# Guitar Two...



## D_W (17 Feb 2022)

...the quickie (though it's dodging a few other projects, so the elapsed time making shouldn't be that much, but the elapsed time total due to the project sitting may be much more). 

I was going to make the whole thing cherry, but I forgot that after getting the last guitar body out of the far end of the slab (the objective was more or less two guitar bodies and half a dozen necks), the remainder of the center had split. I thought this was 3 1/2 to four inches thick, but it's 3, so it's not worth taking the time to cut out another body. 

Years ago, I roughed out some les paul style bodies. two mahogany (macrophylla) and one khaya. I like khaya even though the guitar community sees it as second rate. for a while, it was available in great quality for the same price as poor quality honduran blanks. Those seem to be gone now. 

Of these three, the african blank is too nice for this project, so it's back on the rack. The second of the two hondurans (both came from stew mac on a deal price years ago- they looked like a steal. Once I found out what quality they are, they were just "fair" price. In the tradition of stew mac, the picture of the blank in the listing was much better than these). Both were not well seasoned, and both cupped. The second of the two cupped so much that it lost a lot of thickness. 

I'm not the only person that found this, but they were $85 each, so you get what you get when you're a low volume buyer. I'll make use of them - the comments at the time will filled with disappointment in the reviews, but if you've ever bought something from stew mac, you'll find that they solicit feedback from new customers. Now that I'm no longer a new customer, and for years now, they haven't asked for feedback on anything outside of automated prompts (a real person contacted me with my first ever purchase). Call me a cynic, but I think it's better for them to try to get feedback from starry eyed beginners. 

Back to these - this is an LP special, no drop top, so the thin blank is out, and back goes the afro mahogany blank and I'll use the middle quality one here. It's the light colored one - not surprisingly, these all had their share of metal dust and dirt and a few scratches. 





you can see the wonderful ribboning on the afro blank. One of the humorous things I've heard from guitar buyers in the past is that they "know that honduran mahogany is always better and more resonant". Some of this is because gibson uses it - and at this point, gibson uses it because they have a source in fiji for second growth wood - well, you guys planted it (the English). 

One of the assertions is that "you can tell african mahogany is cheap by the bad color, it's always lighter". 

I sent a few sample pictures to a guy who was giving me that line to trick him, and he guessed wrong. The grain can be pronounced on khaya, but sometimes the only real way to tell them apart is end grain (and khaya is a little more dry feeling if you can get a tool into it, but there's no definites. I'm sure gibson likes honduran - even though I've had poor experience with stability of any of their recent guitars - because it's easy to machine and it splinters less than khaya. 

...so, the cherry table blank is relegated, I guess, to being cut into necks. 




And rift from the end of the board. I could turn the sawing orientation a little bit, but it's not worth the trouble. It may be possible to get two necks out of this blank, but we'll see it's close from the template markout. 

For people who think you can't work entirely by hand, look at the cut quality - this is not slow, it's as fast as I could saw - you get good at hand sawing like this is very little time. My portable TS wouldn't handle this slab, but I wouldn't use it for this, anyway - it's somewhat less accurate than working by hand and I save it for things that I don't really want to work on. 

to "bandsaw" these neck bits out, I'll use a frame saw with a coarse bandsaw blade in it. 










All of this is only about 15 minutes of work. I spent another 15 grinding chisels and then back here - abbreviated lunch and back to regular work.


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## D_W (17 Feb 2022)

(in case anyone is wondering - I might be - why don't I take this to a guitar site where there would be more discussion...

.....well, at one point, I was posting builds on TDPRI. When I did a lot of the stuff by hand, a few members got upset about it because they wanted to suggest I not do it because it would yield poor results. 

I mentioned that I would do a better job avoiding router jigs and the other "accepted" methods, but that I am an outlier as far as hand tools go, but maybe people would like to see that. 

It set off a lot of opinions all the way down to accusations that I was misleading people by suggesting I used hand tools. I guess i read the audience wrong - I thought that some of the folks may like to see an alternative way to do things, but with a warning that if you don't know how to use the hand tools, you shouldn't expect it will look the same. I kind of think this about power tools - I can do limited things with power tools. To do detail work with them and visualize a design and then do it neatly, that's above my pay grade with power tools. 

In short, the woodworking ability on those sites is often narrow and even some people who build wonderful guitars are not very capable woodworkers. If they are making guitars for pay or have built up some kind of personality on the sites as a "go-to" guy, then anything different is a threat. On a big site like that, the customer base can be the site posters as I'd never heard of a couple of the builders before or since.


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## baldkev (17 Feb 2022)

Have you seen that guy over in the u.s that mskes thr guitars with an aluminium frame? It gets tuned to the resonant frequency of the wood he uses ( apparently ) and they have a collosal price tag
I cant remember the name, it was a couple of years ago


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## D_W (17 Feb 2022)

I haven't seen that and am having trouble finding it as it looks like there's a production name "relish" making aluminum frame guitars for about $1499 (but no comments about their tunability/resonance). 

I think there's some room for new innovations in guitar -but bet it's a gamble, even when something is a good idea.


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## baldkev (18 Feb 2022)

I just looked and couldn't see anything. He was a bespoke luthier and made 8 / 9 per year and from memory they were 30k and upwards!


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## Jacob (18 Feb 2022)

guitar with aluminium frame - Google Search


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## D_W (18 Feb 2022)

No bandsaw, so the neck blanks are separated by a frame saw with a segment of cheap bandsaw blade. 











Being kind of cheap with wood here and probably don't have enough thickness ro have a volute. May have been better to take just one blank from this billet. 

Pickups will be a Gibson burstbucker pro set, which has their Lego-like pcb and connectors. Nobody wanted this stuff when I bought these so they were cheaper than just two wired pickups alone. Now, the boards and switches can bring $80.

They're chrome... not my favorite. 






I'll no longer buy Gibson's guitars, but they do make good pickups.


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## D_W (18 Feb 2022)

if anyone is thinking they'd like a bandsaw, but don't want to buy one, this cut is a little bit more difficult than it looks (but ultimately not that difficult once you get used to it. There are a couple of areas where the room for the cut is only a little more than the blade width, and that's on both sides of the billet (about 4-4 1/2" wide). 

Thin bandsaw blades aren't that stable, anyway - you can see how much this one twists when I let go of the saw. The key here is to make this cut 10 strokes at a time or so and look at the back. You can steer a frame saw in the front and back of a cut independent of each other by changing the angle of the saw and twist on it (so you can keep the saw right on the line on the front if you need to and turn the cut in the back to make a correction if that's where it's needed, or the other way around). 

It doesn't take that long to make this cut and the bandsaw blade is just a cheap carbon blade with skip teeth. It cuts faster than a regular handsaw tooth, but needs thicker wood. If and when it dulls (it cuts fast even as it's dulling because of the small number of teeth), you can sharpen the teeth a time or two. 

it takes about 5 minutes to make a cut like this to separate the two neck blanks. things happen relatively slowly (it's not like working by hand will cost much time on this as a project), so you tend not to cut past a line or ruin stock - It's extremely uncommon for me to lose stock due to a wandering cut or some other issue because looking at the project is part of making the cut. 

when I had a larger steel frame bandsaw, if my mind wandered for a few seconds, so did the cut. If something about the wood was not agreeable to the bandsaw, then the cut may wander or balloon in a large resaw anyway and ruin the stock. It happened a minority of the time, but often enough to be annoying.


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## D_W (18 Feb 2022)

random afternoon, thought - I have both black and antique white target WB finishes (they are nice and hard with crosslinker) and may pore fill this guitar and use them. 

On the fence about it. Using them would probably be better in combination with an ebony fingerboard. 

