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First Build - New Favorite Hobby

#23
Good to see another guy from Ohio! Where do you get your woods anyways? I get mine from Keim lumber, it's amazing!

Anyways, I've worked with bloodwood before, and it's pretty dangerous to my health. I had a lymph node swell up in my neck for over 2 months. I had it removed because they thought it was cancer. But I've heard horror stories about the stuff, so take precautions!
 
#24
I get my wood from WoodWerks here in Columbus. Decent selection, but they don't seem to ever have any figured maple or ebony of any sort or size in stock. =( I haven't tried some of the other shops in town though. I heard their selection is very similar.

I will say that Bloodwood is some DIRTY nasty stuff. Horrible smell and the pink dust gets EVERYWHERE!!! I have to vaccuum everytime I do anything because there is just so much fine particulate floating around. I always wear a mask when sanding or cutting wood. Back in college a friend of mine got really sick from inhaling wood dust so I always take the precaution.
 
#25
Yeah the bloodwood isn't good. I have acquired some wood alergies since I started building guitars, it's bad. I honestly love the smell of bloodwood, hate the taste of walnut though!


If you're willing to go on a trip, head up to Holmes county to Keim lumber (www.keimlumber.com). Great place, they have about everything. They carry flamed maple, quilt, and everything you could really want from balsa, bubinga, to purple heart. They also carry some really good looking stuff. Some burl, crotch, and other figured pieces. They've got bloodwood big enough to make bodies from. They also carry a lot of koa. I can't list the amount of woods they carry. It's a great store, basically amish run. It's where I get all of my lumber to build with. It's my favorite store to go broke in, for sure.

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There is a picture of the exotic side. They have more on the other side, about the same size as that space that has the domestics. It's worth the drive. I live in Orrville, home of smuckers, and it's about 45 minutes from here in a car, 25 on a bike!
 
#26
Well, impatience was not without it's price. The ebony fretboard I bought came in, and it is gorgeous. Sadly... it is slightly too narrow to work for this 6 string and the string spacing I planned on. =( I didn't bother checking the width of the blank when I bought it. Oh well, it happens. I'm just going to save it for a second build. It's just too pretty to send back.

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I was pretty pissed when I first checked the measurements, but after a while I decided it would be more fitting if I made the fretboard from scratch for my first build. One more process to learn.

I went to the local wood supplier and browsed what they had. The birdseye and curly maple that had was pretty sad looking, and I was still iffy about trying bloodwood again. After an hour of digging around I found a nice piece of rock maple at the bottom of the stack. I was pretty pleased with grain on it. It had a little curl on one end and the rest was nicely articulated. It was pretty cheap due to the knot, but it was well outside the area I intended to use. I was starting to have second thoughts about such a dark fretboard anyways. <shrug> If I change my mind, I can always dye it.

After some planing, this is what I ended up with. Still needs a good sanding since the planar is dull as a butter knife now. Might send it through a friend's drum sander to clean it up.

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Tossed together a jig for slotting the fretboard. Mainly because I saw the price of the one at StewMac and laughed. I really anal retentive so I kept tweaking things until they were perfectly squared. A little glue, a lot of patience, and a trusty straight edge/angle. I made a template in CAD for the fret spacings to help with accuracy so all I needed to do was clap, cut, rinse, and repeat.


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I also found out today that the pickups I ordered were on backorder for 2-3 weeks... :bawl: Not that i'll need 'em yet, but just anxious to get everything in. Still waiting on a fret saw and new fret wire anyways, so I guess I just need to better manage my time. =p



I'm a bit confused with the truss rods I ordered. There is a long metal plate that runs the length of the truss rod and connects the two ends. Am I supposed to glue the metal portions into the routed slot? Or does that type just sit in there? You can see the end of the truss rods in the first pic. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
#29
Well... It has been an interesting week.

Where to start.

