@cafebrouge Welcome to the forum! I can't help you with your question, but your guitars look great! 👍 

Thanks @swepri. Satisfying experience - although soldering is a constant headache. 

Trying to do a Caballo Tono Ligero thinline with this one.

@cafebrouge hey, nice guitars!

Similarly, I can't help with advice on specific groups, but you will find a lot of helpful knowledge in the members of this forum.

It might be worth floating your questions here to see if you get when you need?

I'm a big fan of thinline teles, here's a partscaster build I put together.

@liebe really impressive, Dan! Thanks for reaching out. Love that pickguard - was that your design? I like the Tono Caballo ones  so might stick with for the Caballo Tono Ligero HH thinline I'm going for.

@cafebrouge cheers!

It's a partscaster I put together before I got into building from scratch. I bought the finished body and scratch plate from the same chap. 

Have fun with your build!

@cafebrouge What problems are you having with soldering? - maybe we can help make it FUN!

top tip: Keep your tip clean and shiny and tip top.

top tip 2: Use quality '60/40 solder' not the usual modern cheap lead free sh*te available everywhere

thank me later 🙂

Anyone got any better ideas?

@markbailey lol it is shit isn't it! Lead free for a problematic life!

@cafebrouge if you're on FB there's some not bad groups, UK Amateur Guitar Builder and Luthiers Club are a couple.

For the basics you can get free pdf templates from the electric herald. Gives you the outline etc.

For soldering I'm with Mark, good old leaded stuff, I can do everything with a simple 30 watt iron using that including grounding to pots etc. Basics are you hold your iron to the wire/join then add the solder and let it flow.

@cafebrouge 

Solder flows towards hot surfaces and you need to sand any pots to take off metal oxide just before you solder. Same with wires, take off the insulation just before and don’t put any hand grease on the bare wire. Even if you use resin core solder still use flux paste to eliminate oxygen in the joint. Apply solder to both surfaces, then when you want to join them only use enough heat to get the solder to flow between the two.be careful of burning insulation off the live wires and hold them between your fingers so you will know when you’re using too much heat. Hope my experiences are useful. 

@rocknroller912 I've seen people mentioning scuffing/sanding pots to solder but I've never found the need, do some come with a weird coating or something?

@nsj

No, metal forms an oxide which prevents a good solder joint. Aluminium and its alloys is one of the worst and very difficult to solder or weld. Most pots are an aluminium alloy.

@rocknroller912 The solder flows lovely on the pots I've used so far and you'd have to file it off to remove it! 🤣 

The only thing I can struggle with is the spring claw using a trem, they need a hell of a heat lol

@nsj 

Spring claw is chrome which is hard to solder. Probably need to file away a small part to solder onto. If you get to the copper layer that should be enough as it solders well.

Chrome might be polished also which will affect the soldering.

Y’all talking about soldering and all but have any of you seen these? Clear heat shrink loaded with a small ring of solder in the middle. Stick your wires in each end then use a heat gun. Tubing shrinks then solder melts and flows. It’s really that easy with these things.

@rathius for joining wires but you're connecting wires to tabs, back of pots, side of switches etc. I'd use them to fix a car though lol

@nsj yeah I suppose if you’re only using regular pots but I use push/push these days. Did use push/pull but switched earlier this year. I do all the wiring on the pots before they ever get close to a guitar and have lead wires to make connections easier inside the cavity. Where these come in handy is making those final connections inside said control cavity. Ya know, the pickups, bridge ground, etc. It’s those connections which cannot be done outside the guitar body where they’re most helpful. After all, it can get kinda tight in the control cavity and make soldering with an iron a bit difficult.

@rathius yeh I've been using those, I do a shallow recess in the top for them to push into so the nob can still sit flush at body height.

But I wire all that point to point then just hook up the pickups in situ last.

Tbh though I think with the length of wire available I could actually connect the pickups outside the cavity now I think about it.