One of these two necks has some end checking (but not open much) that may be better for something like that. Gluing and then filling and covering up the wood. Keeping a white finish guitar undamaged while making may also be beyond my level of conscientiousness.


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## baldkev (18 Feb 2022)

@Jacob It was a high end luthier we were looking for

The frame saw looks interesting. I saw one used in a dovetail video, the guy fired through a set of them at rapid pace!!


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## Jacob (18 Feb 2022)

baldkev said:


> @Jacob It was a high end luthier we were looking for
> 
> .....


Seemed to be a few of them there, not 
Relish Snow Jane Aluminium Frame Electric Guitar
£3,999.00 ?


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## baldkev (18 Feb 2022)

Jacob said:


> Seemed to be a few of them there, not
> Relish Snow Jane Aluminium Frame Electric Guitar
> £3,999.00 ?


Not expensive enough... this was a u.s guy who made a few a year. He picked timber that he wanted to use to cover the frame, he then found the resonant frequency of the wood and made the frame to match the frequency. I am not an expert but i would imagine as soon as the timber is cut ( and the mass changes ) the frequency would change?


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## D_W (18 Feb 2022)

I'm no expert either, but dryness (and probably stiffness), shape and size of the wood all change the note that you get. 

Beyond just what's inherent in the wood (some wood is "dead"). I've had better luck selecting wood with necks and bodies when each is one piece, though and haven't built acoustic instruments (and found and continue to find that the carved top guitars are difficult to figure out with different woods glued together).


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## MorrisWoodman12 (19 Feb 2022)

Slightly off topic but interesting, to me anyway, but how do you determine the resonant frequency of wood? I have an idea to build a marimba and think it may be something to consider especially for the keys. 
Interesting to read this thread: the layman doesn't realise the bits and pieces you have to think through. 
Martin


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## Jacob (19 Feb 2022)

MorrisWoodman12 said:


> Slightly off topic but interesting, to me anyway, but how do you determine the resonant frequency of wood? I have an idea to build a marimba and think it may be something to consider especially for the keys.
> Interesting to read this thread: the layman doesn't realise the bits and pieces you have to think through.
> Martin


"Wood" in general doesn't have a resonant frequency but a particular piece of wood may have. You find out what it is by tapping it and seeing what note is produced, if there is one dominant enough to identify. 
If you remove material it will change the note.
I think you would build a marimba by following a rule-of-thumb guide for size of key for each note and then fine tune each one by removing wood.


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## thetyreman (19 Feb 2022)

@MorrisWoodman12 with a marimba you'll have to fine tune each piece until it's the exact pitch you want, use padauk if you can, it's very resonant.


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## D_W (19 Feb 2022)

A couple of neck blanks and routed the pickup cavity in this mahogany blank. Boy do I hate routers. The result is neat, but I can do it much faster with a drill and gouge and eat a lot less dust.

Fingerboard will be castelo box. If both neck and fingerboard blanks behave, I will make another body and make two, but the other will be cherry, cheap and cheerful. 

I remain unconvinced that a hobbyist couldn't make a lot of fine furniture entirely by hand. It takes about 6 minutes to neatly resaw a fingerboard blank right on the line on both sides.


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## D_W (19 Feb 2022)

Castelo boxwood is what we could only wish hard maple was.


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## thetyreman (19 Feb 2022)

very interesting D_W I don't think I have seen a boxwood fretboard before, it should be very stable too!


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## D_W (19 Feb 2022)

The castelo is - actually, I don't know what it is. It's about an 1800 hardness boxwood look-alike, and it's not always available in big clear pieces. Someone sold it here in the US and I bought an embarrassing amount of it due to a frustration with not finding real box. I've found out since, that's because there really isn't real true box that big - especially not like this. 

Castelo and another box imitation from south america (the name escapes me) are considered second rate to real box (they are), but perhaps the lower hardness makes them more suitable for us as hand workers. I want to make some chess sets in the future, and perhaps make some chisel handles with this stuff because it looks like real box and is "dense enough". 

it's well harder than hard maple but planes and saws much more easily. That's sort of one of the treats of hand woodworking - beech and maple are about the same hardness - but maple is far less receptive to hand work. Castelo is about as hard as hickory, much harder than maple, but works smoothly and easily like a soft ebony. It'll take on sort of a creamy color in short order vs. maple which is kind of dead looking unless it's colored (but some people like that bright unaged look - I don't like it on guitars).


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## Simo (20 Feb 2022)

baldkev said:


> Not expensive enough... this was a u.s guy who made a few a year. He picked timber that he wanted to use to cover the frame, he then found the resonant frequency of the wood and made the frame to match the frequency. I am not an expert but i would imagine as soon as the timber is cut ( and the mass changes ) the frequency would change?



Is it Teuffel you're thinking of? His 'Birdfish' model is made out of alloy with wooden ''tonebars''.


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## D_W (21 Feb 2022)

I made a second body out of cherry, as mentioned here. Just flatsawn 8/4 cherry that's $6 a board foot (cherry is surprisingly musical, but I don't have the experience yet to know what the right note is). That won't make sense to someone else, but you can get a higher pitched note and it's "tight" or too low (limba with low density can make a really low "pong" and not sound like much. 

I had a great grain match after doing all of the cutting and dimensioning of this by hand - dimensioning is always a pleasure. 

And then I realized I'd cut a notch out for the cutaway, and I had the template on the wrong side (which makes it upside down). So, it would've been a great grain match for a lefty. 

I'm not a lefty. I toot my horn in the hand tool side sometimes about how well you can get a joint with hand tools just as a matter of dimensioning (you plane the edges square, the glue joint is non-existent) and I had to put a pencil mark on this one to be able to locate straight to attach the template....

...except this is the wrong side. 













Not as nice on the front side, and I template routed the outside of this ...what a soulless activity, along with the pickup routs. 

The lamination line on the second blank is to the right of the pickups - could be worse. If it's too bad, I'll get artist colors and make this thing brown or something else interesting.


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## D_W (21 Feb 2022)

prelim calculations, without an arch, I think the neck angle will be about 1.5 degrees (rosey paul with the carved top is right around 4 or slightly under - my top was slightly thicker than gibson's average which resulted in a nice low brige). 

These two guitars should be light enough to have strong mids. I still think there's no real improvement in any les paul over the very stripped down lower models other than attention to neck profile, etc, and that the sandwich combination in solid bodies gives up a lot. 

Best commercial guitar I ever played in terms of resonance was a collings 360 all mahogany.


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## baldkev (21 Feb 2022)

Simo said:


> Is it Teuffel you're thinking of? His 'Birdfish' model is made out of alloy with wooden ''tonebars''.



I just looked that up... nope. This was an aluminium frame which was then covered with the chosen wood. The frame itself was designed and 'tuned' to the resonant frequency of the wood being used. I can't remember if the neck was aluminium, ive got a feeling it was.


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## D_W (22 Feb 2022)

heading toward lunch - slow progress (the stuff looks like this to start), but that's the case when work is just 45 minutes or so at lunch and trying to sneak another hour in the evening when the kids are doing homework or practicing piano. 

Can't remember how well the necks were trued, but they were not particularly flat yesterday, so I re-trued them. IT's warm this week and I"m sure it will be cold again soon (so moisture level in the air will change drastically). Wood from this slab years past twisted significantly over only two weeks (and probably less than that), so at the very least, I don't want to put fingerboards on them and throw them into either guitar less than a week from now. 

Neck 2 has some cracking in the peghead (remember, these are cheapie guitars) , but all of it is sound enough to glue - If it needs to be remade, I'll do that, but at the very least, it'll get a strong peghead overlay to help it out. 

In the event these blanks twist with humidity, I guess I'll make two laminated from 8/4 stock with a walnut or maple stripe down the center.






lunch today is just more shaping on the necks and chisel/rout(er plane) the truss rod grooves to depth.