I used some heavy duty double-sided tape to adhere my full scale paper template to the fretboard. In the future, I think I will just make a couple templates out of some acrylic or flat-stock metal. However, the jig actually worked pretty darn well. It took me a good two afternoons to finish all the setup and sawing of the fretboard. Just really time consuming with all the clamping required by my home brew miter box. Although it cost me nothing but scraps. Yum yum yum... Free tastes gooood. =p
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I sanded the heck out of the fretboard with some 220 grit to smooth out some dings made by the depth stop on the fret saw I got. Smooth as butter now.
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I cut the taper on the fretboard by double stick taping a heavy duty metal ruler as a guide for a table router with a guide bearing. I must say it came out better than I expected. That tape I got didn't want to budge an inch. Nice new bit, and one nice clean cut.
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I also routed the truss rod slots with a table router. I didn't feel confident that I could put together a jig sturdy enough to hold up against a plunge router, so I just did the opposite. I did 7 or 8 incremental passes to make sure I didn't gouge the wood and they came out nice and clean.
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At the end of last week I has just started to rough cut the neck to match the fretboard taper.
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Today I started cleaning up the neck. My father bought a brand new bit for me to use as a gift. Unfortunately, neither of us knew that the MAX rpm rating on the bit was already over the set speed of his router... We turned it on for the first time and it was LOUD. After no less then a second, all the adjustment screws in his table vibrated out of their holes. before we could hit the kill switch, the center plate around the bit vibrated completely out of place and up around the bit. BAM!!! The bit caught it and threw shrapnel all throughout the shop. Thankfully the neck was in the way of the plate so it caught the small bits and pieces and the larger chunks flew the opposite direction. So no injuries and no real damage to the neck. In our first attempt, we ended up with a partially broken table and a brand new $50 bit with a nice new chip in it... Sooooooo, yeah... I felt bad since he bought the bit for me just that afternoon. We both just shook our heads and headed out to Lowes to find a new bit. I ended up buying him a new router while we were there in addition to the bit. Variable speed this time... Seemed fitting as he has let me virtually take over his shop for the past month. With the new bit and a slower speed things went much smoother on the second attempt.

After cleaning up the edges, ever so cautiously, I began rounding the profile on the back of the neck... by hand. I wasn't about to buy two tools in one day, so I broke out the rasp and went to work. After some tweaking, I got into a groove. I finished one side of the neck in about 2 hours. By then I felt like my arms were about to fall off, so I called it a night. Tomorrow I plan on finishing the neck profile. Hopefully I will have time left to route out the top of the neck in the body to bring it flush with the wings. I must say there was something very satisfying about using that rasp. I pissed and moaned the entire time, but at the end of the day... I felt like I accomplished something significant. It just felt good.
 
#33
Well, I made some real nice progress this afternoon. I finished the taper on the back of the neck and rough cut the outline of the headstock. It took a good few hours, but I am definitely pleased with the results. Doing it by hand with a rasp was definitely the way to go. I cleaned up the neck with an orbital sander and some 120 grit pads.

I shaped the headstock by hand with a Dremel tool and a sanding wheel. It chews through the wood pretty fast, so it was pretty darn effective at rough shaping that small area. I still need to drill the holes for the tuners and decide if I want to do any more shaping with the headstock.

I also realized that I nicked the side of the neck with the router. It's not too deep but it is enough to send me into anal retentive overdrive. I can't decide if I want to repair it with a plug, find some other way to cover it up, or find a way to make it look intentional. =/

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#37
Been a pretty busy at work, so I've been slacking on posts and progress.

I managed to bore out the holes for the tuners and finish shaping the headstock. I just used a forstner bit and a block of scrap wood underneath to prevent tear-out. I also rounded off the volute to make it look less geometric. I made a small piece of decorative laminate for the headstock to reduce the amount of bloodwood that is visible. It is essentially a thinned version of the neck's Maple/BW/Maple pattern. I haven't decided is I will use it or not, but it is standing idly by just in case.

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In retrospect I could have routed the truss rod slots differently, but I really didn't think things through there. I really just kind of winged it. In doing so I made a portion of the neck towards the end of the fingerboard rather uneven and wavy. I recently started getting into the video podcast "The Woodwhisperer" and saw a jig in one of the episodes talking about planing and jointing lumber. It used a plunge router as a makeshift planer for planing odd shaped areas. I used some extruded aluminum angle sitting around as the two sleds, and a scrap piece of fiberboard with a melamine top as the guide. I was a little apprehensive at first, but once I started making the first few passes I was quite impressed. A little bit at a time and it came out rather smooth. It just needs a little bit of sanding and some chisel work on the edges that abut the fretboard. I left about a 0.5mm buffer from the edge of the fretboard just in case things did not go as planned.

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I need to do some jointing on the wings to prep them for glueing to the neck. After that I need to do some level sanding and then I can start routing the cavities.
 
#38
I've been traveling constantly the past month for work, so progress has been very slow. =(

I did manage to get wings jointed and glued up. Went through and did some level sanding on the face and back to clean up where the pieces met. There was a good bit of slop after the glue set. I probably didn't have the piece completely level when I clamped everything together. <shrug> oh well, live and learn.

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Is there any trick to making routing templates for the pickup cavities? The pickups are just flat soapbar bartolinis. I found pre-made templates for the exact model online, but figured I would attempt making them from scratch if they were easy to make... accurately.
 

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