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Thanks for the comments and interest, Alan. About the maple, it is plain, but I like it, too. The first guitar I built was built from an old cutting board, and the one I set aside to start this one was being built out of...you guessed it, another old cutting board. The first one turned out to be a really good guitar. It is my main player. But this is the first time I've used what one could consider an actual body blank to build with. If I get it together properly, it'll be the closest thing I've built with "luthiery woods". And the first instrument I'll be able to show the wood on.
Thanks for the compliment on the headstock. I struggled for almost 2 years trying to come up with my own design. What I'm really liking this time is the walnut headplate. I think the tru-oil is gonna make that thing pop!
Again, thanks for looking!

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Mike

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

Hey there! I'm back!
Time to rout the neck mortise. Attach template.....


...and done. I squared the corners with a chisel.



Finally got the 3/16" router bit, so time to rout for the truss rod.



All I basically do is use a 1x4" on either side, making sure the bit is centered on the neck at both ends. Then I make multiple passes until I'm at the depth I need. The 1X4s help keep the router straight.
Finished.

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Mike

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

And here are a few pics of what it will look like attached to the body.







I haven't glued the fretboard to it, or glued it to the rest of the guitar yet. I want to shape the neck first.

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Mike

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

Here's another chunk of that walnut.



I'll work it with the plane until it's relatively flat on both sides.



Then i can clamp it up....



And do a quick and dirty rip with the handsaw. Not looking for precision here. Just trying to hack off a fairly thin chunk of it that I can plane level and thickness for the back control plate.



Like so.



All the time I've got this evening. Hopefully i can continue this tomorrow.

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Mike

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

I'm doing more and more stuff by hand.
Ripping that walnut must have been fun!
Looks like the truss slot came out perfecto.
Keep at it.
I've been doing some testing with tung oil on mahog scraps,
and I like it.
Alan

I thought about tung oil for this one, but from what I understand, it takes a while to dry, and I'm on a time limit. I've only got a little over 3 weeks left to finish this guitar.
I've used tru-oil before(20 years ago) and it was fairly quick drying and simple to use, so that's what I chose.
As for ripping that walnut, "fun" is not the word I'd use to describe that. All I have for a saw is a fine tooth finish saw(the same I used to cut the neck tenon). Both my arms were ready to fall off before I was done with that, lol.
But I do prefer hand work for a lot of the tasks of building. I like feeling the wood in my hands, and it's slow enough that I can avoid some mistakes. That in itself is worth the time and effort, to me.

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Mike

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

Thicknessing with the plane.



Getting there.



And here it is after cutting it roughly to size. 9 & 3/4" X 4 & 1/4", approximately 2/16" thick.



I'll take a flat sanding block and make certain it's dead flat on both sides, and then I'll be done with that.

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Mike

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

Laid out the tuner hole positions on the headstock.



I use an assymetrical headstock. IOW, the tuners don't line up directly across from one another. The bass strings are farther from the nut(and therefore the saddle) than the treble strings are. I know there's a luthier out there that could probably say there's a technical reason why some of them do this. Me, I couldn't tell you anything besides the fact that I like the look, so that's why I use it.
The masking tape serves two functions. One, it lets me lay out the tuner locations where I can see them well, and two, I hope that it will protect the headplate a little, so that when I go to finish sand there won't be as many dents and scratches to sand out.
I use "thing" again to get straight holes. I start with a small diameter bit and go all the way through, then drill with the larger diameter, but only go half way. Then i flip the neck and drill the rest of the way from the back. This helps avoid tearout and chipping around the holes.



After this, I sanded the surface of the neck blank and the back of the fretboard. The little clear plastic piece is the top to a box Seymour Duncan humbuckers come in. It's good and flat, so I use it for a sanding block.



Then I hit it with naphtha to clean it up, and installed the truss rod and glued the fretboard to the neck.



I like my little workmate for this. It lets me get even pressure all along the fretboard/neckblank.

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Mike

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

I'm still here Mike.
I like your sanding block.
Hey, I was thinking,
with the tung oil,
even if you only got a couple of coats on there,
it would look pretty good.
Maybe you should do a thread on all the ways you can use the "thing"!

Thanks for hanging in there, Alan. As to the tung oil, I'm sure that it would look great. But the tru-oil also looks great, and it's something I'm sort of familiar with, lol. As far as "Thing's" uses go, the sky's the limit. Anywhere you need to make certain something is square, straight or level, "Thing" will help you on your way.

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Mike

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

Took the neck out of the clamps today. Unfortunately, there's a problem. The edges of the fretboard did not sit flush to the neck blank in a couple of spots. I can't show a pic. I tried, but my cheap camera won't take a close enough pic to show it clearly.
I know what happened, however. I used the old staple method. IOW, you put a staple into the wood, and then clip off the top of it, leaving two little barbs to grab onto the wood to keep it from moving. The two bad areas are right where the staples are. I did a dry run before glue up and everything looked fine. But apparently either the staples didn't penetrate enough, or more likely, one or more of them bent over instead of penetratring the wood the second time around. Time to remove the fretboard.
Here are the tools I use.



An iron, some aluminum foil to keep the heat from damaging the fretboard, and a puitty knife.
Lay the iron on top and let it do it's thing.



When the glue heats up I'll be able to get the putty knife under the fretboard. Then it's simply a matter of moving the iron on up the fretboard, followed by the putty knife, until the fretboard seperates from the neck blank.
Voila!