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## D_W (22 Feb 2022)

The belt sander has turned out to be a very valuable dimensioning tool for these necks. It's not particularly good for final sizing (it would be close enough), but for stock removal without having to clamp things, it's great. Peghead thicknessing, bulk removal, etc. 

sizing the necks to final width later is still better done with a spokeshave and floats, though - at least if quality is important.


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## D_W (22 Feb 2022)

small progress from lunch. It'd be just dandy if these two way truss rods had smaller nuts on the ends and didn't require such a big cavity just below the nut. 

These are somewhere around 17/18" long and by the time all is said and done here, this tenon will be cut off near the butt end of the truss rod. Gibson's single iron type is as long or longer, but (threaded) nut goes well past the nut of the guitar, so it doesn't end up as close to the pickup cavity (this one will end up *really* close). 






Next bits neck joint. on both parts, cutting the necks to final width, etc. plenty left.


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## D_W (23 Feb 2022)

question for the knowledgable peanut gallery. Thoughts on inlays for this guitar? None? ebony blocks?

Ebony LP type?

I do have the abalone colored celluloid, too - gaudy. 

And also, this are going to be fairly harsh compared to roseypaul - what do you think about binding the neck? I have a thought on that a little more definite (actually, one of the cheaper gibson guitars I ever had was a les paul special plus - or rather, I had three of them over a several year period). The virtue to them is they didn't seem to have the blocky neck the later fade types had (it was really nice actually, the neck profile) and they had no bling on them except the neck was bound. 

I liked it. 

But the real reason I'd trouble with it is to do a better job on the next carved top LP type rather than ignoring it. 

I think neck binding has no purpose other than hiding the fret ends. Body binding, I get - it protects the body perimeter. It could do that on the neck, but far less bump traffic there. But two reps at making a fingerboard neck size minus binding with precision, so that the binding is even all the way around - that would be valuable (and it doesn't take long to bind the neck). 

I'm leaning away from inlays because there's no great reason to have them. I've always been a fan of small dots at the top of the fingerboard (like low-E side of the neck), but it's not a particularly traditional look.


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## baldkev (23 Feb 2022)

D_W said:


> I'm leaning away from inlays because there's no great reason to have them. I've always been a fan of small dots at the top of the fingerboard (like low-E side of the neck), but it's not a particularly traditional look.



I like that too.... contrasting colour, very swish


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## D_W (23 Feb 2022)

Little done today, at least thus far - both fingerboards have stayed very flat through a couple of temp changes (if I have quartered rosewood that will twist, it does so pretty quickly). So, I thicknessed them to around .25" or just below. 






my overhead lighting is bright white (mostly 6-7k ish LED), so it's not easy to show color. This stuff has a wonderful boxwood color, tthough I've got some thinking to do as it will get filthy if the fingerboard is unfinished, and as unfinished box will do, it will turn gray (interesting that the imitation does the same as the real thing). 

It planes like a dream, though. I suspect it might be a little brittle fretting as it feels a lot like ebony does, just not as hard- as in, there's not much of any grain direction feel. 

I imagined all kinds of lack of straightness on the fingerboard of the roseypaul and in the end when I got the strings on it, they were all in my imagination or maybe some visual anomaly (looking from a bad reference etc). However, the fingerboard width was left a little bit fat (by me) assuming that I would need to install binding and then trim it back. That wasn't as accurate as I'd have liked, so maybe a trimming jig is in order. 

There are two things I despise - a cut that involves a tedious routine and doesn't feel like woodworking, and jigs/shop nesting. What do I mean by that? The point of jigs can end up getting to removing you from the equation and sometimes to the detriment of speed and skill building. It's also a waste of time to build them if you don't like doing it, so my jigs tend to be the most simplistic of things that get close to a fitted size and I'll hand finish everything once it's on the guitar. To that end, the jig is literally a trace of the neck template onto scrap ply (that's been jointed straight by hand) and 1/4" ply strips glued down with CA and activator. this may end up being more of a checking jig than it is a working jig (I realized part of the way through, I'd gotten the direction backwards and made it left handed, but i can plane left handed, and saw left handed for that matter, so it's no big deal). took somewhere around 10-15 minutes to make. The one side is template size (unbound fingerboard) and the other is a uniformly narrower template just under 2mm less wide (the binding very very slightly greater than 1mm). I don't want a bound fingerboard that ends up shy of the neck - but using the same template for everything, I should have about half a hundredth of squish in total. 



The wet spots are activator. 

A few years ago, I gave up on making jigs that were expensive materials (I never use them enough) or held together 14 ways and figured if CA glue doesn't hold, then I'll do a better job. I don't recall anything giving up. If I break this or kick it by accident or drop it, no big deal. 

While doing this stuff, I got an email that fed ex dropped off a package. It's cherry from irion...I kind of keep my eyes open for thicker slabs of wood that have really straight grain. The price is never that great, but the chance that the wood will be stable when sawn in single piece necks or look good on a guitar body is better. The difference in the cost for a guitar from outright junk to something that is more like this (it was advertised as a 10/4 mantle slab) isn't a whole lot - maybe $30? $40? I'll save that money somewhere else.


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## D_W (23 Feb 2022)

slotting fingerboards cutting freehand - separate issue - requires marking, too. I haven't decided order of operations, but there have been times where I'd like the fingerboard (after profiling) to be able to be viewed square, so the one open end of this piece of plywood will be "stripped" with something that's got half the taper that the fingerboard does. That way, if I choose to do all of the sawing last, I can at least mark the fingerboard squarely. I've done that before with shims, but it can be a pain. 

I have no TS that would be usable for this kind of stuff, so considering ways this would feed across a power tool isn't really in question.


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## D_W (24 Feb 2022)

Will take a break from posting about the build for a while until there's more progress made. I marked the fingerboards at lunch today and the necks are ready for finer work. Where things stand no is this cherry is dry (and one peghead already has glued repairs in it out of the billet). I'm struggling to guess what the peghead overlay should be - just that after making the laminated peghead, this wood, cracked or not, isn't nearly as strong. Mahogany wouldn't be either with such a steep peghead angle (gibsons suffer breaks often, of course). 

I will be putting an overlay on no matter what just to give some differing grain. Should it be castelo box like the fingerboard? I think that might be a little funny looking, but can't think of anything else that would go well with the fingerboard as there's no ebony inlays or anything to match. Glitzy ebony or straight grained rosewood would also look funny. 

I'm thinking the box is the most suitable thing even though it might look a little odd.


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## D_W (24 Feb 2022)

(separately, found today - I think - that my dovetail saws all cut a couple of thousandths under .023, which is what fret manufacturers recommend. 

I have a gaggle of saws, but they all seem to be around .020-.021 and then .03 or more. 

I set a gents saw to about .04 with the intention to hammer the set back uniformly above .023 by a couple of thousandths and have it set at about .025" now. i realized my error in measuring before was in using calipers - the blades that measure the inside diameter can push into surrounding wood very easily (like .002 or .003) giving a slightly illusory result. In this case, it didn't hurt anything in in the end, but made fret installation a lot harder than it should've been, which wasn't making sense given the .023 measurement and recommendation. 

Of course, the appropriate test is to take an offcut of the castelo box and test fret wire -the fit is good/snug now, the frets go in relatively easily and they don't come back out very easily. 

...lastly, before taking a break from taking pictures of everything all the way along, the end of the "mantle" and why I will waste money on common woods in pieces that look well sawn. 







wood with good color sawn with that orientation and pith on center (so that the quartered wood doesn't twist even though it's quartered) isn't too often seen at regular stockists here. 

