Ooh nice, when watching Mark doing the carve he only marked about a 1/4 inch, 6mm or so so don't need it to thick. I'd imagine walnut would be nice to carve too. Also I can say that it's very satisfying, I got a right buzz doing my first, a bit more sweat doing the oak lol

@nsj It will be my first carve, so I hope it will be fairly easy. I'm going to do the neck first, while the walnut is acclimating in the garage.

Working on the ebony fretboard at the moment. 

@swepri it's a bit nervy but I just followed Marks vid and it came out great! Gave me a right buzz!

I've got a stack of ebony boards, takes a right bloody whack to get the frets seated sometimes lol

Well, I'm in no hurry when building and is not very good at documenting the build process. But now the finish line is a bit closer. Applied several coats of Danish Oil and waiting a few days more for it to cure.

Two noticeable misshaps so far. The cheap brad point drill bit wandered off when drilling one of the tailpiece holes, so I had to make an 11mm dowel and re-drill with a good quality drill bit. The other mistake was using a too thin template when routing the recess for the control cavity cover. So, the guide bearing slipped over the edge and damaged the template and made a somewhat wonky outline. You always learn something new.

Yeah, and a tear-out when routing the neck pickup cavity. But it will be hidden when the pickup is mounted, so I didn't try to patch it up.

@swepri I find getting the drills to go exactly where you want them can be a bit of a fight lol. Small bits with the hand drill aren't so bad, you just tilt the drill to move things about when doing the likes of post holes I find it a lot harder.

You could maybe use the template to make a slightly bigger template with thicker mdf or that, then go around to clean up the rout. Although I must admit, template making is not my strong point lol

Finally (almost) done. I still have to make a little cover plate for the truss rod and maybe adjust the slots in the nut a tiny bit.

American walnut top, bosse cedar body and neck and some white veneer between top and body. Danish oil finish. Ebony fretboard and brass dots. This is the first tune-o-matic bridge for me. It has a narrow adjustment range, so I took measures from about ten other guitars before drilling the stud holes (every guitar I measured had different distances from the nut to the posts! The average worked fine for 10-46 strings).

@swepri After watching many vids I've found for 24.75 scale 630mm for the high E and add 3mm for the low works perfect. And for 25.5 scale I just do the 25.5 and add 3m for the low E. So far they've all worked out perfect.

I'm sure that's kinda where Mark said in one of his lives, add 1/8th inch which I believe is about 3mm. Said something about 1/8th inch anyway lol

@nsj Yes, 630mm and 633mm is exactly what I did. Worked very well.