First Commission Build - Is A Super-Tele A Thing?

[TerribleTim68]

Trying to get back to work on this thing, it's been a bit. I got distracted with the racecar and the garden and that silly job thing. But, I decided today would be a good day to start carving that neck. -

Just basic stuff here, Shinto saw rasp using the facet method and then I got a set of various sized dragon rasps from the Amazonians that I gotta say, I really like. The dragon rasps were used to get into the rounded areas of the volute. I'm fairly happy with how this is shaping up. it has that thin Ibanez feel to it, or that may just be my bass player hands holding this tiny little neck, I dunno.
My next big step is to start roughing in the heel area. I don't really have good tools for that and I'm not really the type to use crazy things like carving disks on angle grinders. So I need to think this part through and stare at it for a while and ponder life's choices and the astrological alignment before I get too crazy there. This is where I watch those guys with spoon gouges and think "Now there's a tool and a skill I'd love to have", but alas, I don't have either. I may just break out the round saburr bits on the Dremel and start attacking it, that's how I did the past heels and it worked fairly well. But for now, I got a start on the neck carve and I don't hate it.
Oh yeah, my fancy scarf joint is looking cool, I don't care what you say.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Finally got back to this neck.

I went ahead and put the side dot markers in. I prefer to use a small hand drill and do them by hand. Yes, you could use a cordless drill or even a drill press. But I like the slow methodical approach of an old Stanley egg beater drill. Just some standard 2mm white dot material here, nothing fancy -

I also (as you can see from that pic) went ahead and pounded the frets in. So that was fun (he said sarcastically).
I purchased the StewMac fret press and cauls and had planned on using my drill press (the Shopsmith) to press them in, because Matt over at Texas Toast says "If you aren't pressing your frets in, you're not even a luthier".
So I gave it the old community college try, but for some reason it just didn't want to press them in correctly. It seemed like one end wouldn't seat for some reason. So I ended up bailing on that and went back to the trusty Harbor Freight green/red soft nose hammer and started whacking away at them. Oddly enough, they seated just fine. I did run a bead of Titebond in each slot before whacking them home, because I've seen that done and it seems better than trying to wick CA in the ends afterwards. When all was said and done, it looked like this -

Yeah, as they say down south, "I ain't mad at it".

I'll investigate the press and cauls later. Maybe I just need to learn how to do it that way and this wasn't the time to be learning. I should prolly find some scrap and practice on that or something. Anyways, it's fretted. I gave them a quick and dirty end file to keep from cutting my hands up when working on it, but they are not "dressed" in any manner. I'll save that for the end when I'm all done beating the snot out of this build. I don't like dressing them and then messing them up during the rest of the build processes. So yeah, on to the next thing.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Just Wing it Baby!

Finally getting around to gluing the body wings on -

Nothing fancy here, just a bunch of Harbor Freight clamps, some Titebond II and the glue spreader I came equipped with at birth (my finger). Just one more reason you don't wanna chop your finger off on your shop equipment.
Decent squeeze out along both joints. I'm operating on the theory of "you don't need so much glue that it drips a big river all over your workbench, you just need enough to get good adhesion". I think we'll be okay here.
Anyways, I usually try to save the offcuts to use as cauls for this procedure. But for some reason I can't find them anywhere. I assume I will trip over them tomorrow, probably as I'm pulling the clamps off.

We'll let this chill for a while (I have an appointment this evening so I can't get back to it today, thus the reason I wanted to get it in clamps now) and then route a little wiring channel before gluing on the top. We're going sans pickguard on this one, so we need a hidden channel. Had it been a bolt on neck, easy-peasy. But with this neck-thru I need to do a bit more planning. Also doesn't help that we're going Floyd Rose here too, so I think that bridge pup has to scoot "forward" a bit too. Lots to consider, aren't custom builds fun? One of these days I'll stick with the "standard" designs. (I doubt it)

 

[Reedt2000]

Looking good

That fretboard seems pretty high off the plane of the body. The Floyd is gonna need to be up there too. Might mean a deeper tremolo cavity on the back. Which also might allow you to run you wires through there, or at least drill the channel between B & N pickups.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Looking good

That fretboard seems pretty high off the plane of the body. The Floyd is gonna need to be up there too. Might mean a deeper tremolo cavity on the back. Which also might allow you to run you wires through there, or at least drill the channel between B & N pickups.

