honza992

Agreed, some more details would be great. Coincidentally my current build will also be shellac, I just hadn't quite worked out how to do it! Looks great though, top job.

My advice is don't. The £300 you spend now will be dwarfed by the obscene sums your new addiction will cost you. You'll have no time to watch sh_te on TV, your mind will buzz with future builds, you'll gaze furtively at the Axminster website, and (even more dangerously workshopheaven.com), you'll lose friends who will tire of talk of 'fret radius', and 'double action truss rods', you'll find that rather than having time to fill you'll have no time at all, as your guitar building obession slowly takes over your life.....😀🤣

Go on, you know you want to do it yourself.....just one, it can't do any harm....go on.....😀

It's brilliant that you are finally taking the plunge, though guitar building is a hard but addictive task master. With that's n mind my advice is not to build the guitar of your dreams, but to build something that is relatively straightforward and something that you will actually finish. My first was a bolt on Precision and even that was unbelievably hard. If, like me, you have no background in making anything then I honestly recommend you start simple. Leave the curved this, and the widdly that for build 3 or 4. A flat body, bolt on, single pickup, oil finished bass will still throw up a million seemingly unfathomable problems. But you will finish it, and for build number 1 I think that's the important thing. But lots of help here whatever you choose to do...Good luck

Thanks so much Christine, that's brilliant. I'll have a go.

I've routed the binding channels, and got a couple of options. The first is black with a cream line inside, the second adds a couple of very thin white lines round the edge. They don't quite match in colour, but I'm not sure how much that matters. Anyone have an opinion? You may be wondering why I've covered the top (and back) in tape......The walnut veneer is 0.6mm thick which means there is very very (very) little margin for error in terms of how much sanding I can do. So when I'm routing (or actually pretty much all the time) I put the tape there just to provide the veneer with a tiny bit of protection.

I like the idea of using a cabinet scraper. But for the life of me I just can't get one sharp. I've looked at a million videos, have what I think is the right sheet metal, and even have one of these: But can I get it to too lovely wispy shavings? No, all I get is dust. Would anyone be able to talk me through, using very very simple words, how you sharpen a cabinet scraper. And it would be great to widen the discussion a bit further to see how and when you use it. And any useful tips etc. Thanks!

In my opinion dowels or biscuits aren't needed from a strength point of view, glue should hold fine. To use a 1.2mm brad nail you just hammer it in 5 mm or so, then clip it off so there's 1-2mm sticking out. Put all the bits in position and push them together and the brad will leave an indentation on the corresponding piece of wood. You can then drill out that indentation with a 1.2mm drill bit so that the pieces can all be pushed together fully. If it's important that there's no movement when you glue I would be inclined to do it in two halves. And maybe even glue the veneer onto the wings first, then glue each wing in turn. Otherwise that's a lot of glue that's going to be sloshing around and a lot of different pieces of wood to try to align. As for dowels, I've never used them in this way so I'm not sure how you would get the dowel on one side exactly lined up with the hole on the other side...

While building the topic of 'finishing' looms large, as it were, in the back of my mind. Some of you may know that I'm an active member of Extinction Rebellion. I've already stopped buying exotic wood, and I'm trying to review all of my building processes to see if I can make them more environmentally friendly. With that in mind I've decided my finishing from now on will be with shellac. Or at least the top coat will be shellac. Grainfill will be Epoxy.....which I know isn't ideal, but it uses I tiny amount and reduces the amount of finish that is required. Or at least that is my plan for now. Like all my plans, it's likely to have a very limited shelf life.....

Ah, thanks for that. I've always wondered how people glue with titebond without it slithering around like Torvil and Dean. I'll try it next time, cheers! Edit: Oh and is that just for titebond, or Epoxy as well? When I'm dong veneers, that's turned into my glue of choice, titebond introduces too much water and warping for my liking....

I spent ages trying to work out how to get a neat 'join' where the fretboard, nut and headstock veneer meet. It's the sort of thing that drives me mad if it's not perfect. In the end I decided to sand the headstock 'veneer' (3mm of ebano and w/b/w veneers) like this, setting up the platform in front of the sanding disc at the same angle as the headstock, about 13 degrees. That meant when the headstock and nut meet, they're both vertical: I then glued the headstock veneer on, using my normal brad nail technique to stop it slipping around. I've started using these spring clamps more and more after I saw a B&G video that showed them using 20 of them to glue on a fretboard. They seem to provide plently of pressure but are really quick and easy to use. I'll be doing the same....

Thanks Christine. I have no skill with hand planes but can rout virtually anything! Though part of me wishes it was the other way round🙄

Right, the body is routed to shape and a bit of tidying up around the lower horn and I have this: The neck heel will have more wood glued on to make it thicker, but just to check my neck angle is correct, I put a 6mm mdf shim in the neck pocket then used a straight edge to check height at the bridge.... My plan said 7.8mm, so 8mm is pretty much spot on.

