Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi All,
I'm new to the forum here - I started designing my first build 7 months ago and am getting much closer to finishing it - I have been playing guitar for over 34 years and am actually a guitar teacher. I wasn't sure to post this on here, mainly because you all would probably figure I'm out of my mind for doing what I'm doing for my very first guitar build, but when I started this thing, I was also trying to learn how to do inlay, and I decided to go insane with inlay on my first build. I agree, it hasn't been the best decision of my life, but at the same time, each step of the process has been about as stressful as bungee jumping off of a cliff with a rubber band. (I kinda like stuff like that!)

Anyways, I will try to start posting pics and info on here as much as I can. I know some of you are wondering why it is taking so long and to be quite honest, I really didn't have an expected "birth date" when I started this, but I knew it would be allot of intensive work - mainly because I have never done this before. I get in several hours a day on this guitar and most of the time has been on aquiring materials, cutting, cutting cutting, redesigning and more cutting.

So without further blah blahs, here we go:

This was one of my final designs of the guitar I did in photoshop - I designed the entire guitar in Illustrator, so I was able to experiment with different designs. I actually purchased a blank neck on ebay - the body is Sapele and had a low grade flamed maple top that I didn't like:

and ended up redesigning it and put an ebony cap over the flamed maple - my friend Tony just did that this past week, since he had access to a really nice sanding machine. One of the first things I did was put the dragon tails into the rosewood fretboard - here I am gluing the pieces together:


Here are the 2 dragon tails (All 261 pieces of Faux Turquoise, Green Abalone & Gold MOP) glued to the fretboard:


After it's glued, time to trace with a razor and then rout:


All routed:


Then glued in:


Done:


Next step was to work on my headstock prototype - I did a test run on a piece of walnut:


Then I had to sand down the headstock on the blank - it was too thick for the gotoh tuners:
- yes, it's duct tape - and it held the neck just fine.

Next, I had to fit the neck to the body - nice work eh?
- this was based on a suggestion from a friend - I was having a problem making them flush, so he suggested joining the 2 together and using a hack saw to cut in between them - that was the result - this was actually all fixed with a dremel - do you guys hate me yet? LOL

Sanding the headstock:


Headstock done?:
this is a flamed maple veneer at this point of the build, but I ended up doing more a month later....

Putting in the trussrod:


Cooking the upper dragon wings webbing:


Cooked - this is a technique I used for shading the upper dragon wings:


I know these pics jump back and forth a bit, but it's just how things worked out!
Here is the poplar crescent and bondo for the trussrod:


Side dots for fretboard:


Shaping the body contour:


Upper Dragon Face/Working in Illustrator: after I draw things in Illustrator, I print out, then cut out the numbered pieces for my inlays, then glue them to the appropriate pieces:

A: Nostril - Black MOP
B&E: Brow - Green Abalone
C & D: Horns - White figured MOP
F&G: Ears - Paua Abalone
H: Inner Ear: Pink MOP
I thru N Ear fins: I Kewazinga P: Camatillo O: Koa N: Snakewood
L& M: Chin spikes - Paua Abalone
J: Face - Padauk
K: Mouth - Rosewood

Cleaning up edges:


Initial look after all cut:


I literally have tons of pics of this build - not sure how many pics I could post on here or if anyone is interested in what else I have done - I can try to bring this post up to date with quite a few more pics if anyone is interested - looking forward to learning/sharing with you all - thanks, Virgil

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

That's a really impressive undertaking. Thanks for sharing it. Inlay is something I haven't tackled yet. Maybe next guitar.

Mike

_________________
Mike Lindstrom

Wow.....quite the undertaking!
Keep the pix coming!

Thanks Mike,
I did some practice pieces with my inlay before tackling that fretboard - was still learning more "tricks of the trade" when I finished it in January - I am promising myself a much simpler fretboard on the next build!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Skip the bondo next time, OK?
It's cool for cars, but not on guitars.
However - it's great for tools such as clamps, etc.

I must echo the other folks - you set your goals high and are going for it!

