Yew-topped SG-style Guitar * Finished Pics!

[Andyjr1515]

So I now have a top glued to the neck.

  
Quick check that everything is still square - both on the neck/top assembly and the mahogany.

And an orientation of the grain:


The upper back - that doesn't have any cable routs or control chamber stuff - then is cut to a 4mm oversize shape, a strip of maple is glued to the join face and then the 'you can't have too many clamps' ritual


Note the side clamps to secure the join with the neck, the central blue clamp and caul to get the side fully home and then the smaller clamps and curved protective cauls to ensure that the side joins are fully gap-free.

That's enough for today.  It's Saturday.  A weekend Gin beckons...    Wonder what's on for tomorrow - or pretty much the same 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Andyjr1515

[SpondonBassed]

8 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

A weekend Gin beckons...

Well earned.

Cheers

[Andyjr1515]

And to the other rear wing.  This is the one that has the control chamber and the pickup routs incorporated.  Note also the maple veneer acting as the demarcation:


This particular piece of Sapele was a little bit cupped and so the clamping was going to be particularly important.

I first used a couple of sash clamps to hold the joint with the neck tightly.  Clearly, it is important not to crush the 'hoop' left by the removal of the control chamber material and so, here, the sash clamp was fixed from the inside of the chamber to the outside of the other half.

So I could get maximum clamping force, I also cut shaped cauls from the offcut to be able to clamp all round the edges and with some hefty ply cauls underneath to protect the yew top:

It's going to start looking like a guitar soon

[Andyjr1515]

And now it does look more like a guitar

I'm pleased with the joins - certainly, with many hints and tips from the good and knowledgeable folks here over the years, I'm getting a bit better at it!

It's like this pretty much all the way round.  And see what I mean about 0.6mm of maple still being fully visible.



So now it looks more like a guitar.  The next step is to make it look more like an SG.  The chamfer carves start tomorrow...

[SpondonBassed]

Those bevel cuts are going to be exiting.

[Andyjr1515]

25 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

Those bevel cuts are going to be exiting.

I'm looking forward to them being done, but a bit nervous of the doing of them - it's quite a fragile wood when you get the grain-direction of the cut even slightly wrong.

[SpondonBassed]

I have every confidence in yew.

[Frank Blank]

1 minute ago, SpondonBassed said:

I have every confidence in yew.

The old oaks are always best, it doesn't teak a lot to start the puns.

[Andyjr1515]

Oh dear....oh dear....oh dear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SpondonBassed]

I don't want to keep lumbering on about it because by now it should be ingrained in yew all...  It takes tree fellers or more to a ply puns and knot two.  Until Andy improves on "Oh dear....oh dear....oh dear" it just leaves yew and me Frank.

Edited April 6, 2020 by SpondonBassed

[Maude]

1 hour ago, SpondonBassed said:

Until Andy improves on "Oh dear....oh dear....oh dear" it just leaves yew and me Frank.

Oh fir Pete's sake yew pear! These puns make me sick, or more. 

[SpondonBassed]

I'm stumped for an answer to that.

[Andyjr1515]

Thanks, folks! 

And so to the carve.

First is to mark it out.  This was scaled up from a fairly flat-on photo:


Now the top is glued to the back, there is little to no chance of, say, a whole knot becoming dislodged.  However, the brittleness and variability of the wood was going to take some patient, steady work.  The thing I always think kills a DIY SG-style is when the faces are rounded and the chamfer edges aren't crisp.  There are a number of ways of maintaining that but, for what it's worth, these are my main tools for the job:

Spokeshave with a very sharp blade and set for quite a light cut for the rough-cut external curves, curved medium micro-plane for the rough-cut internal curves, flat and freshly re-burred cabinet scraper to smooth and flatten off the faces.  For carves like this, I have in the past used just a scraper, but with this timber, even a teeny scraper burr has a tendency to dig in.

For the horn cutaway, pretty much just the micro-plane, but being careful to cut down for the upper edges and up from the lower edges to ensure no chipping along the all-important edges:



Grateful for a sunny dry day for this - too many poisonous particles flying around to do in the cramped cellar.  Mind you, haven't heard the neighbours moving around for a while...

And the first rough carve is done.  Here it is lightly dampened to show more closely how the finished figuring is starting to develop: 


And while I was doing this, a parcel arrived from David Dyke.  Sounds like we might have an ebony fretboard blank 

As always, thanks for looking and for the encouraging comments and suggestions.  Always much appreciated - especially for a build 'from the dark side'  

 

[Paul S]

15 hours ago, Maude said:

Oh fir Pete's sake yew pear! These puns make me sick, or more. 

Well, to misquote Benjamin Franklin: there's nothing more certain on Basschat - as in Life - than bad puns and Taxus.

A little botanical humour there.  Well, almost.

[Mykesbass]

20 hours ago, SpondonBassed said:

 it just leaves yew and me Frank.

That has really given me the needle.

Fabulous looking build @Andyjr1515

[TheGreek]

Love the Yew top...

Got me pine-ing for one myself....

[Andyjr1515]

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

[Richard R]

Cut the MOP inlays so that they are the same shape but smaller,  so you don't remove the ends when you radius the fretboard?

[Si600]

Feature. Do all of your crown inlays rectangular at twelfth and above and it can be your thang along with flocks of swifts.

I'll flock off back to the garden now, though it's a bit cold out, so I won't be out for much longer!

[Andyjr1515]

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! 

[Andyjr1515]

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!

[Richard R]

2 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

 

This is clearly one of those jobs where having the right tools is going to help a lot. Though that does not in any way detract from the skill required to use them properly!

[Andyjr1515]

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 

[Andyjr1515]

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!

 

[SpondonBassed]

14 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

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!