And here's the neck blank sanded clean.



I spent the rest of the evening making a radiused caul for my fretboard. The next time I clamp it up will hopefully be the last.

_________________
Mike

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

Kinda feels like Chritmas today.



Wow! Thanks for the package, Alan. There's not a thing in there that I can't use.
I've got enough matching headplates/control covers for at least 3 guitars. Material for at least 8 or 9 nuts. I assume the small white one is bone, and the rest is corian.The corian looks great, and i won't be buying nut material anytime soon. The smaller pieces of wood I can use for all sorts of things.
I especially like the little razor saw, the little plane, and the small file handle will come in handy. And of course, I'll definately be using the fret crowning file. The little wooden caliper is neat, as is the curved scraper.
By the way, the yellow siris is beautiful wood. If I'm not mistaken, there's a full headplate of that as well. If I had that wood laying around, I'd definately build with it. I know I'll be using the headplate on an upcoming build.
Thanks so much. Maybe one day i can return the favor. Much appreciated.

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Mike

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

Glad you like the stuff, Mike.
I figured if I'm gonna send a few corian nuts,
I might as well pack a flat rate box full of tools I have 2 or 3 of.
That yellow siris makes mighty nice fretmarkers, especially when they are oiled.
Have fun, and good luck on yer build.
Good method on f.b. removal!
Alan

Hi Mike,
I thoroughly enjoyed looking at your post this morning - I am building my first guitar right now and I was also diagnosed with diabetes last year, and have rheumatoid arthritis, which does make things more difficult for a build - and I also see we have a common bond for the lack of tools, although, I have been a little more fortunate and some people have given/loaned me some equipment to get me going. I think this boils down to a passion for working with the wood and I like your comment in regards to doing some things by hand makes it a bit more difficult to mess up - seems like we have more time in our heads to say "STOP, don't do THAT anymore!" lol.

Keep up the great work! Looking forward to see what this is gonner look like in the end!

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"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, thanks for the comments and interest, and welcome to the forum! It's good to have you here.
I too have been the recipient of other people's generosity with tools. I posted a pic in this thread about that. I also have a table saw that was given to me. I have used it quite a lot for this build, for making templates, jigs, etc. I'm grateful for friends and family who have helped.

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Mike

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

Finally got the fretboard glued up again. Here's a pic of it in the clamps.



It looks like it's gonna be good this time. I have the fretwire on order. Should be here hopefully by Friday. If not, surely by Monday.
I still have yet to locate the bridge, and locate and rout for pickups and drill for wiring and bridge ground. After the fretwire comes in I'll pound that in and shape the neck. Then it'll be time to join the neck and body.

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Mike

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

That's not going anywhere anytime soon! I love this stuff - it's the reason I bought MORE clamps today!

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

Yeah, i'm finding out more and more that no matter how many clamps I have I could really use more of them.

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Mike

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

Time to rout for pickups. One trick i've learned off of the TDPRI is to use masking tape on the surfaces I'm going to be applying double stick tape to. It really increases the gripping strength of the tape, and I don't have to worry about the template slipping.



Attach the template...



Repeat for the bridge pickup, and here we are.

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Mike

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

Fretwire is here. It was sitting on my porch when I went out this evening to work on this guitar. StewMac's on the ball. I ordered Monday, it shipped Tuesday, and it arrived today.
Time to pull out my homemade fret bender and my fretting hammer.



I know a lot of people like to press their frets in, but I just love hammering frets.



Fretted.

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Mike

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

Now that the frets are in I can start shaping the neck. I like to wait to shape the neck until after fretting because I like all that wood behind the fretboard. The neck blank is also flat, which helps alot.
I use the rasp to get the blank down to thickness.


What I do is leave 2/16" behind the truss rod at the 1st fret, and 3/16" at the heel transition.





My rasp blew a chunk of wood out at the heel, so I glued it back on.



Have to wait and let that set up before I continue.

I was going to use walnut for the control cavity cover, but after I fit it to size I didn't like the fit. So instead I'm going to use a piece of flamed maple a friend of mine gave me.

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Mike

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

Looks good!

Hey Mike,
before you give up on that one,
maybe try getting the gap even all the way around the cutout?
Those are really hard for me to make look perfect.
BTW, that's almost the identical shape cover plate on one of my older builds.
I saw that, and thought, "whoa!".
I made a template to route the body,
then carefully fit the cover to that.
Yours really doesn't look that bad to me.

Thanks Jimmy!



Yes, they are hard to get right for me as well. That's the reason for this shape. Mostly straight lines. I may go back over it tomorrow and see if I can get the fit a little better. Depends how much time I have. I'd like to finish the neck. Also, if you look at it, there's really not a lot of room left toward the outer edge of the guitar, so I may just leave it as is The hard part for me is the shallow routs like this. You either have to shim the template or build a thicker template for the bearing bit to ride on. I really think that a lot of the little things like this are just inexperience. I hope that I will get better at this as I continue to build.

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Mike

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

Bone nut blank, courtesy Mr. Alan Stassforth.



Using the half pencil trick, I'll mark the top of the frets and the fretboard radius on the nut blank.



Then trim the ends.



After that, I'll take a file and radius the top of the nut, getting fairly close to the line.





Well, that pic's a little( a lot) fuzzy. But trust me, I'm radiused and close to the line, lol.

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Mike

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