Irion and Horizon are specialty mills that will charge more but offer a lot of stuff that doesn't just come off of a cant that's turned over and over to get maximum flatsawn footage.


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## giantbeat (24 Feb 2022)

Love a good guitar build, this looks fantastic. 

my former business partner was a guitar maker before he got into doing drums with me, I always wanted him to carry on and do it full time when we set up the drum factory, we had more than enough tooling it was fascinating watching him do the odd bit before he packed in, I think I still have all his templates stored away… he left the drum co 5 years ago and is now a driving instructor…. Terrible waste of talent.

I look forwards to more pics & posts.


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## D_W (24 Feb 2022)

giantbeat said:


> Love a good guitar build, this looks fantastic.
> 
> my former business partner was a guitar maker before he got into doing drums with me, I always wanted him to carry on and do it full time when we set up the drum factory, we had more than enough tooling it was fascinating watching him do the odd bit before he packed in, I think I still have all his templates stored away… he left the drum co 5 years ago and is now a driving instructor…. Terrible waste of talent.
> 
> I look forwards to more pics & posts.



I'm not sure what the magic in the US is in terms of getting a solid list of customers. I think there are a lot of excellent builders who then end up working either doing custom work for manufacturers (like the guys making dangelico guitars in the US - they make several brands and there's only a few of them), and then there are a few who can curate a customer list for $20k acoustic guitars. 

Guitars and guitar electronics are a notorious money loser for most people trying it here and a lot of folks bounce out of a stressful job and try and make a go of making guitars or pedals, etc, because they were able to do it as a hobby and sell a little here and there). 

It's a rough thing. The only outlier I can think of is a couple of guys building guitars that really aren't very good but with some celebrity endorsements and "old wood" making claims that the sloppiness and cheap cost of their materials is sort of going against the grain and being unique (Think $4k fender style guitars made sloppily with otherwise normal electronics and stuff in them - something you'd expect to see for a third of that and made better).


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## D_W (1 Mar 2022)

little bits here and there....not as long as I said it would be before I left another update. 

I split the two guitars at this point (it's nice to make the rough parts of two at a time, but it's nicer to do the other stuff one at a time just to be able to see progress). 

I cut the neck tenon and pocket (but need to shim the back of the pocket now - there's about a sheet of paper space at the back of the pocket but it will allow choosing where to apply a thick plane shaving to get the neck as straight as possible) 

Peghead overlay is castelo box, and the jig for the fingerboard worked well. 

I'd cut the fret slots a few thousandths over .023 and realized when I looked at the frets I have (generally modern jumbo and then something like fender medium proportions, the former are .057" tall and .115 wide, and the latter something like .05 and .095) ,the smaller frets have much smaller nibs or whatever on the part of the fret that fits in the slot, and I tested the set put on the saw with the jumbo frets...

....but I cut both fingerboards. bummer. I'm surprised that the dots/arrows/nibs on the fret tangs are so different in size - like a factor of two.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2022)

as clean as the mortise looks, it's cut entirely by hand - mahogany leaves a surface off of a float like it's been spiral head cut (the pickup cavities are just routered). 

I can see why cabinetmakers would get used to it - it just does whatever you ask of it. Strange dark spot on the body is just because I didn't want to sand off the bridge marks - they appear to be well placed to be dead on at 24.75". front and back will get a simple roundover. 

Considering what to use for the bridge. I like the ABR-1 type bridge (or whatever the vintage type is called) but the wood really isn't hard enough for it. I will probably insert a turned dowel of very hard wood like gombeira or persimmon to seat the bridge posts rather than using the heavy metal ones that are stock in gibson now.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2022)

(shim in guitars means something specific for anyone used to dealing with fenders. In this case, I'm going to shim with a plane shaving and glue on both sides - just as a matter of avoiding any thicker glue lines- the whole point of this guitar and the cherry one is to see if getting rid of the very hard neck and top will bring the mid resonance back).


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## the great waldo (1 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> as clean as the mortise looks, it's cut entirely by hand - mahogany leaves a surface off of a float like it's been spiral head cut (the pickup cavities are just routered).
> 
> I can see why cabinetmakers would get used to it - it just does whatever you ask of it. Strange dark spot on the body is just because I didn't want to sand off the bridge marks - they appear to be well placed to be dead on at 24.75". front and back will get a simple roundover.
> 
> Considering what to use for the bridge. I like the ABR-1 type bridge (or whatever the vintage type is called) but the wood really isn't hard enough for it. I will probably insert a turned dowel of very hard wood like gombeira or persimmon to seat the bridge posts rather than using the heavy metal ones that are stock in gibson now.


An abr bridge with 6-32 or 4 mm threads will be fine. Just put a few drops of ultra thin super glue in the hole after thereading the posts and let it fully harden. That'll harden up the mahogany nicely and keep the posts securely in. By the way fret slots shouldn't be too tight. You can always tap the bottom of the fret tang with the edge of a chisel / file (I use a warington hammer that i've ground the sharp end to an invereted v shape)
Cheers
Andrew


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## Setch (1 Mar 2022)

Looking very nice, the cherry and castillo box looks sympathetic if atypical. I think cherry may be one of of my favourite woods. I made a tele style neck using cherry for a MIMF $100 guitar challenge, a it was lovely to work, and aged to a really nice mid tone, with subtle shimmer. The close grain and crispness of maple, with the agreeable workability and warmth of mahogant are a bonus.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2022)

the great waldo said:


> An abr bridge with 6-32 or 4 mm threads will be fine. Just put a few drops of ultra thin super glue in the hole after thereading the posts and let it fully harden. That'll harden up the mahogany nicely and keep the posts securely in. By the way fret slots shouldn't be too tight. You can always tap the bottom of the fret tang with the edge of a chisel / file (I use a warington hammer that i've ground the sharp end to an invereted v shape)
> Cheers
> Andrew



That's a good idea with the tangs - make your own nibs on them. .023 isn't something I want to shoot for, but it's strange how much bigger the tang bumps are on the jumbo frets - to the point that the two frets would seat differently in something like a .025" groove. 

After incorrectly measuring the prior saw kerf and thinking a .02" kerf was .023, I'm erring on the large side, though and will dot the edges of the frets with thin CA to make sure they stay down. 

edit. I just tested both fret types in castelo box and they come out a little easy for my liking, but not on their own. A small dot of CA in three places will ensure they stay put without making them a terror to get out in ...OK, they'll never have to come out as nobody has two guitars and plays two hours a day any longer.


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## D_W (1 Mar 2022)

Setch said:


> Looking very nice, the cherry and castillo box looks sympathetic if atypical. I think cherry may be one of of my favourite woods. I made a tele style neck using cherry for a MIMF $100 guitar challenge, a it was lovely to work, and aged to a really nice mid tone, with subtle shimmer. The close grain and crispness of maple, with the agreeable workability and warmth of mahogant are a bonus.



Definitely an odd look - light colors like a fender, but the wrong light colors. The mahogany body will change color some when it gets finish, and the cherry will darken to this:



The box - we'll see. It won't be bright white like maple, but the outside of the box blanks that I have is a nice sort of straw color. 

I like cherry - when I ask about it in guitars, I don't get a whole lot. I do notice after sawing it, though - it's not the most stable of woods. There are much worse, but it doesn't match the stability of mahogany. It's far nicer to sand and feel than hard maple, though. The two guitars I've made of cherry in the past, and a neck on a third all are good with resonance. One of them has a neck with some twist. these two neck blanks (even though sawn from wood years old) are moving around a small amount with weather changes (not enough to threaten playability, but just enough to see. They should move a little less when finished, though - the guitar that's a few years old with a neck that would move seasonally may not be moving as the last couple of times I looked at it, it's straight.


