Look what I found

[Scoops]

Update.

Needed to have the smell of walnut penetrate my olfactory system this morning, so I thought I'd do some work on this.

Here we have the neck pocket hogged out

And here we have the neck pocket routed out with the neck in position.
Link Removed

 

[Scoops]

Update:

This is what this thing looks like without it's makeup. Pretty ugly hey. Starting to prep the body for finish. Because the shellac did wonders for the appearance, I think I'll give this thing a french polish.

Also worked on getting the neck into shape. Put in the taper, cut the head stock to thickness, and put in the nut slot.
This too is ugly right now.

 

[Scoops]

Every now and then you have to go with the "unplanned"

Yesterday, I did some router work on the neck. You can see the striations of the passes I did when was bringing the head stock to thickness. It almost gives the appearance that the ebony is curly. I think I'm going to leave it that way.

 

[Scoops]

Using a router, rasp, and sander, I roughed in the profile.
I'm liking this because it's very hard to see the seam between the neck and the FB. (Pic on that later)

 

[Scoops]

Greetings

Today, I routed the control cavity, made the control cavity cover, and put the radius on the edges.

Got a small F'up. I drilled the hole for the jack before I put in the radius. Got a bit of wierdness down by the jack. I might just leave it alone. Maybe fill it with "Ebony Bondo"

I decided that electronics for this will be simple. Passive with volume, 3 way DPDT switch (series/parallel/single), and a tone pot with a Bill Lawrence Q filter. This should give me a large tonal spectrum to work with

Thanks for looking

 

[Scoops]

As hoped, you can't really see the seam between the FB and the neck.
Shaping and sanding this out is quite the chore.

It doesn't seem to be "moving: at all right now, so I'll probably be putting the FB radius in by the end of the week

Also, the striations I made mention of in post 23, well, they are gone. I decided to sand it out.


Cheers, and thanks for looking.

 

[RBS_Johnson]

That's quite a volute you have there. Is that the final neck shape? Having never carved a neck(yet), I don't quite know the general order of operations.

-Jake

 

[Scoops]

That's quite a volute you have there. Is that the final neck shape? Having never carved a neck(yet), I don't quite know the general order of operations.

-Jake

Close to the final neck shape. I'm continually refining my neck building process. What I cite as my process, some people would have problems with. Also, most of what I'm building nowadays are fret less, so my steps will be a bit different

 

[Scoops]

@RBS_Johnson

Here's the general order I follow when making a neck. This will differ from builder to builder, but this is what works for me (some of the finer details I'm leaving out like dabs of silicone in the TR slot)

1) Mill neck blank so that it is "square"
2) Cut truss rod slot
3) Rough cut out neck shape with band saw
4) Use a template/router to get the neck to shape
5) Prep fingerboard (if necessary)
6) Insert TR and glue down FB
7) Trim FB shape to neck
8) Do head stock work (Cut nut slot, cut HS to thickness, drill tuner holes, ect)
9) Cut profile into neck
10) let sit for a week or 2
11) Cut FB radius
12) Fine tune FB and make sure it's perfectly level.
13) Final sanding
14) finish coats

 

[AltGrendel]

You mentioned building a neck with a skunk stripe. How would that be different?

 

[Scoops]

You mentioned building a neck with a skunk stripe. How would that be different?

I haven't done a skunk strip for a really long time.
I wouldn't use a single action truss rod, and the curved installation approach.
So with that in mind, most of the steps would be pretty much the same with the following exceptions
Step 5 would be to make skunk stripe
Step 7 would be to trim away excess skunk strip material

 

[RBS_Johnson]

Thanks Scoops. That makes sense to me for how to go about it. I'm going to need more tools and some heavy reading time before I try my hand at building a neck.

 

[Scoops]

I have a luv/hate relationship with Ebony!

I was routing the radius into the FB. The edge always gets a little tricky. I'll be able to glue the piece back in though.

Cheers

 

[Scoops]

Update:

In my last post, I showed how Mr. Chipout showed up. . I managed to glue the piece back on, but it looked like there was a piece that got drawn into the vac system. This left about a 1.5 inch (very small) section of chip out I needed to fill. I set up a dam, and mixed a solution of very thin CA and ebony dust, and poured in accordingly. I hope this works.

