First attempt at the neck shaping. Layed all the neck parts out and did some marking up. Neck, fretboard, nut blank, headstock veneer, and truss rod. And, I got a little excited and started cutting the outline out. Probably a…   Read more»

Glued the scarf joint today. It may or may not come out good, I’ll know tomorrow when I take the clamps off and start checking it. If it’s good and tight, then the game is on to measure and see…   Read more»

Couldn’t find good quality 4 pole bobbins and the 8$ 4 pole pickups for cigar box guitars do not fill me with confidence. I cut out the center two strings from a repro set of PAF bobbins, and glued them…   Read more»

First fretboard tapered and fret slots cut.
Gonna make truss rods this week, fret board is 11.5″ and so I’m looking at an 8 3/4″ truss rod.

Cut out the first two fretboards today. Seemingly silly mistake to taper them first but they fit into a slide in the fret miter box, to keep them square. The board stock was not wide enough to not cut some…   Read more»

Getting some work done. Plans are important to a quality finished product!

Fret saw got here today. It’s a Zona brand, so nothing too flash but it’s the right size for my fret wire. Ran into some issues with the neck design, but it’ll be OK I’ll just have to make the…   Read more»

Got my fretboard material in today, and set up the bandsaw for resawing down to the right thickness. The initial piece was a little over 30mm thick, and just over 4″ wide. I cut it to around .300″ thick with…   Read more»

More work happened today. Might have screwed up as I cut the start of the scarf joint today, but the back (glue side) of my neck wasn’t planed and so I had to run it through the drum sander to…   Read more»

Did some doodling on the bridge assembly. The plan is to make a few from aluminum to get the size and shape correct, and get the saddles to adjust properly. Then, I’ll machine them from something harder.

The spacing…   Read more»

The quartersawn board turned out to be extremely soft and powdery. Pretty as that is, it’s not useful so back in the student bin and I have hunted up a flatsawn hard maple board, 2+ inches thick, 5″ wide, and…   Read more»

After scaling the drawing to produce a 17″ scale, the body can be cut from a 15″x12″ blank with a little room to maneuver. The piece I have is 18″x18″, so I have room to adjust where I need to…   Read more»

Dug through the wood bin at the school today. Got the OK before I started to “pull out anything you find in there that you might want, I’ve got enough shit to last a lifetime and these kids don’t know…   Read more»

Thanks guys. I just dropped off the CAD model at the print shop, so that I can have full-size prints made. I just finished up teaching Blueprint Reading so my students have “A” size prints in hand now, it will…   Read more»