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks for stoppin' by Chris!
Absolutely right about the cutting station - I made one of these last year out of cherry wood:

I am cutting the upper dragon's eyebrow in this pic, with an extra-fine jewelers saw. You can see a vent I made on the top and there is a vent on the bottom, with a vacuum hose connected and my wife donated her panty hose, which captures any pieces that get sucked into the vents. I also bought the clamp to put on there that holds my pieces in place:

For the really tiny pieces I have a set of sheet metal vice grips which were cut down to about an inch - which was a suggestion I used from Larry Robinson. Larry also gave me the initiial idea for the jewelers stand, AKA "Bird's Beak", however his is aluminum, and does not have the clamp(My idea).
I do cut most of my small wood pieces with a scroll saw. The dremel is used mainly for "fine tuning" the various pieces and I even made myself a "Micro Routing Table" (Later in the story) that kicks butt! the pieces in the pic definitely look bad, but they did fit after some tweaking - more pics coming that will show the head complete!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Thanks Robbie! More on the way!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Hi Chris!
The bondo came as a suggestion from a friend who has been building guitars for 28 years - I realize that there are different thoughts out there regarding this process, and I am always open to suggestions, so any specific reasons to not use it I would like to hear - it's part of the reason I am posting here, I like hearing different suggestions, ESPECIALLY since I'm a noob - thanks again, V

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

You crazy man!
Looks good!

I appreciate the feedback everyone - I will try plowing through some more info and pics to attempt to get this guitar posting up-to-date!

Here i am selecting the green abalone for the upper dragon's body:


After they are selected, I cut out the corresponding pieces of paper:


I use CA glue to glue the paper to the pieces:


I love green ab!


For those of you who are wondering what I look like when cutting all the Abalone:


Here is the advantage of using pantyhose in the vacuum when cutting shell:


Cutting away: it's important to keep that blade straight!:


Gold MOP ready to be cut:



On the left, you will see the Black MOP used for the upper dragons arms/legs:


After all of the Upper Dragon's body pieces were all cut out, it was then time to glue all of the pieces together. I first do a "Reversed" print out of the dragon, tape it to a flat piece of mahogany, then tape a sheet of wax paper on top of that. The reason for this to be done in reverse, is that you need all of the pieces flush to the top when inlaying it into the wood - ESPECIALLY if you have different thicknesses of materials, which I have in my case - the Gold MOP is 0.060" and the Green Abalone is 0.030" And I KNOW I should have had them the same size in the first place, but the price I paid for the Green AB was WAY cheap, so I bought it. It is crucial to keep the figuring as close as possible with a minimal amount of sanding - the green ab looks TOTALLY different on the other side!... I then start gluing the pieces together with CA glue. This takes time and occasionally I have to re-cut pieces that refuse to fit:



Even though the hand is slightly off on the pic above, it's actually fine, since there are no pieces it is trying to fit with.

Getting close:


Gluing in the last pieces:



One of the spikes was off from the other spikes and required a re-saw:


After everything was glued and dried, I then cut out the wax paper and scraped it off the piece The skeletal wing structure is padauk and the wing webbing is Leopardwood:


More goods coming soon!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Thanks Alan! Trying to get a bunch of pics posted to bring everyone up-to-date - keep checking back! V

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Just too cool. You got guts to do all that inlay on your first build.

As mentioned before, one of the problems I originally faced with the build was my flamed maple top was not exactly "Artist Grade", which had me become hesitant to putting all of this work into some really cool dragon inlays and stick it into a bad wood - also, my original intention was to have the flamed maple get a dark red dye, but I found out down the road that would be nearly impossible for it to not seep into the woods on my dragons - it would have been fine if it were all shell, but it's not. Some may suggest that I dye the wood first and THEN do the inlay, but sometimes when you are doing inly there can be some larger gaps that would have really messed things up.

I then came up with a crazy idea to put an ebony inlay into the body and headstock and leave the flamed maple in there for the binding.... my friend Tony, who was the first person to coax me into building a guitar in the first place has been a woodworker/cabinet maker his whole life took on the challenge of routing out the body for me and I would rout out the headstock. I first foun d a piece of ebony that was almost 2" thick, 4" wide and about 23" long and Tony cut it into sheets for me (This is Gabon Ebony). He was able to get 6 sheets from the board, which gave us plenty of wood to work with. Tony also had a great suggestion to use prehistoric shark teeth for the dragons teeth, which I thought was a great idea and I have them ready for the inlay already, as a matter-of-fact, I'll be using then sand shark teeth for the claws of the dragon. Another idea that I had was to see if I could get snake eyes from a taxidermist that would be 5mm in width, which I did locate. The pic below shows the upper dragon, the lower dragon head laying down on the ebony sheets Tony cut:

You can see the snake eye in the upper dragon - it really looks sick close-up.