No, it's getting a top glued on later.
This one will have a maple burl top -

I covered that in post 291 and 299. I also plan on gluing a black veneer layer between the top and the body. That being said, the body is firmly in the "thin-line" realm.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Girl Look At That Body!

So I made some more progress on this body, but I've also reached a stumbling block.
Let's start with the good:
I pulled the wings out of the clamps, and all looks good. A little glue cleanup with the card scraper and I think we're good to go. The next thing to do was some maths, because I'm fairly sure this Floyd Rose is gonna push that neck pup forward a bit, so I started by laying out the Floyd Rose routing templates and making a lot of marks -

And yeah, as you can see, that neck pup needs to scoot about a 1/4" forward -
I don't think it's gonna be a major deal, it's the price you pay for wanting a Floyd Rose on a Telecaster man.
So with that all somewhat laid out, I went ahead and punched a few holes through the top and slightly into the body so I would know where I want wiring channels -

And then after pulling the top off, we have this -

Cool, so let's set up the router with a 1/4" upper bearing bit and then double-sided tape some guide rails on and get to it! -

And now we have some very simple, straight forward wiring channels, boom! -


Okay, on to the veneer portion of the event. This is where I sort of reached a stumbling point and I need some input.
First of all, I didn't have a piece wide enough to do the body in one single veneer sheet. So I need to splice in a strip down one side. Not a big deal, I've seen several of you do that before. So I found two factory edges that were nice and straight and taped them along that line. It looks good to my 51 year old eyes and it's gonna get buried under the top anyways, we'll put the joint along the lower horn since I plan on doing an arm carve on this thing and I don't want to be carving into that seem line. -

But here's my question to the hive mind, what do you do to keep these two pieces together during glue up when you need the tape to be removed? -

I'm ready to glue this up, but I don't know how to hold the two veneer pieces aligned if I remove that blue tape.
HALP!

 

[Gary_M]

I would replace the blue tape with a couple of very small pieces of Scotch tape... something very thin. Position the pieces so that they are well inboard of the body edges and just leave them in place. By the time everything is glued up and sanded flush, you'll never know there are a couple of tiny pieces of tape under your top.

Alternatively, if you have enough room outside the body perimeter, you could tape them out there and then cut them away later, but you risk sliding of the layers.

Alternative to both of the above (and possibly the better solution). Position the veneer where you want it with tape in place. Drive a couple of staples or trim nails through both sides of that veneer layer and clip them off, so that you have a positive index... this can also be used for the drop top so that nothing slides at all. Then remove the tape before glue up. Of course be sure that your staples or nails are nowhere near anything that will get hit by a router bit later.

 

[TerribleTim68]

I like the clear tape idea!

 

[TerribleTim68]

What Have You Done?

Well, right, wrong or indifferent, it is done!
I went ahead and used @Gary_M 's idea of using clear "Scotch" tape to hold the seem together in strategic locations and glued that baby up! Gratuitous clamp shot for reasons....

I'm never sure how many clamps it requires, but I'm usually sure the answer is "all of them".
One of these days I need to buy some deeper throated clamps to reach in farther towards the middle, or build some of those cool cauls that apply pressure in the middle or something. I probably used a bit too much glue too, against my own advice. Hopefully it doesn't completely fill my wiring channels.
Whatever, it's glued, it's drying, now we wait...

 

[Beej]

When I walk in the spot (Yeah)
This is what I see (Okay)
Everybody stops and is staring at me...

 

[TerribleTim68]

When I walk in the spot (Yeah)
This is what I see (Okay)
Everybody stops and is staring at me...