Continuing with the nect pocket, first up I clamp the neck down into its approximate position, then put two straight edges in place down the side of the neck. I then move the neck around until the straight edges are the same distance from the centre line. I then clamp the neck down firmly. I then put the template over the top of the neck and glue it down using the superglue/masking tape trick which holds really, really secure. The neck can then be removed and the pocket routed.... And the final pocket. A couple of things. First off I would put two layers of masking tape around the inside of the template to make the routed neck pocket a tiny bit smaller. This time I used only one layer and it wasn't quite enough. The pocket is tight enough for epoxy glue, but I wouldn't want to use hot hide glue which needs a pretty tight fit, as I understand it. Second, I wasn't able to rout quite as deeply as I would like. It's not an issue because I'm using a neck which is pretty long, much longer than a standard LP joint, so there's plenty of surface to glue, but aesthetically I would have liked it a bit deeper. I'll have a rethink for next time..... Oh and I know it still looks pretty awful at the moment. Scruffy as hell. Next step is to rout the body to shape, which should hopefully improve it's appearance no end😀

Andy, silly question, but where is the peak of the volute level with? The nut?

Bit of progress on the neck pocket. First up, hogging.... I make my pocket templates individually for each guitar I do. It doesn't take that long but does need a router table. Basically I clamp the neck on to a piece of 12mm MDF, then stick down 3 straight edges using double sided tape, pushing them up against the neck to get the shape. If you haven't got 3 straight edges then 3 pieces of MDF cut straight work just as well. Once they are stuck down the I use a guided bit in the router table to cut the template to shape. The advantage of this technique is that you are using the neck itself to shape the template. Once that;s done I then cut two piece of MDF on the radial arm saw at an angle of 2 degrees. These will provide the angle needed to cut the neck pocket. So the template is finished:

Thanks Christine, that makes sense. I'll give it a go😁

Rethink time. I just can't get the ebano binding bent round the lower horn, even with heat and water and thicknessed down to 1.5mm. I'm a bit surprised but there you go. So, I've redesigned the lower horn so it's sharp, a bit like the Gibson ES-295, if a bit less ugly (I hope anyway). I've ended up rather liking it. The advantage is that the binding can be cut and mitred, rather than bent. Not that I've ever done a mitre joint in binding (or indeed anywhere else) before, but I;m sure it's time I did.... So the template is finished: Let me know what you think😁 Oh, and I'm not using a mortise/tenon joint which would be normal for a Gibson LP. Instead I'm going to leave the neck at full width like an SG. Looking at neck joints purely from an engineering point of view, I'm not the Gibson mortise/tenon brings much to the party, other than tradition and a requirement for precision chiseling. With the full width neck joint (in effect I guess the whole neck is the tenon) I can use my standard neck pocket method, and should be plenty strong enough. I hope🙄

In my scarf joint post above, I realise I didn't describe how I glued it. It sounds easy, but wasn't, at least for me anyway. Even dry clamping it was impossible to get the two halves not to slip out of position. Because of the stripes I know that any mis-alignment would look rubbish. After endless experiments I reverted back to the same technique I use when gluing on fretboards, and it worked perfectly. Basically I use a couple of 1.2mm brad nails (or they may be lost head nails....), and bash them in about 10mm or so. I then get wire cutters and clip them off so about 1mm or so is remaining, like this: I then line up the two pieces and push them together so that an indentation is left on the other part. I then use a 1.2mm drill bit in my hand drill and make a small hole where the indentation is. When gluing the two halves together the two nail ends ensure there's no slippage. It did take me two goes before I got the alignment spot on, but because the nails will be cut away when the neck is in its final shape it's no problem at all. I'll definitely use the same technique again, and as I said it also works really well on fretboards. Edit: You may wonder why I specifiy 1.2mm nails and it's because that's the smallest size bit my drill will take, 1mm is too small, and you want the hold to be the same size as the nails or there's a bit of slippage (even if only a tiny amount).

Oh and since I'm here and finishing is endlessly on my mind, how did you finish the Peavey above? Looks great.

Wow, thanks Andy, that's some great work you've done on my behalf. I really really appreciate it! Just to double check, was that 2mm thickness as it comes from Rocklite? If so, I may try taking it down to 1.5mm and bending that in one go, along with a maple veneer, maybe with a backing strip of some kind, as @Christine suggests....and if that doesn't work then taking it down to 1mm and trying to glue two strips and the maple veneer at the same time. I may run out of hands, but it's worth a go, I really don't like black plastic veneer. I'll report back!

Ooooh yes, they'll be some veneers on the headstock. I'm thinking white/black/white/figured walnut to match the body......And now I've been reminded by @Gilmourisgod of his walnut Ric build, I'm thinking about binding as well, no doubt with veneer highlights as well. Or I may change my mind and have a non-matching headstock....As you can probably sense, I'm going about this in my usual slightly casual fashion!

Nice progress Andy, looks great. Quick question about the ebano as I've just ordered some for my build. Do you think you could bend it round the standard lower horn of a Les Paul, or is it too small a radius? If so I may try thicknessing two pieces down to 1mm each and gluing them both on at the same time.

Hi GIG, good to see you on this side of the pond. Ahh, the walnut Ric. One of my favourites, really a top job. And the headstock binding rocks. Which has now got me thinking about my current build. I hadn't thought about binding the headstock, but maybe, just maybe it could work......Thanks!

I've decided to go veneer-tastic on this build, shoving them in pretty much anywhere I can see space. So 3 layers went into the scarf joint, in for a penny and all that. After gluing, the neck blank now looks like this... The truss rod is done (I use the WD Music double action ones, the best, or least bad, ones I've come across). I rout it upside down on the router table which is a joy. Now, where else can I glue multiple layers of veneer? (The neck I'm planning in my head may end up being a 25 piece.......)