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## the great waldo (1 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> That's a good idea with the tangs - make your own nibs on them. .023 isn't something I want to shoot for, but it's strange how much bigger the tang bumps are on the jumbo frets - to the point that the two frets would seat differently in something like a .025" groove.
> 
> After incorrectly measuring the prior saw kerf and thinking a .02" kerf was .023, I'm erring on the large side, though and will dot the edges of the frets with thin CA to make sure they stay down.
> 
> edit. I just tested both fret types in castelo box and they come out a little easy for my liking, but not on their own. A small dot of CA in three places will ensure they stay put without making them a terror to get out in ...OK, they'll never have to come out as nobody has two guitars and plays two hours a day any longer.


Putting the cuts into the bottom of the tang forms a wider burr which helps hold the fret and also stops the fret from rocking side to side ass it's supported at the bottom and in the middle.
Cheers
Andrew


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## D_W (2 Mar 2022)

the great waldo said:


> Putting the cuts into the bottom of the tang forms a wider burr which helps hold the fret and also stops the fret from rocking side to side ass it's supported at the bottom and in the middle.
> Cheers
> Andrew



Thanks for the thoughts on that as well as the bridge. as far as the bridge goes, I guess if the posts lean, I could insert something harder in the future. I don't like the idea at this point of putting in a Nashville style bridge (maybe it wouldn't make a difference) on such a light-bodied guitar.


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## the great waldo (2 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> Thanks for the thoughts on that as well as the bridge. as far as the bridge goes, I guess if the posts lean, I could insert something harder in the future. I don't like the idea at this point of putting in a Nashville style bridge (maybe it wouldn't make a difference) on such a light-bodied guitar.


You can run down an extra height adjuster on the post till it's flat on the top (this will stop the threaded rod leaning) and then run another one down for height adjustment.(this is assuming you've got enough height under the bridge to fit 2 adjusters)?
Cheers
Andrew


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## the great waldo (2 Mar 2022)

baldkev said:


> Have you seen that guy over in the u.s that mskes thr guitars with an aluminium frame? It gets tuned to the resonant frequency of the wood he uses ( apparently ) and they have a collosal price tag
> I cant remember the name, it was a couple of years ago


Lots of b/s about in the music industry. Usually the bigger the price tag the more the bull!!
Cheers
Andrew


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## D_W (2 Mar 2022)

I ended up ordering an abr1 bridge and Tailpiece for this guitar, but vintage style with very small travel on the saddles. For whatever reason, I couldn't easily find a slightly more modern bridge depth and aluminum Tailpiece. I guess if it ends up out of intonation range, 

Even though this is a low budget build, the first one with Gibson pickups and mahogany is still going to end up around $550...

...plus case. Expensive hobby given that I could make 6 or 8 in a year with just here and there time.


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## the great waldo (2 Mar 2022)

Gotoh make a good quality lp bridge GE103B - G-GOTOH no saddle rattles. and also an aluminium tailpeice. All the gotoh stuff is properly made (In Japan not China) and is reasonably priced. As you are in the USA philadelphialuthier should be able to supply you with most parts.
Cheers
Andrew


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## D_W (2 Mar 2022)

the great waldo said:


> Gotoh make a good quality lp bridge GE103B - G-GOTOH no saddle rattles. and also an aluminium tailpeice. All the gotoh stuff is properly made (In Japan not China) and is reasonably priced. As you are in the USA philadelphialuthier should be able to supply you with most parts.
> Cheers
> Andrew



That's the guy I generally buy from - in this case, his combo deal has something "made in the US", but I'll buy a gotoh bridge if it's lacking in adjustment range. 

I like the tone pros hardware, but can't justify the price difference on cheap builds like this.


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## the great waldo (2 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> That's the guy I generally buy from - in this case, his combo deal has something "made in the US", but I'll buy a gotoh bridge if it's lacking in adjustment range.
> 
> I like the tone pros hardware, but can't justify the price difference on cheap builds like this.


Most of the tone pros stuff is rebadged gotoh parts, the bridge is a Gotoh bridge with a couple of grub/allen screws threaded to fix the bridge onto the posts, an easy conversion for someone with your obvious talents. By the way the mylespaul forum Luthier section might be a useful source of info for you.
Cheerts
Andrew


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## D_W (2 Mar 2022)

That's what I'd assumed and why I wasn't ponying up the extra cash for the TP stuff - it doesn't look any better than gotoh. 

I'm a little puzzled re: what phila-luthier is using that is made in the USA, vintage spec (not as wide as the gotoh bridges) and that has brass saddles and no wire. I wonder if it's somehow connected to whoever does the castings for gibson. 

I'm not sold on the super high dollar hardware and tuners, but much of that is overweight gear that I'm not looking to use, anyway (like the giant heavy strat and tele bridges, etc, and some has big etchings of the hardware brand on it which is ....not attractive).


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## the great waldo (2 Mar 2022)

The American made bridges from WD use the Gibson bridges with the writing ground of before plating (you can just see the shadow of the writing if held against a bright light) I'll assume that Philly Luthier use the same manufacturer. The Faber bridges from Germany are quite good.
Cheers
Andrew


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## D_W (3 Mar 2022)

If that's what the bridge is, I'll report on it. The good thing about the whole set was that it's about $80 with tax and shipping. 

I think the rods are brass, though (not thrilled about that, and if that's historically accurate, I'm not really going for historical anything - would love spring steel posts and carbon steel saddles - but the cheap thing). 

I've browsed faber stuff before, but never bought any (due to the price). I sold a bunch of guitars years ago and ran into a guy who was a tire kicker, but then messaged me relentlessly with guitar questions - I guess for no reason other than that I made the mistake of answering questions about wood. At any rate, he must've told me about 750 times that he'd never replace a bridge with anything but faber. Had a fascination with believing that gibson used better wood than anyone else, too - strange guy.


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## the great waldo (3 Mar 2022)

D_W said:


> If that's what the bridge is, I'll report on it. The good thing about the whole set was that it's about $80 with tax and shipping.
> 
> I think the rods are brass, though (not thrilled about that, and if that's historically accurate, I'm not really going for historical anything - would love spring steel posts and carbon steel saddles - but the cheap thing).
> 
> I've browsed faber stuff before, but never bought any (due to the price). I sold a bunch of guitars years ago and ran into a guy who was a tire kicker, but then messaged me relentlessly with guitar questions - I guess for no reason other than that I made the mistake of answering questions about wood. At any rate, he must've told me about 750 times that he'd never replace a bridge with anything but faber. Had a fascination with believing that gibson used better wood than anyone else, too - strange guy.


I'm sure you could find some engineering bolts with the correct thread and cut them down to size, they would be a very good quality steel. You could maybe use stainless steel which of the right grade is much harder than brass and won't rust. Gibson wood over the years has been all over the place. I was at the Frankfurt music fair a few years ago and overheard a funny conversation with some Gibson guys trying buy ebony from an Indian supplier. They kept trying to pay the guy for the wood with les paul guitars and the Indian chap kept explaining that he needs money to feed his family and run his buisness not electric guitars. The Gibson guys seemed so indoctrinated with the company that they didn't seem to understand what the chap was trying to explain!!
Cheers
Andrew


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## D_W (3 Mar 2022)

Much cleaner and easier fretwork with the right sized slots.

I have the morning off this morning due to an electrician here working on the end of the house where my fiber modem is. 





This picture finally shows the color of the box properly. It's wonderful


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## D_W (3 Mar 2022)

guitar one has throw me a curveball at this point. I intended to try to do all of the steps accurately and just throw things together. Somewhere in the triangulation of things, the bridge is about 1/16th off center (or the markings), which is due to the neck being out of line with the original centerline. The neck is glued in, so too late. Pickup cavities are already drilled there are one or two other small things to fix. 