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Thanks Jim - everyday that passes I get more freaked out!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Next I embarked on the inlay of ebony in the headstock.... this quite frankly had me a little nervous - I was going to rout out the maple headstock that had a thin piece of flamed maple veneer on it, which I planned to leave a 1/16" "binding around the edges and inlay the 1/8" ebony sheet into.....

Here is the paper template on the ebony sheet:


While that was drying (Spray adhesive) I cut out the lower dragon wings in Wengewood:



You think this looks fragile, I actually ended up sanding it down to 0.060" later down the road! Here it is all cut out:


I did cut out the upper dragon wings with my jewelers saw, but it was very tedious and time consuming (Like a marriage LOL) SO, since necessity is the mother of invention, I thought it would be easier to just cut out the wings on the scroll saw and fine-tune the edges with my "Micro Router Table" I invented - I took my stewmac router base, traced out the base, routed the depth of the base unscrewed the base and screwed the thing in a wood box Tony gave me:


This gave me a really nice flat surface and made things eady for me to rout right up to the lines of my paper templates.

Testing things out:


Here are the edges of the wing that made my new tool handy for:


Scraping off the paper:


WengeWings!


Gluing the paper pieces to the faux turquoise:



This was for the lower dragon's back.

Gold MOP lower dragon arm:


Meanwhile ...... back at the headstock:
Peeling off the paper:


Next, I decided to just paint my new guitar with poster paint! Just kidding.... keep watching:


I then put small dabs of elmers glue on the back side of the Ebony:


Then put a clamp on it - yeah, yeah, I know, "Where is the scrap wood in between the pieces dude" - don't worry about that... this wood is getting sanded WAY down, not only that but the clamp is just snug to hold the wood against wood:


Now I trace the wood to be inlaid into the headstock:


Next, I popped off the piece of Ebony - the poster paint has 2 purposes, 1, being that the piece being inlaid is not being glued to the substrate, it's actually being glued to the poster paint:


And the other reason, is it gives me contrasting trace lines... on dark woods I use yellow and on light woods (Like maple) I use black poster paint:


Impromptu headstock pocket:


This held everything in place and kept the headstock flush:


Initial rout at the tip of headstock:


1st pass with 1/32" ROUTER BIT:


Cleaning out the meat with 1/8" bit:


First pass done:


I took my time and this was everything routed after 3 passes... on the final pass, the stewmac 1/32" bit had too much of a bevel on the shank and would have dug into the top edge of the binding, so I ended up using a dental bur I got from my dentist that endednup being perfect for the job:



I then cleaned both surfaces with acetone and glued with TiteBond:


Glued overnight:


More on it's way!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Next morning I sanded the ebony flush to the maple edge:


Then routed out the trussrod nut cavity:


There were quite a few gaps around the edges - especially down here where I sanded too much:


I then picked out the excess TiteBond:



Close-up of gaps around the edges:


CA & Ebony powder:




After pass 2 of CA & Ebony dust:



It took a total of 4 or 5 passes to clean up all of the holes.... some of the pics shown below are only showing after the 2nd pass. Here I am re-drilling the tuning machine holes:




Checking to see what things look like with tuners:


Meanwhile, off to the cutting of shell... here are the bottom dragon pieces being cut:


Dragon nostril:


All of the pieces cut & bagged:

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Dude. Duuuuude.
You are nuts. On my first guitar, I used DePaule Supply 3-D stars for the position markers. I attempted to inlay them on some scrap walnut to practice. After about 15 tries, I gave up and sent them and the fret board to Dave Nichols. One week later, and I had a perfectly inlayed fret board. I continued to practice inlaying stuff into wood, and on my last two, I did my own inlay on the headstock. Neither were anywhere as complicated as what you are attempting, a logo and three letters. Took all of 15 minutes and I enjoyed it, but this....this is another level. Keep posting those pics. I am really enjoying it.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Some of the elements of this build are taken from my PRS Custom 22 - like the fretboard size, 25" scale, electronics and pups - I am planning on putting in Dragon II gold pups in here - mainly because it's my preferred tone out of most guitars I have played. I did a test on a piece of Bocote to see if I had the scre holes right and I was dead on with the first try:



I have 2 nice pieces of Tamboti I will be making these out of, which should transition nicely from the ebony to tamboti to gold metal.

