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The FireDragon Triplets

#101
Christine said:
It's been a full day but a fruitful one

The Cherry constructional veneers were due to arrive this morning so I set out on a quest to get the necks glued. I planed, squared up and thicknessed the outer thick laminates, then thicknessed the inner Mahogany laminates. Just as I was finishing the veneers arrived :) I ordered enough for three necks but I was sent enough for seven, a bit of a misunderstanding somewhere, well they won't go to waste. I ripped those up into strips on the circular saw with an 80tpi blade.

Then after lunch I used a bench plane to clean up all the glueing surfaces, if you remember from the Les Paul build I don't consider a surface straight from the planer to be suitable for glueing, that's just me perhaps, it is done daily by many woodworkers without issue. After that (yes I was tired!) I glued them up, I changed glues for this, let me explain why. Titebond although it is considered the industry standard and with good cause it has a very short open time before it becomes less than ideal. As I had twenty surfaces to glue up in one go I needed a glue with a long open time, I chose Cascamite, a Urea formaldehyde glue, it's a powdered glue you mix with water, it is a very ridgid glue which has less tendency to "slip" when set than aliphatics so you can argue it is better for laminated neck
s but it will be no worse. It isn't an ideal glue for other aspects of luthery whilst it would be fantastic for glueing set necks you wouldn't want to use it because it is very very water resistant, you could never ever get it off again without a saw.

So anyway, glue, clamps and three necks glued up :) The last picture is the aftermath of the day in the workshop, I am far too tired to sweep it up this evening, a job for the morning I think

View attachment 3124928


View attachment 3124929

View attachment 3124930

The difference in colour on the laminates is because some are planed and some sawn, they are all identical really :) View attachment 3124931

Three necks glued View attachment 3124932

Tomorrows first job! View attachment 3124933
Click to expand...
Too bad you don't have a country & western bar nearby. They could use that on the floor-along with peanut shells:smug:
 
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#102
Christine said:
I'm not sure if I've ever seen a Satinwood fretboard before, no doubt someone has used it, it seems a decent wood to use other than being very difficult to work but it takes an excellent finish and is as hard as Sri Lankan Ebony.

A little explanation about why I'm doing this, about 20 years ago I bought a guitar magazine on a regular basis. In one of them there was a feature about some hand made guitar with a look of the Fender Aerodyne Jazz to it, with a rippled maple (?) top and sprayed transparent red and a darkish maple neck/fretboard, it wasn't anything super special but that one guitar was truly pretty. Now I could see that with a Satinwood fretboard so I took a lump out of our stores and cut four of them and put them away in readiness for the day I would build my own. Now that day has come at last, now I just need to get that red the right colour!
Click to expand...

You are making me a believer in bound fretboards.
 
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#103
Christine said:
Today I cut the fret slots on the three fretboards. I also inlaid the Rosewood blocks and fitted them, being wood they could be radiused the same time as the fretboard without worry. I've included a sequence photo of my marking procedure as a reminder but a full description can be found on the Les Paul Twins thread. After that I dimensioned the board and bound it.

Once that was all dry I started to radius it, initially I was going to use my jig for the router but I was out of other things to do today so I thought I'd have a go with the radius sanding block. It took 15 minuted to shape but I actually preferred that method, I felt a lot more in control of the amount of wood removed and it was easy to keep putting the straight edge on to check it was flat. I don't think it was an awful lot quicker either. Anyway, it was sanded down to 320 grit and thoroughly cleaned before slapping a bit of Teak oil on it. I have tried to photograph the figuring of the Satinwood, it's very difficult but it is truly stunning in the flesh, you can see how it got it's name.

View attachment 3123902
View attachment 3123903
View attachment 3123905
View attachment 3123906
View attachment 3123908
View attachment 3123909
Click to expand...

Wow that is gorgeous, just wow.