Nothing terminal, but a good lesson in not locating the bridge until the neck is in place. The amount of discombobulation is within the limits of the pickup covers so none should be visible in the final guitar, but it's a little disappointing. 

Guitar weight without hardware is 5 pounds 5 oz. I think that means this guitar will end up somewhere around 7 1/2 pounds and it should be looser sounding and not so tight in the mids and bottom end. 

i think I'm going to remake the second fingerboard and come up with a setup to cut the frets square with a center mark and then taper the fingerboard second and profile the radius last. 

So more problems that I didn't have with the first guitar among other things done better. The frets were a breeze. They are almost level just as installed, which is what I suppose someone should expect. 

I did end up using a medium fretwire instead of a jumbo - I figured that this fingerboard was shaping up better and the amount of leveling that I had to do on the super jumbo frets wouldn't be needed, and super jumbo frets at full height are pretty drastic.


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## D_W (3 Mar 2022)

Or in short, this guitar is turning into a bit of a cowpat and some parts are like the first one where I'm doing correcting that I don't really want to do. I'd like to build and not chase adjustments from mistakes.

When I cut the neck tenon joint on the second of these two, I'm going to use a piece of wire and a pin to check exactly where the fingerboard edges and center will go.


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## D_W (4 Mar 2022)

the great waldo said:


> I'm sure you could find some engineering bolts with the correct thread and cut them down to size, they would be a very good quality steel. You could maybe use stainless steel which of the right grade is much harder than brass and won't rust. Gibson wood over the years has been all over the place. I was at the Frankfurt music fair a few years ago and overheard a funny conversation with some Gibson guys trying buy ebony from an Indian supplier. They kept trying to pay the guy for the wood with les paul guitars and the Indian chap kept explaining that he needs money to feed his family and run his buisness not electric guitars. The Gibson guys seemed so indoctrinated with the company that they didn't seem to understand what the chap was trying to explain!!
> Cheers
> Andrew



gibson and their wood supply over the years is an interesting topic. In the late 70s, they started to laminate mahogany necks (which probably makes for a better neck, even in mahogany - as I look across everything I've bought, I can't recall any laminated necks that have had a significant issue, but body hump and dips and S shaped stuff on the surface of decades old mahogany neck guitars aplenty - I have one right now that needs to be fixed and then refretted just to be sold (I'll have to plane it) - a yamaha SG700 - too bad, it's a good guitar otherwise. 

But as far as the mahogany goes, I don't follow too much of what went on in the early days as they were still willing to try things (with korina, etc, but gibson calls korina difficult to handle and work - I'm sure just because you can't throw it in jigs and carelessly cut and shape and edge treat it with no problem like you can mahogany). 


I had a 76 les paul that was pancake, but it was only 10 pounds even and I have to admit, it was pretty nice (laminated maple, of course - neck had no relief but was perfectly straight and stable - if I'd have kept it, I'd have shaped just a bit of relief into the fingerboard. It was fine plugged in. And then after that, a 90s guitar with neck stability that didn't even survive retail (sold to me as an unknowing teenager and gibson wouldn't have anything to do with it when I went to a guitar tech that wasn't at the dealer that sold it a couple of years later). 

And then the weight relief variations make it harder to tell what the wood is until around ...something like 2006? when gibson set up an agreement to get their wood from fiji. The second growth wood has nice characteristics and looks nice (usually not super dense, though they've made some boat anchors in the lower cost lines in the last half dozen years - the ones made as store specials like the "les paul player plus" or some other such thing made for guitar center - some of those were 12 pounds). But, they're still missing stability - I like to think I've only had 8 gibsons - but I just counted - 13 of them.

3 of those had so much wood movement that they had dead areas on the fingerboard, who had enough movement that the lacquer checked end to end before they were 10 years old (I'm sure that's two factors - the lacquer not having enough plasticizer and the wood moving too much - looks great on an old guitar, but hindrance if trying to dump a newer guitar). Another two guitars needed to have the frets leveled to reasonably sell them. So five had playability issues, 2 of the 3 that were dead needed significant fret leveling, and the third was unfixable (I sold it as salvage - which just because it's gibson wasn't lovely, but yielded a surprising return (still was 60-70% of "good" used guitar cost - the guy who bought it said he just liked the way it looked and he wouldn't play past the 8th fret where it was dead as a doornail). 

Everything has some level of needing periodic work - tokai's regular line stuff seems about the same. The older yamaha guitars that were gibson copies and actually mahogany, same, but the ones with mahogany body and maple neck - haven't had anything with an issue. 

The other thing that's irked me with gibson is their desire in some cases to save $3 on a $2800 guitar. Like getting rid of indian rosewood for a while on a les paul standard and using a lighter colored central american rosewood, as well as a reddish granadillo that looks like bubinga on some of the slightly lower cost models. And things like making the "slash" les paul (I'm not the customer for that, anyway) and putting in their own pickups to not buy an (at the time) retail pair of duncan alnico II pros for $160, which was probably wholesale to gibson at $100. And then trying to turn around claiming their own pickups should retail at $180 each. 

Could be worse, but if they were satisfied to make good guitars only and just live with whatever size the market would be, they could be a whole lot more like fender, who manages to make a very good US guitar in 7 hours of labor, and a very good mex guitar in about the same for 1/2 to 2/3ds the cost. 

I think the wood stability issues in the last 15 years are due to second growth wood of a uniform source and unwillingness to develop a specialty drying process or hold the wood for a couple of years before using it. And the trouble extends to the fingerboard wood (the instability).


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## D_W (5 Mar 2022)

finish about half thickness with buttonlac.


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## D_W (7 Mar 2022)

now, with dots...interestingly, the rosewood ends up showing up nearly black. I have 1/8th plastic dowels made for making custom dots (vs. getting the little dots). I should've used them - but I didn't - I feel like what I'm making is too nice for plastic, but let's be honest - it really isn't and I wouldn't care later. 

I made the little dowels with an LN dowel plate - I won't say it works great, but it works well enough. One of every two or three dowels has a usable section and then cutting them and flushing them. Flushing is done with an incannel gouge so that I don't have to saw them too closely. For me, at least, it's a bad place to take risks. Why the incannel patternmaker gouge? it's rosewood, and the gouge can slice - patternmaker gouges are just magic on end grain compared to straight chisels. a pocket knife with a steep bevel on one side is good, too. 

When I'm actually making things, i'm reminded of how few "premium" tools I use on a regular basis. This is part of the reason for my sour attitude in the open forum and why I post there less now. 

The workmanship isn't collings quality here, let's be honest - but I pulled out my carved top guitar and looked at the neck binding and fingerboard, etc, compared to that guitar and it's nutty how much better you get on item #2 of the same type. 

if there's anything I could ever impress upon a beginner (though I'll be one my entire life - that's just the way it is), it's to be willing to make a bunch of something and really fine results bewteen iterations. There's still more to improve on this one - notice that the very last fret slot isn't straight - not sure on that one, but it's like that - fortunately off kilter on the low side - I'll never play those notes. unsightly as my belly, though. 

I can solve that by making a miter box, but I do so love to do all of that work freehand. I think the fix will be just to cut the frets while the fingerboard isn't yet tapered in width (i.e., while it's square). I know now that I can plane the fingerboard freely with slots in it already and not worry about chipout on this very dry feeling box). 

Frets are already given the first level and halfway polished. Once the nut is installed and a few more FP coats are added, I will give them one more going-over - I found in the past that if I level the frets very heavily on the first go, through and fall asleep for a second, the first fret ends up a little low - I didn't do it in this case, but so far, I've had "good" fretting after one leveling and super fretting if leveling roughly crowning the frets and then doing a lighter level. 

somehow, this guitar got slight hump at the higher frets so they got filed (fall away) pretty heavily. Not to jinx myself, but since this guitar is getting gibson pre-wired crapola, the wiring should be pretty quick. The way I drilled the passages, the switch will need to be re-soldered, but that's about 5 minutes of work (the connector is way too fat to fit through the passages)


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## D_W (7 Mar 2022)

when I look at the fingerboard in pictures, it looks like poplar. It'll get a little bit of buttonlac and get a color closer to the peghead overlay to mitigate that...