In the following pic, you will see the lower dragon's face pieces, but I decided to change out the spalted face piece with some dyed wood that I had Jim Huston of Idaho make special for me - Jim sells different dyed burls on Ebay that I thought would look sick on the lower dragon - he also did the dying of the wood for the webbing for the wings. After it gets the finish, it will darken up quite nicely:




The new face:


Lower dragon wings cut out:


Lower dragon face pieces cut out:


Wing webbing in WengeWing (Easy for ME to say!):


I use toothpicks sometimes to hold the wood together when CA gluing:
LOL

Starting to glue the bottom pieces to the reversed drawing:


Soaking MOP in acetone to loosen off paper:


More assembly:


Right around this time, Tony had called me with some BAD news (Ugghh) - Apparently, while routing out the body, the router bit broke and blew out the wood binding for the body.... It was ok, because up to this point, there have been TONS of things that have gone wrong, and I am learning to just adjust, go with the flow and simply concentrate on the solution/other options... we agreed on having him rout the maple flush to the mistake, still put the ebony on and just bout a rounded bevel around the edges.... meanwhile back at my stuff:

The faux turquoise busted while trying to fit it in around the wing tip:


CA glue fixes everything:

What broken piece?


Bottom dragon all glued:


Martian Cocaine:

Just kidding, I needed to check if anyone is actually reading all of this.... anyways, this is some webbing sawdust to use for filling of gaps(A) I also use scrapings of scrap wood(B) to fill up the holes:


Unfortunately, I was not paying attention and I forgot to put wax paper down before using all the CA glue to fix the lower dragon and I super glued it to the wood I was working on (OOOOPS!) So with a very thin metal ruler and some acetone, I was able to pull it off. This pic shows the only wood that decided to stay glued:


Here are the 2 dueling dragons - the first time they met:


Last Thursday, Tony brought the body back to show me how much he had to rout out and I took the opportunity to put everything together before he put on the Ebony cap:


WOW! I am almost caught up with the build pictures on this thread - still have a few more things I have done - will post later!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Hi Tony!
I am definitely not of sound mind & body - That's so cool - I bought my batch of Paua Abalone, Pink MOP and Black MOP from DePaule Supply! I did my first Inly last October when Carvin Guitars made me a spalted maple DC727, and they made a POS trussrod cover for it - that was what got me started on the inlay - I then made a cool trussrod Cover for my Taylor:


That "V" on the pic above convinced me that if I cut that, I can cut just about anything! It actually scared the living daylights out of me, but somehow, my eyes kept guiding me as to which cut would be the next one without busting the piece - I have come to really admire doing inlay in the past few months and think i will do ok inlaying diamonds or circles on the next guitar! - It will certainly take less than 200 hours to do as well! LOL - Thanks again Tony!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

WOW! That is some determination there, dude! Awesome design. I was pretty fed up just after the 21 piece rosette on my current acoustic. Although I did an upper bout inlay, and fingerboard markers, and headstock too... probably over 50 pieces total. But you've got like 300 in the bodies alone, by my estimation! I counted 58 spikes on the abalone dragon.

Love the turquoise. Much underused in guitars, IMO. Also the burn shading, I've been wanting to try that technique for a while, but haven't gotten a chance yet.

I hope you've got some good dust control! That much shell could cause some major lung damage. I always cut wet, although I don't know anyone else who does that, and it is a little annoying having pruny fingers all day.

I feel sorry for your wallet. There should be discounts for people with the guts to pull off such grand designs as this Maybe you can get the job of inlaying the 2 millionth Martin

WOW! Thanks so much Dennis! I had around 260 pieces of inlay on the fretboard and approx 50 pieces per dragon, which brings the total count around 360 or so, not including re-saws, but I really haven't thought about the total of everything until you mentioned it (No lie!) I just keep focusing on all the little jobs I am doing - I have been recently running into some problems as well though, which I will be posting soon. I do have the vacuum for the dust and a friend of mine who worked for OSHA and he said the mask I have been using is good for the job. I then wash everything down with a wet rag. I do appreciate you asking about that because I did quite allot of research before starting this journey, and was a bit nervous about that facet of the trade. I love the turquoise as well. I almost had done the lower dragon wings' skeletal structure arms & legs with it as well, but after doing it in Photoshop first, it looked like overkill, hence me only using it in the back of the body. It looks AWESOME in the Rosewood -I think as money comes in down the road, I would also like to cut wet - I'll have to have you pass along that info to me!