Christine said:
It's been a full day but a fruitful one

The Cherry constructional veneers were due to arrive this morning so I set out on a quest to get the necks glued. I planed, squared up and thicknessed the outer thick laminates, then thicknessed the inner Mahogany laminates. Just as I was finishing the veneers arrived :) I ordered enough for three necks but I was sent enough for seven, a bit of a misunderstanding somewhere, well they won't go to waste. I ripped those up into strips on the circular saw with an 80tpi blade.

Then after lunch I used a bench plane to clean up all the glueing surfaces, if you remember from the Les Paul build I don't consider a surface straight from the planer to be suitable for glueing, that's just me perhaps, it is done daily by many woodworkers without issue. After that (yes I was tired!) I glued them up, I changed glues for this, let me explain why. Titebond although it is considered the industry standard and with good cause it has a very short open time before it becomes less than ideal. As I had twenty surfaces to glue up in one go I needed a glue with a long open time, I chose Cascamite, a Urea formaldehyde glue, it's a powdered glue you mix with water, it is a very ridgid glue which has less tendency to "slip" when set than aliphatics so you can argue it is better for laminated neck
s but it will be no worse. It isn't an ideal glue for other aspects of luthery whilst it would be fantastic for glueing set necks you wouldn't want to use it because it is very very water resistant, you could never ever get it off again without a saw.

So anyway, glue, clamps and three necks glued up :) The last picture is the aftermath of the day in the workshop, I am far too tired to sweep it up this evening, a job for the morning I think

View attachment 3124928


View attachment 3124929

View attachment 3124930

The difference in colour on the laminates is because some are planed and some sawn, they are all identical really :) View attachment 3124931

Three necks glued View attachment 3124932

Tomorrows first job! View attachment 3124933
Click to expand...

Does that make an 11 piece neck ?
 
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#104
Christine said:
Today I cut the fret slots on the three fretboards. I also inlaid the Rosewood blocks and fitted them, being wood they could be radiused the same time as the fretboard without worry. I've included a sequence photo of my marking procedure as a reminder but a full description can be found on the Les Paul Twins thread. After that I dimensioned the board and bound it.

Once that was all dry I started to radius it, initially I was going to use my jig for the router but I was out of other things to do today so I thought I'd have a go with the radius sanding block. It took 15 minuted to shape but I actually preferred that method, I felt a lot more in control of the amount of wood removed and it was easy to keep putting the straight edge on to check it was flat. I don't think it was an awful lot quicker either. Anyway, it was sanded down to 320 grit and thoroughly cleaned before slapping a bit of Teak oil on it. I have tried to photograph the figuring of the Satinwood, it's very difficult but it is truly stunning in the flesh, you can see how it got it's name.

View attachment 3123902
View attachment 3123903
View attachment 3123905
View attachment 3123906
View attachment 3123908
View attachment 3123909
Click to expand...
Looks like beautiful work there Chris!
 
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#106
Today I worked on the other two fretboards, I'm using 8mm mother of pearl dots, this believe it or not is the very first time I have used them, how simple are they!! Drill and fit, sand and job done. I cut the boards to size and started to think about binding them, I bought a couple of rolls of plastic binding for them but decided to use Sycamore (very like Maple) instead, so I did and very nice it looks too. They've had a coat of Lemon oil and they'll get a couple more over the next few days. I also cleaned up the neck blanks, I think Cherry was a good choice, more subtle than the Gibson laminates

IMG_5314.jpg


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IMG_5316.jpg
 
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#111
This has been an amazing thread - I must have likewise missed some trolling somehow?

I'm astonished at the simultaneous builds - I can't wrap my brain around keeping that many targets in the air at once, much less while maintaining that astonishing level of quality. I do hope the thread continues.

- Kurt
 
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#115
BritFunk said:
This has been an amazing thread - I must have likewise missed some trolling somehow?

I'm astonished at the simultaneous builds - I can't wrap my brain around keeping that many targets in the air at once, much less while maintaining that astonishing level of quality. I do hope the thread continues.

- Kurt
Click to expand...
Yup! Me too. And a lot of others.
 
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