...fortunately.


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## D_W (10 Mar 2022)

This guitar is in the throes of getting a little bit of french polish each day - which is a weird thing. Shellac gives you easy finishing. It has a property where a little bit of work with french polish loosens the shellac on the surface and it can be moved. But there is a point where it becomes a little soft, and you have to take what it gives you and then stop. 

I usually am good at that. 

the other day, I did something to mess up finish in the middle below the bridge and ruined the bargain, and then attempted to make up for it by flooding the repair area with shellac, which was fine, but that area dried a bit thicker than the rest of the area around it. Attempts to level it created a small near bare spot at the border and the nonsense continue (I will have to brush shellac in the dead spots and then continue on). 
Why did I do that? i don't know - lack of care and then trying to work around the "easy gift" that french polishing gives - a reasonably vintage looking finish that is near gloss - no spraying, etc. 

it should all be fixed by this weekend, then hardware goes in and start on the all cherry guitar next week - a little at a time. 

I made a big leap this past week. Of all of the store-bought guitars that I have, none is close to the quality and workmanship of the collings. I sold my last gibson guitar in january, and this past week, I listed the last collings that I have (I guess based on the fact that I can't see a great reason to copy their pattern above and beyond any other pattern - the magic is in their work, not necessarily the pattern). 

Having fought the gibsons and others at sale time to correct the problems of wood movement over time or poor quality at the outset, I've never needed to do more to a collings guitar than polish the frets and make sure none of the pots or switches have gotten scratchy. Every one of the 8 - used - is straighter than any guitar I've ever gotten from anyone else. 

That said, i listed the guitar and it sold online in about 10 minutes. And that was that. It's definitely a good time to sell off excess guitars. It may not always be. Some of the guitars I ate s. on in the past unloading are up 50% now in just a matter of two years or so.


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## D_W (10 Mar 2022)

...oops wrong thread


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## D_W (13 Mar 2022)

fitting out the hardware now - lots of stuff loose. The only thing not yet made is the truss rod cover (Which will probably also just be boxwood) and the knobs which I think I'll also turn out of boxwood. very 70s color scheme. 







pickup rings need to be trimmed to the right angle (the neck angle is very slight), and the switch (this is switch, pickups and pots off of a les paul of some sort - probably an LPJ or some robot guitar or something as they're PCB based).

Somewhere along the way here, I got something off a half degree with the neck angle, so the bridge will be *almost* bottomed out once the saddles are slotted.

I didn't bother to sleeve the tailpiece posts, everything just goes right into the wood. Should be about 7 pounds 4 oz when done.


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## D_W (14 Mar 2022)

I mentioned losing the half degree here on the neck angle after planning for it already to be a low bridge. Well, it's just on the edge of biting me. The bridge that is unmarked is as far as I can tell, kluson (it looks identical after looking closer to last night, to the one that gibson uses). 

So, I already have the bridge at the limit to get reasonable action and wanted to cut the saddles just a smidge deep to give a turn of room for them without sinking the bridge into the body a tenth of an inch or so. 

However, the bridge design for kluson has the screws way up into the saddle profile (well above the bridge itself) When the saddles are back to intonate, the screws lean a little bit popping up even further - even a groove equal to string height only puts the strings very very close to the screws. I looked at gotoh's bridge, not the same thing (the screws are smaller and below the height of the bridge). 

I found this out in the kluson bridge by filing a groove just over string height and the string is already laying on the bridge screw. That just sucks. 

I have some spare kluson saddles for a dippy reason (some guy just sent them to me when I bought tuners - I guess he just figured he'd dump all of his extra parts in with the tuners after getting bridge saddles and tuners replaced) , so I'll fix the kluson bridge and go with gotoh from now on. I don't really see the point of having the screws sticking up so high above the bridge aside for being cheap (the kluson design allows the top of the bridge to be notched instead of having to drill holes through the bridge. )

Good lesson to be more careful about neck angle in the next guitar when pushing the limits to the same extent. 

the kluson bridge itself is also taller than the gotoh (I don't keep spare bridges so I don't have others laying around to check). this build will be OK with the gotoh bridge but it's pushing the limits of taste when all is said and done and the guitar is neater all around than the first guitar but still more things to improve on. finishing the slots and playing it is on hold now until a bridge is delivered, though. Bummer.


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## D_W (14 Mar 2022)

lunch provided an opportunity today to swap saddles in the bridge as it is (for the one I filed low) and still not impressed - any saddle that's seated, the string tension from the stop bar pulls the saddle toward it slightly and lifts the screw a little bit.

The nut that I used is bone. It slotted a little to easy for my taste (it's not that hard, which probably has some effect on acoustic tone.

The guitar has a nice even sound. It's not a resonant boneshaker, but it's not weak anywhere (not as bright and more mid focused than guitar #1).

shellac on the fingerboard and neck will be nicer to play with the gloss knocked off of it. With the bridge bottomed out, the action is just where I would put it on purpose and all of the notes are clear despite no follow up truing of the frets (just leveling after installation and partial polishing just to test them).


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## D_W (17 Mar 2022)

short detour now that guitar 2 is done and guitar 3 is already halfway done in parts.

I need to start unloading stuff and the reality with older guitars is that if you're honest, you have to fix things to list them for the condition they were advertised to be in when you bought them.

This guitar (SG700) was not expensive - $600 from japan (shipping and tariff made it more like $900 total, though). It's a guitar I'd like to copy (I have the up trim neck through version of this also). I bought it from ishibashi, who I have about 50/50 success with in getting a guitar in honest condition. The neck on this one is totally wonked, and the frets are half height. There's body hump (which is sort of always on old les paul pattern guitars that don't have laminated maple necks) and when the truss rod is set neutral on this guitar, there is a hump on the low 3 strings and a huge dip on the neck in the high 3 - there's no choice but to plane the neck and refret it (other order).

Just to sell it.

I think I can do it in about 3 hours total labor (building 10 guitars has made me a fast repair person). I planed the neck with a fresh new old stock atkins super shear (I'm sure nicholson made it) and then sanded the radius to make sure it was still in spec with the radius.

Jescal 47104 will be the frets for it (the modern jumbo frets are too tall).






markings basically show the truth - the low side is C shaped between the neck hump and the nut and going around the material being removed by the super shear on the low side. 

On something like this, I'm not a fan of removing all of the material across the entire neck to get it perfect if getting it 80% good removes half as much. It probably won't move again given its age (40 years old or a little more) , but what's left (I did a lot more after this of course) is just a couple of thousandths here and there. 

The super shear allows dealing with this with the nut on, but it didn't fight coming off ( nobody glued it) so I removed it. I don't remember the status of the nut work, but it may have been too low after the refret, anyway, despite the moderate high frets. 

Closing these build threads off for now - you can't really see 8 guitar builds over a year and not start to think they all look the same. I'll post guitars as I finish them in the "what I did today" or whatever the thread is called where finished work is shown. 

parting thought with the SG series of guitars like this - it's a guitar that sells cheap. The neck and body are true older mahogany and the top is maple. The pickups sound like pafs or close and the electronics all still work, and the workmanship is very high quality. This is a guitar that kind of got lost in the shuffle and the neck throughs were nosebleed price at the top end, but the street price in japan in the late 1970s would've been about $350 equivalent US. And it's at least as good as a les paul and sounds just like one - despite the name, it's basically a better than gibson les paul DC and not as ugly as gibson's DC. It doesn't at all feel or sound like an SG (one wouldn't expect it to given the weight bulk and construction almost identical to les pauls).