 

[Beej]

I stopped short at the next line as it immediately gets very close to being NSFW

 

[TerribleTim68]

FSO -

There we go, we have a thing!
After affixing the template to the body via some of that super cool double-sided tape (I also had to set it up on some risers because, neck-thru and the fretboard gets in the way) I ran my fancy router around the edge using a top bearing bit and cutting down into the body about half way or so. I then flipped it over and switched to a bottom bearing bit and finished it off from the other side. Once the template was popped off, I now have this -

Yeah, I ain't mad at it. There's still some cleanup to do around the neck transition, no way I'm running that big scary router too close to that. And I've got a bit of cleanup to do down at the lower butt end where the router chattered on the end grain. I paid very close attention to which direction I was running, trying to stay in a "downhill" direction all the way around. It can make for some scary moments when the router grabs and tries to run when you are cutting in the technically wrong direction, but I'd rather try to maintain a good grip than end up with chip out. Luckily, zero chip out.
But yeah, in the grand scheme of things we're in good shape here. We've got a Telecaster shaped thing.
I don't know if you can tell, but I'm pretty happy with it right now. I actually decided it needs to come in the house now and live on a stand instead of the shop workbench when I'm not actively working on it.

Next up I need to start laying out the bridge position and get that tremolo cavity done. I think I want that situated before I even worry about pickup cavities. And I think I want to do that before I even worry about the arm carve or the belly carve (yes, I'm doing both of those on a Telecaster). It seems like sorting out this tremolo cavity while the body is as square as possible would be prudent.

 

[Beej]

Oh my word that came together nicely!

 

[TerribleTim68]

Oh my word that came together nicely!

Thank you, that means a lot coming from you.
I feel like I'm getting to a point where I'm not scared anymore and the process is making more sense, the choices are making more sense and the product is getting better.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Finally got around to getting the video for the neck carve and fret job edited and posted. -



I swear, editing video takes way too much of my life.
Now I need to get the video for the body wings done. I'm only one video behind, but luckily it's been too hot in the workshop to actually do any work so there's that.

 

[TerribleTim68]

So the body glue up video went live on Friday. If you aren't subscribed, or may have simply missed it, here's the visual version...

 

[TerribleTim68]

Decided today was a good day to punch a big hole in the face of this thing.
I've bene putting off this Floyd Rose routing for a while now, partly because I don't wanna botch this at this point. I did practice on a scrap piece of 2x6, figured if I could get it good on that soft wood then I should be okay on the hard wood of this guitar body. I also learned a lot from my practice piece, so that's good.
Anyways, after much template placing, routing, moving templates, routing, switching to a different template, routing, switching to another template, routing, switching to yet another template and routing some more, I had something that looks like this -






As you can see, my bookmatch seem is not perfectly centered on the guitar body, it's slightly off. Not sure how I ended up that much off but I'm okay with it, the neck beam is centered all the way down and the stripes on the back being centered in the routing is more critical to the eye than the front. This top isn't super bookmatch-y anyways, so I think it'll be fine. But when you flip it over and see the spring cavity centered on those stripes, that's obvious.

Next up, to route for the pickups. I'm just going to face mount them from the top, no pickguard on this one (because I hate pickguards). So now I need to figure out the depth for the routing. Any advice on how best to calculate that? Is there a math formula?

 

[TerribleTim68]

So anyways, some interweb research kind of showed that most people route these to 3/4" depth, just to make sure they have enough space. So that's what i did. Pickup cavities routed -

And my little wiring channel I placed before gluing that top on revealed itself.


So yeah, after a quick test fit, I've got plenty of room here for pickup height adjustment. This will be just fine.
Next up is the control cavity, but I don't have the control plate and everything yet so I can't really check how much depth I need here. I may have to just make another educated interweb guess and just pick a depth. I'd really like to get it done today while I'm already covered in sawdust.

 

[TerribleTim68]

After a bit more digging around on the interwebs, it seems that the pickup selector switch is gonna drive the depth and they seem to be about 1" deep. So I decided 1-1/8" depth should be good for that control cavity and went to town. She's all routed now -


And again, little wiring channel revealed itself. I don't know why I get such joy out of that -


Once I get my control plate I'll verify depths on everything, but even if I need to go a bit deeper I can easily do that with a pattern bearing bit. We're in good shape here, it looks like an electric guitar. It just has a rather rough outline shape.
Next up I plan on doing a fore arm carve and giving the rest a good round over. I'm not a fan of the slab look, and I want to reveal that pinstripe in the arm carve. Stay tuned for that!