a veneer demarcation. For this one, I am reverting to good old Titebond. And no - an upside down radius block to use as a clamping caul isn't the best way to treat a wooden radius block... : All the rest of the bits (trussrod, tuners, stoptail, pickup rings, electrics, etc) arrive sometime today, and another room has been decorated so I will soon have no excuses but to just crack on

Without a lie, one of the best refinishes I've seen. Top class.

I cut the frets to length and detanged the fret-ends. Lucky break - the little bit at the bottom is all I had left off the coil... When I'm fretting, once I've run along each slot lightly with a triangular needle file, I run a small bead of Titebond along the tangs,then hammer them in (one side, other side, middle) and then pop a clamped radius block on while I'm preparing the next one. And, after the glue has fully cured, the fret-ends are snipped and edges sanded and we have a fretted fretboard Next job is the headstock while I wait for the trussrod to arrive

Yup. It reminds me of a wind-tunnel photo...

Little by little. This is my hobby and usually is interspersed with a lot more 'life' stuff. With the lockdown and building a guitar on a bit more 'doing something everyday' basis probably makes me realise how much work there is involved in one! But - in actual terms - decent progress. This morning I have tapered the fretboard to it's final size and rough-tapered the neck: Next job is probably putting the frets in the fretboard. Nowadays, I do that before gluing to the neck - easier to handle, easier to keep stable for hammering and clamping the frets and MUCH easier for getting the fret ends square and straight with the fretboard edge.

That's sort of what I do with a varnished neck. I, like you @Pea Turgh , do sand down to 240 and then apply a couple of coats. But I make those my sealing coats, not the first of the finish coats. I then sand down those coats back to the wood with 300ish grit and finer before starting to add the actual finish coats. So, maybe more by accident, you are actually on the right path, I reckon

That looks lovely, Jez.

So this is where my little stash of sanding dust comes in - mixed with epoxy to glue and gap fill at the same time: And sanded. While they take quite a bit of effort, nevertheless on a scale of 1 to 10, just how satisfying is that!

Well, it's taken all afternoon and evening but.... ...using the Dremel with precision bass, I started by 'dotting' around the outline: Then joined up the dots, then roughed out the middle and then finally started the final tidy up and fit for each: ...and a few hours later, they are all in and ready to glue But that will be tomorrow

Given that I generally use 25" or 25.5" scales on electrics, it wasn't worth getting a template for the 24.75" of this one. And so I would still be using the G&W mitre box but hand marking the positions. For this, I used the Stemac fret calculator and double-side-taped a decent quality steel rule along the centre-line, with the rule end flush with the nut-end: To mark the positions, standing vertically above each position to avoid parallax errors, I used a sharp ended centre-punch (pictured above) to mark the position with a small indentation. After double checking the position, I then added more pressure to the punch to make a larger indentation (for reason explained below). Having marked them all, and before lifting the ruler off, I added a reverse double-check by reading the position of each dot against the rule and checking the answer with the Stewmac measurement. The ticks above means that my reading of the positions matched within a minimum of 0.05mm to the calculator. There were a couple where is was a bit more that that. For those, I just put the punch in the dip and added a teeny sideways pressure until the required measurement was exactly in the centre of the adjusted dot. Then, with clamps at either side and the board held against the side with tight packers, I positioned each blade-thickness-sized dot until it was invisible at both sides of the blade and I thus knew that the blade was right in the centre of the dot. I clamped both sides simultaneously to ensure that the dot remained directly under the blade and then cut the slot. So here we have the board fully slotted. Next job is to position each of the MoP crowns, seen here laid on top, score round them and rout the chambers: This may take some time!

OK - decided. And the first job on the list is radius to 12". After driving myself to the brink of madness in the past trying to radius an ebony fretboard with a radius block alone, I then made my own routing jig and then saw sense and bought a proper one from G&W: It always takes a bit of time getting it all set up, but the rout job itself took less than 20mins to this level: Ready for the final 10mins sanding off of the tooling marks with the almost-redundant radius block. I have a terrible memory, but I always remember to keep the sanding dust!! : Now, I'm one of those people where, if I drop a piece of toast it always lands butter-side down. Except when I try to demonstrate that certainty to anyone, when it lands, of course, butter-side up. So imagine my disbelief when this natural aberration that was lurking under the surface: ...turned out to be 3mm BEHIND where I will be cutting at the end of the fretboard Well, if that was karma, I clearly must have done at least one unbelievably good thing in the recent past!

And I now have a nice AAA ebony fretboard blank. But I'm not going to rush into things - I'm going to ponder a bit first. Because I'm not quite sure of the best sequence. I have a nice set of Mother of Pearl crown inlays I will be using the G&W radius rig for radiusing: I don't have the right template for a 24.75" scale, but I will nevertheless still use the G&W fret-slotting mitre block to cut the hand-measured fret slots to give me slots that are square with the blank and at a consistent depth: And I will be hand-marking round the inlays and using my Dremel with the precision router base to cut the inlay recesses: So what's the problem? Well, there's a few. For a start, the Gibson-esque crown inlays are very wide. And the fretboard is quite radiused. And the MoP I only just over 1.5mm thick. Have the eagle-eyed amongst you wondered why the earlier frets on Pete's are crown and the higher frets are rectangular? Well, basically, I ran out of Mother of Pearl at the tips! Just sanded right through with my radius block! So I squared them off and turned it into a 'feature'. So my choice is: - Slot - Cut crown recesses - Fit crowns - Radius This would be easier for the precision routing and ensure that the recess bottoms are flat. But, it would rely on the inlays being sunk to exactly the right depth and the radius jig likewise. Also, it means the router would be routing Mother of Pearl! or: - Slot -Radius - Rout crown recesses - Fit crowns - Radius fitted crowns with a radius block This would ensure that I knew exactly where the inlays were going to fit in the curved fretboard. But routing on a curve is trickier (although I have done it before) and the rout bottoms will be also curved. And that's why I'm going to have a little ponder first

"9 feet by 9 feet! Eee….Luxury My workshop were less'n half o' that. And it were at bottom of lake...." (etc)

Well that's just showing off!

I do agree, there is an uncanny resemblance....

Just posted on the other thread, @Maude. What a fantastic paint job on the Kay!!!!

Wow!!!! That is such a great paint job! Transformed.

I like that carve feature VERY much

I look forward very much to seeing this develop