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## D_W (18 Mar 2022)

I finished refretting this guitar today at lunch. In total both days to plane the neck, install the frets (only one wobbly and rather than to fix it, I just remade it). 

I'm less inclined to sell this guitar quickly now . The stability of the mahogany neck (which usually presents needs for significant work in a one piece mahogany electric guitar over what's probably 45 years in the case of this one) gave me a bit of a distaste for the guitar, but for what it cost to fix ($10 in frets and figure $5 of consumables all told), Now I suddenly like it. 

The pickups are high quality and it looks like the pickups and the case by themselves would sell for near the street price of the entire guitar in japan. 

It is pancake, though after staying away from pancakes because the internet said to, I'm more in favor of them than multi piece bodies with poor matching. The pancakes are well matched and the boards are dead quartered, straight and ribboned. The neck was the only real issue and now that's fixed thanks to some poor man's skill. 

The frets are good enough to go and if needed to be made more perfect for the picky with a specific end treatment, there wouldn't be much to do. 

Here's my regimen, the end part with the fingerboard is probably important:
* flatten the frets with a file glued to a board (figure about the size of a mailing envelope)
* file (with an older regular fret file, not a diamond fret file) crown into the frets - the older files can leave some chatter in heavy cuts, but they're fast and the file that I use is cheap. 
* coarse sandflex block on the frets, but a bunch at a time, gradually moving the sandflex around
* 400 grit paper on the sandflex 
* then a little automotive touch up handled thing with hook and loop - 1000, 5000, 10000. The amount of time spent after crowning to have the frets functionally polished is about 10 minutes. No taping off
* then when done, linseed oil (on rosewood) and p-1000 broken in used laterally all the way up to the frets to remove any small marks and cake the pores a little (I know this isn't typical)
* then one more shuffle with the padded disc across the tops of the frets in case the sanding left a stay bit here or there, and wipe off any excess oil or black stuff. 

Out of pure luck, the nut was probably never filed lower on this guitar when the frets were redone. The neck was too far out of straight to ever notice. Now with frets installed, the nut height is ...like collings. 

This guitar is made with more care and feels better than the early 2000s standard that I had as my first les paul, and it's a little better than the HLS tokai. Bonkers that the market things a 70s les paul is $3500 now and this guitar is $600 in japan. It's a better guitar. 




it's 9 lbs 5 oz, uncanny les paul sound, too - as in, not obscenely heavy, but very robust. The neck profile is divine, but I find that to be the case for most japanese stuff that doesn't have an outright flat (stylish at the time) thin neck.


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## D_W (19 Mar 2022)

i'm starting to suspect the kluson stuff isn't "made in usa" based on klusons wording. I think it's mostly made overseas. 

Looking up where kluson tuners are made - the "company" is WD in florida, bringing in tuners from korea (vs. what used to be made in the USA). 

When they talk about their line of hardware, they call it Kluson USA (R), which means that the name is a registered trademark. Grobet taught us a lesson about this by retailing Grobet Swiss and Grobet USA. Grobet USA products are generally made in india. 

Kluson's page talks about the bridges being "US Made". but they never use the phrase "Made in USA or Made in the United States" which have a legal definition here. 

I'm fumbling around looking for saddles for their bridges - the bridge saddles and screws cost more than the bridge itself does (with them included). Annoyed only because I want to raise the saddles from where I filed them due to their propensity to tip and sitar the strings. 
I guess I"ll just buy a whole other bridge and throw out the one I have (not the end of the world), but I have to admit I'm also annoyed that they use the name Kluson USA as a registered trademark when they could say "Made in USA kluson hardware", but they would have to meet a legal standard. You can say "US made" for stuff you take out of a box and wipe with a rag. 

I just looked at the tuners - they state lots of bits about being distributed by WD in florida, and then at the very end in mice type "made in korea". That's fine, I figured all of the tuners were made in korea other than waverly and their days are probably numbered. Schallers may be made in germany, too, who knows. 

I wish I'd have kept the top cardboard fold from the bridge packaging (but I didn't). 

I'm also annoyed by the Kluson bridge as someone sent me tuners from a USA gibson bridge, but for some reason they included all kinds of rubbish (including saddles). The screws that gibson used on a black custom from an ABR-1 bridge aren't the same as those on the "US made" kluson bridge and the saddles don't quite fit right. I'll bet the gibson bridge and the blank bridges aren't made in the same place, but wary also that gibson doesn't use all US parts in their guitars, either - I don't think the bobbins and parts in their pickups are made in the US - the pickups are, but the parts are foreign. 

Where does this land in materiality? The bridge can be distributed by WD and retailed for $27 or something, and if it were truly made in the US, it would be more. If you get kluson tuners (the set I just put on the LP project are iffy - typical - 5 have even tension and the 6th (the G of all strings) is loose) for $40 per set but they'd be $85 made in the US, nobody would buy them. 

The gotoh stuff made in japan may be made in japan (the average wage is a lot lower there than the US, especially in manufacturing), but japan has low standards for origin labeling so I kind of doubt it's actually made in japan. If you ever get seiko watches, they're all labeled made in japan above a fairly low price point, but only the stuff made in house is actually fully made in japan (grand seiko, etc). The price difference is a factor of 10 or more.


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## D_W (19 Mar 2022)

well, luckily I'm at least wrong about the bridge - I found a stock listing of a new bridge showing the whole packaging and top left, it says "made in USA", which does have an allowance for partially foreign made, but it's as good as you'll get in the USA where we don't really make anything end to end in all parts any longer.


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## D_W (22 Mar 2022)

well, I ordered another kluson bridge after fighting this one and received three gotohs in the mail. Two are hybrid ABR1 posts with nashville bridge. I kind of like this. The other is an ABR-1 sized bridge. 

They are the same width as kluson and I don't know if there's any tonal compromise, but the gotoh bridge has saddles that sit lower, the screw is entirely retained in the bridge and can't tip up and out, and the saddles adjust very smoothly. 

That'll be my last kluson bridge - and for now, I'll neglect to read what people don't like about the gotoh as I like it, the guitar sounds great and with BB pros has so much brightness (along with plenty of bass) that on my go to quick amp (marshall lead 12), the tone needs to be rolled back a little. I like this flexibility rather than having a guitar that's dark and you can't get enough tone on the neck pickup. 

I'm sure there are people who don't like the gotoh bridge, though - there's someone who doesn't like everything, and with bridges into the hundreds, you can find likes and dislikes for everything. I'm getting older and when I get something that I like, I appreciate not going to the internet to read reviews and find out why I shouldn't. 

I like the 80s better solid state circuits, too - for whatever reason, they respond differently to increases in master volume vs. gain (sort of like a tube amp - not quite as warm, but interestingly similar) and the gain level responds a lot to the volume knob (like a real tube amp). 

This guitar is definitely more resonant and fuller than the hard maple neck and rosewood topped LP that is a bit stiff and hard for an LP despite not being that heavy. I'll give that guitar more bottom and mids and less top end by replacing the antiquity pickups with something potted, and it'll be fine. 

But I do like the LP special pattern body resonance and sound profile better than the "Real les pauls". The special just has the potential to be stronger sounding when unplugged and it's easier to find the tonal profile when the body is just a body and not a bottom and top sandwich. 

the end!

I forgot about something earlier this year - both of my kids are on sports teams. My hobbies in general are just about to die for a 2 1/2 month period as there are literally 60 practices and games for the two kids between then and now. Time management will dictate mostly just work and hauling kids around. But the wood and parts will age just fine until then.


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