Poly Wanna Slacker and Extreme Glueline Remediation

So I've been putting wipe-on poly on the neck (about 10 thin ones or so), and, after letting the Danish Oil dry for nearly a week I put a couple coats on the body as well.

Then I got tired of the glue line on the sides of the body, so I cut a 1/4" x 3/8" fillet.  You can see I dipped into a control cavity.  That's cool.

I turned my router into a self-contained router table, and tie-wrapped it to the legs of my band saw for stability:

I clamped a guide to the band saw table to make a 1/4" strip of oak.  I had to sand a 64th off it despite my careful calibration and testing of the guide.  I set the strips into the side fillets with Titebond, which is way, way too thick for this kind of thing.  I clamped up in the middle first to drive out the excess glue, which sorta worked, then used my only two long-enough clamps to get the all-important ends (I don't want glue showing there) and put weight on the middle with dumbbells.

This means I'll have glue to clean up on the body.  I'm hoping the few light coats of poly already on there makes it not stick so good, and that the sanding required to bring the oak strips down to level doesn't wreck the danish oil finish.

I really want this thing to be done but those glue lines were bugging the hell outta me.  I couldn't leave it like that.  Couldn't.

Finishing Up and the Aluminum Silhouette

There's nothing to photograph lately.  But I've taken the whole guitar apart again to apply finish to the neck and body.  For the neck:  Watco Danish Oil.  It's a penetrating, hardening type of varnish.  For the neck: Minwax Wipe-On Poly (gloss).  It's basically a pre-thinned poly that goes on in fine, controllable layers; I picked gloss not because I want the shine, but because satin finishes are "satinized" by the addition of stuff (silicates?) to gloss finishes.  I figure it's better without stuff in it.

The world of finishing can be pretty confusing.  You got shellacs, polyurethanes, other polys, varnishes, and multiple type of lacquer, including nitrocellulose lacquer which is traditional for old guitars.  I literally surfed for 6 or 8 hours before settling on the two I picked.

Currently I'm sanding like crazy.

Also I took delivery of 4 feet of 1/2" aluminum bar stock.  The idea is to make the rest out of it in the form of a guitarish outline.  Unfortunately the stuff is hell to bend - I've got nothing that works on it, and I'll have to go in search of a bender.  On the other hand, if it survives the bending process it'll probably be strong enough to handle the day to day battering a guitar gets.

More soon.

Closest So Far to Being Done With This Guitar Part IV!

Okay, control cavity covers.  Working with acrylic is a pain, but not as bad as the hardware store guy made it sound.  I used a rabitting router bit to make the inset or whatever you call it, then I laid the acrylic on the cavity and drew the pattern, then I cut it with a hacksaw, then I sanded it until it fit as good as it's going to.  The downside: doing these three cavities probably took me 5 hours.

You can see where the two cavities join.  The cavities connect this way because my guitar-designing skills are not so powerful.  And that shitty battery is fabulous-looking, no?

I made the front jack cover the same way but with aluminum.  It's gnarly because I didn't want to buy a flat of aluminum wide enough, so I pounded a piece of angle flat.  Yeah!  Also note the switch mount.  The dominant artistic theme that I'm trying to evoke here is "crudely-formed pieces of aluminum screwed randomly to a brown block of wood." I think I achieved that look perfectly.

The knobs are certainly not final.  See the master volume to the side of the bridge?  It's different because the other kind wouldn't fit there.  Genius! Also those speed knobs look shitty on this guitar.  I'll be searching for something a bit nicer.  Or making them, more like.  Another adventure.

Playing Impressions and To Do List

To get the neck pickup working I had to flip a connector that I had wrong on the EMG pickup buss.  Then everything was well.  This guitar sounds good - the neck and body don't resonate much, so it has acres of sustain.  Also because of the lack of resonance, it lacks a certain amount of "tone".  It's a little too clean and plain.  But you know what?  I mean to do that.  That's why I picked a composite neck, thinking that the two materials (wood and fiberglass/epoxy) would fight each other an resonate with nothing.  It's why I picked a solid bridge.  It's why I picked EMG pickups - for their low string pull.  It's why the body is a large, very thick slab of what passes for mahogany these days.

I wanted a guitar primarily for high gain chord work, with massive sustain, that could do some nice cleans, and I think I got it.  I've decided to concentrate all the controls in the main mahogany slab.  That will give me the freedom to do whatever I want with the body shape, or even leave it the way it is (though I would like an leg rest and one for my arm as well).  Why shouldn't my guitar be a block with little sticks hanging off it holding up wood bits like a Tinker Toy atom?  Let everyone else build more Telecasters and SGs and LPS and Strats and whatnot.  Make mine different.