I also have the body sanded to 220, and I've put on the first coat of conductive paint.

Thanks for looking

 

[Scoops]

Hello again

Now that I have the body sanded to 220, I'm looking at filling the grain. As I indicated earlier, I'll be doing a French Polish on this, so I'm starting with a 3lb cut. Most of the shellac here will be sanded off. This works great for filling pores. As the grain fills, I'll progressively be changing to a 2lb cut, and then a 1lb cut for final finish.

I've also mended the chip out on the neck. (sorry bout the fuzzy pic) With the exception of the air bubble hole, the chip out is nearly undetectable at this stage. Once I get it to final finish, it will probably be a little more visible, but I'm happy with it where it's at.

Cheers

 

[Scoops]

So I put some shellac down. When I sanded off the rough stuff, I noticed that the grain was filled with this orange-ish looking stuff. (Sorry, no pic) Didn't like it, so it all got sanded out. Might have been the amber trans-tint I put in it.

So what I thought I'd do here is provide a little more detail on how I go about doing a French Polish. Rather than saying "I'll go from 3lb cut to 1lb cut" and show the difference between the two at the end, I'll show more of the details as I go. I do some things a little different. For example, I don't like using Rottenstone. More on that in a later episode. If everything goes as planed, I'll have an instrument to play by this time next week.

Needless to say, I mixed up a fresh batch of brown shellac at a 3lb cut, and did a test spot on the instrument. It's turning out better. But looks like I'll need to do another coat before I consider starting the finish coats. Here's a pic of where it's at.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Scoops]

OK,

The next step was to dry sand this down with 320. I used a "rag" soaked with alcohol to wipe off the residue. When I was done with this step, I looked for any sanding imperfections, and repaired accordingly.

When I was done with that, I put on a VERY liberal coat of 3lb cut to both sides. Even though this will dry very quickly, the shellac will still be somewhat tacky for a couple of hours. I'll wait until tomorrow morning to do the "wet" sanding. You can already see it is getting a little deeper in color. This piece will be very interesting (translate: difficult) to finish due to the different natures of the wood. The "flamed portion is very porous, and not really as dense as your typical walnut, while the non-flamed is more inline with what we know to be walnut. We'll see how that turns out.

Eventually, I'll dilute the remaining portion of the original batch of shellac to add color

More tomorrow

 

[Scoops]

Update,

Last light, after I thought the shellac had dried, I finished putting in some of the machining I had to do. Namely, drill holes for the bridge screws, and also drill holes for the neck screws. I knew I should have done this a while ago, but I didn't think I would do as much damage as I did. It will be easy to recover from this, but it just means I have to do another "dry" sand. This time, I'm using 400 grit sandpaper. After I'm done sanding, I'll put on another coat of shellac, at a 2lb cut. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a "wet" sanding later this evening.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

I officially suck at French Polish. I tried it once, and managed to create a sticky, linty mess that never quite dried right. I switched to stupid easy Watco, but you never get that level of shine out of it. I put a similar scratch/dent in my Walnut Steinberger build right at the last minute. It's still there, but I ignore it now. I find squinting a little, or just deliberately avoiding eye contact with the offending area helpful.

 

[Scoops]

Update:

Ran into "life" this week so far, so I'm Not getting much done.

I did my "wet" sanding today. I did this to do a final fill on the pores. I am happy with the results. The mixture I used was 2 part shellac (2lb cut), 1 part extra virgin olive oil. I had to work quickly because the shellac dries very quickly. Typically, I just put a few drop of the my mixture on the wood and start sanding. When I feel it starting to stiffen up, I quit sanding, and I wipe off the residue with a rag. I used 400 sandpaper for this round. How do ya like the humongo knot?

I used the butt end of the body as a barometer. When the cracks filled, I knew the pores are probably filled as well.

I might have used a tad bit too much olive oil. The pores seem to be sweating just a tad, but only in the "soft" section of the wood. I'll hit it with 600 sandpaper tomorrow.

Thanks for looking