Yeah most people wouldn't want to hear I have over 3k into a 1st build that may not even work, but if worse comes to worse, I'll have the world's most kickarse paperweight. Would love to show the final build to Larry Robinson when I'm done - maybe he'll hand over the 2 millionth to me Thanks again!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

OK, finally on to the more recent stuff!
The other day I sanded the fretboard flush to the neck:



I found out later that the neck was slightly off, so now I have a little too much of a dip in between frets 9 and 14 - not sure what I'm going to do there, but I am on other things (And problems) Oh boy!

Here is my first attempt at hammering in the 24th fret:


I then decided to try starting down at the first fret and use a triangular jeweler's file to get a wider opening on the frets. The fretwire is from stewmac, I did also get a Japanese fret saw and miter box from them that WAS the same size as the fretwire, I DID bend the fretwire first, but the slot was just too small. Any suggestions from people who have experience in hammering in fretwire into INLAY material would be greatly appreciated - although things are looking better as I am going along.

I had to re-glue the upper dragon upside down to a board with wax paper yesterday so I could sand the wings flush to the rest of the shell inlays - I sanded everything down to 0.060" of an inch - without busting anything!



Last night, Tony brought over the body with the new Ebony veneer (approx 3/8" thick) - I HAD to lay the dragons on it to see how things would look:


This pic shows a great side view of the Sapele body, flamed maple veneer and Ebony veneer:


There were slight crack in the ebony when Tony brought it over last night - I ended up filling them with Ebony dust and CA glue:


After the 60 grit sanding block:


After the 220 grit sanding block:


There were still some gaps in there so I had to go around for a second pass:


On my second pass (about an hour ago), this is what it looked like:

When I went and checked on it just about 10 minutes ago, I discovered a totally new HUGE crack:



Tony and I are baffled and not sure what to do - I checked the moisture content of the wood the day he cut it into sheets and it was at 8%. We did notice that the wood had been curling ever since we cut it. We both used acetone on the wood before gluing it with TiteBond, which a luthier had suggested, because of the oils in Ebony.

Anyone have any suggestions??? That would be awesome!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Virgil, glad you posted this! You mentioned elsewhere that you were on your first guitar. I was hoping to find pics or a thread about it. Nice job, and kudos for diving into the deep end on your first!

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Hi Mike!
Yeah man, your thread inspired me to post my goods up here - seemed like it took me hours to post everything, but I'm finally caught up - nice to be amongst fellow builders finally - hopefully I can learn more of the process from others like yourself that have experience in this stuff!

Thanks, V

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Oh, if you have a vacuum, you've already spent a lot more money than me. My wet cutting setup is... a bowl of water. I just dip my fingers in it and touch to the piece to wet everything down. Repeat frequently while cutting, and all the dust drips below the cutting surface and down the saw and on the hand that's holding it. Irritating, but easily washed away. I do some shaping with wet-dry sandpaper and needle files too, occasionally dipping the paper or file in the water bowl to wash the dust away and re-wet it.

Most of the old inlay guys seem to be doing fine with the vac setups though, so I'd say just keep doing what you're doing.

For the fretting, consider pressing them in rather than hammering. And whatever you do, practice on scraps before you go on pounding that beautiful board! Definitely beveling the slots by triangular file is a good thing, to help help slide them in, plus reduce chipout incase of refretting later. I haven't fretted into inlay material yet (only working on my third guitar now), but my pressing method is quite gentle, and I doubt it would crack anything. I use one of the ends of my radius sanding block as a press. Get the tang placed into the slot, set the block on it, and clamp it down with a cam clamp. Then grab the block and pull and push around at it to press all over the fret. Then remove the clamp and radius block, and squeeze at the fret by hand with a small flat block of wood to mash out any remaining small gaps. Can get pretty tiring, but it doesn't take too terribly long, and leaves the frets nice and smooth. If the board is nice and flat before you start, and you don't scratch up the frets while beveling/smoothing the ends, then you don't even need to level them. Be sure to only use the designated end of the radius block though, and not the center of it, since it gets dented up in the process.

As for the ebony cracks... ebony can be pretty grumpy stuff, so that might just be a hopeless piece that likes to crack. Although if it was curling before you glued it, then stickering and letting it sit for a while might have helped, but doesn't necessarily prevent future movement either. I'd just keep filling the cracks and see if it settles within a week or two. Maybe put it in dry and humid areas during that too, to get all the trouble worked out of it before the inlays go in.

Alternatively, you could plane off the ebony and try African blackwood instead. It's quite pricey, but more stable I think, and more resonant as well. But it would be sad to waste that beautiful ebony piece, so hopefully it will get itself settled