Now I have to do a bunch of things, and in order not to waste strings, I have to remember to do them all at once:

1. Cut the humbucker springs by 1/3 or so, particularly the neck
2. Mount the pickup selector mini-switch (a DPDP on-on-on strapped into SPDT center-on) on a piece of aluminum near the master volume
3. Mount the output jack.  It can't go on the end of the guitar because I want this thing to stand up when I lean it against something.
4. Route reliefs around the rear cavity edges to receive cover plates - at the same time I ought to clean up the cavities and make them even
5. Fix up a dead note up near 16 or 17 on the high E, where the edge of that fret is way too low.  I missed this in leveling and I'm not sure how I want to fix it:  I can re-level the frets (then re-crown them and re-polish them) or I can level just the upper half, sloping down gently, like some instructions say.  The problem with that second one is that if I do that, and it doesn't get enough material, I'm in trouble.
6. Thin the back of the neck?  I've got about 10/64s back of the truss rod, and the neck is thick.  If I had had to force relief into the neck with the rod, it would be pushing on that material, but I think it's pushing on the other side instead (because the strings are acting on the neck well).  Still, I think I'd rather be safe than sorry.  The neck plays well.
7. Figure out what to do about rests for leg and arm

All Together Now! A Guitar is Born...

I drilled a 3/8" hole with a spade bit from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup for the neck pickup wires.  Like a true genius I allowed the drill bit extender to gouge the surface of my neck pocket.  It looks crappy but no harm done I guess.  Dang.

I drilled 5/16" holes for the control pots.  The top one will be the master volume, and it will have a switch next to it.  The others, behind the bridge, are individual volume/tone pairs for the pickups.

I routed like a fiend, using the same template I used for the pickups.  I cleaned up some messes with a good sharp chisel (my new best friend in the shop).  The bottom cavity is for the master volume.  Are you wondering what that semi-circular relief is for?  Thinking maybe it's clearance for a potentiometer?  Think again - it's damage from an angry router bit that I prettied up somewhat.  Wonderful!

Here's my genius pickup mounting technique.  I made aluminum bits to span the pickup routes and function like a pickup ring does.

EMG solderless wiring is pretty cool.  Again, the uninhabited cavity on the left is for the master volume when I receive it in the mail.  And the pickup selector switch when I figure out how to mount one.

The guitar body assembled:

I played it.  The bridge pickup is working and the neck pickup is not...time for troubleshooting.  It sounds very nice, I believe.  I'll reserve judgement until I hear the neck pickup.

Pickup Routes and Bridge Hole Fix

I screwed up the location of the bridge.  I had it about 2 mm too close to the bass side.  This was forcing the roller adjusters on the treble saddle all the way to the edge, putting a sideways bend in the strings over the saddles, and pissing me off.  So I got myself a 1/4" tapered plug cutter and made 6 plugs - because the plug cutter doesn't make them deep enough go all the way down the 1/4" holes I redrilled through the existing screw holes.  Then I put Titebond in each hole, put one plug all the way down (forcing it with the end of a 5mm allen key and a hammer), and repeated with half off another plug (the thicker half - remember, it's a tapered plug cutter).  About a 1/16 of an inch remained above the face of the guitar body as the glue dried.

The it was time to make the pickup routes.  I found this very difficult.  First I attempted to make a template from a piece of scrap drawer-front oak I had around:

The plan was to draw the pickup outline and, because I only have a 1/2" diameter flush-cut router bit, drill 1/4" holes in the corners first to more correctly match the pickup corner radius.  Well, all that was doable, but when I routed the center of the oak, things went sour.  I gouged it up, it tore chunks from the grain - it broke my template.  So I set my sights on something a little more tractable: 1/4" luan plywood.  Easy to work, I figured, and strong enough to run the flush-cut router bit against.

I didn't cut the pickup ears into the template.  That I'd do later.  I stuck the template to the guitar body with double-sided carpet tape (wonderful stuff, wish I'd discovered it sooner!) and pre-drilled the 1/4" corner holes.  Then I went to town with the router:

Then I put the pickup into the hole upside-down and marked the ears.  I used a 3/16" brad-point bit to rough out 3 small holes inline in the outline.  Then I whacked it with the chisel, which I had to sharpen; the long piece of glass with sandpaper glued to it proved excellent for this, in fact that's what I'll probably use that glass for in the future - 3 or 4 sections with different grits.

I'm tired.

Fret Leveling

My pickup-expectation paralysis broke finally, today, and I decided to make myself useful.

I used a cheap 24" foot aluminum level for this job.  It has a nice straight edge, and it's just a bit longer than the fretboard.  I got some fabric carpet tape, which is advertised as being easily removable.  I already had some 320 grit sandpaper.

I put the carpet tape on the level 1" strips of the sandpaper onto the carpet tape.  I adjusted the neck as flat as possible.  I began to take run the level across the frets, making every (poor, I'm sure) attempt at preserving the conical fretboard radius.  I got it to where nearly every fret had a flattened top except for the bass side of the second, and a couple up around 17/18.  Those weren't getting touched.  To go faster, I used the same course file I used for fret end trimming.

Finally, they were all flattened to some degree.  Then I marked them with black marker and used my fret crowning file to make the fret tops round again.  I'm glad I bought that one file.  I couldn't have done the crowning without it.

Next is to dress the fret ends and polish the frets.

Here are a couple of sites that do a far better job of describing this than I can:

http://www.skguitar.com/SKGS/sk/fretcrowning.htm
http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/repair/acoustic-guitar/fret-leveling.php
http://www.stevesguitarsite.com/FRETLEVEL&CROWN.HTML