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Winter Buildoff 2022: Still A Diva

#181
Went ahead and routed that headstock after dinner. Get the CA and tape, do "The Trick", chuck up the flush trim bit and go to town -
20220106_202652.jpg


Yeah, looks like a Diva headstock to me. :cool:
I'm getting much more comfortable with the router and the flush trim by just controlling the depth of the bit. It seems like if you can just take half the bit's length on the first pass, it's much less squirrelly.

And then, just because, I had to wipe it with some DNA so I could see....
20220106_203055.jpg


20220106_203149.jpg


I mean, you know, it's not 4A, but whatever. For $20 it's not that bad either. As I've said, I can see why it was a reject, but I'm gonna make it look cool. I have faith. :cool:
 
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#186
TerribleTim68 said:
20220106_203149-jpg.jpg
Click to expand...
Well, not sure how they graded that piece or why, but the grain pattern ended up perfect for that shape.
Taste is a matter of taste, but I think it looks really cool with the mix of regular grain and striping. Maybe they graded it lower because it wasn't covered completely with tiger striping(?) I dunno, I like how it is. It has good character and flows with the shape.
 
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#188
RichterScale said:
Well, not sure how they graded that piece or why, but the grain pattern ended up perfect for that shape.
Taste is a matter of taste, but I think it looks really cool with the mix of regular grain and striping. Maybe they graded it lower because it wasn't covered completely with tiger striping(?) I dunno, I like how it is. It has good character and flows with the shape.
Click to expand...

RichterScale said:
My idea for mine was to have simple dark/light contrast, but have the maple be just a plain contrasting accent and not steal any attention from the Wenge.
But the more I look at that piece, if I found one just like it, I would've stole that too.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I kinda worked with it to get the flame where I thought it would work best with this shape. It took some doing. I basically resawed it, opened it up in a bookmatch method and then started looking at each side and flipping it and opening it the other direction to see how it would work best. Sometimes the edge you think should be the bookmatch isn't the best one for the situation. In the end, I think I have a piece that will work well for this build. The fretboard is gonna cover most of the center, so that area with no flame will, for the most part, not even be visible. I'm extremely happy with how the headstock face came out almost completely flame covered. But again, that was a lot of looking at the piece and moving it around to get the flame area where I wanted it. :cool:

As for grading, I'm sure they devalued it because it wasn't fully covered in flame. For some high end guitar, they probably want it completely covered in flame. When my wife brought it home she said "I got this for you, it was cheap and I thought it was pretty. I don't know what you can do with it, but it was pretty." I knew immediately that it would be a guitar top. I told her "Oh, that's gonna work perfect, I got a plan!" She actually got me two of them, so I still have one more sitting off to the side that I haven't even resawed yet. At one point I thought it may be the back for this build, but she gets grumpy if I cover the wenge/purpleheart on the back of it, so I changed direction. She's probably gonna freak out when I dye this top too. :smug: So for $40 I ended up with two of these and the other one is destined to be a top at some point, but I'm not sure when. The next build will be painted, so we're out beyond what I actually have planned at that point. We'll see, I'm sure there will be a fourth build at some point in time. Being able to do so much of this work at my home now has really stepped things up a lot. I've spent far too much money collecting some specific tools that make my life easier and allow me to build at home now. Where Lucifer took a solid 18 months to get to the finish stage, this one is moving very, very quickly just because I can now go out to the garage after work whenever I want and do some small task. No more waiting for the next three day weekend. :thumbsup:
 
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#189
TerribleTim68 said:
cover the wenge
Click to expand...
That's at least a 10 min game misconduct and should probably be illegal.
My big 'ol board was quarter sawn and all the grain was straight on the large face, with no figure. My body wings won't show any figure until the edges, where they get rounded and shaped, so, even though it's still wrong, it's a little less wrong that I'm covering a large portion of the body Wenge because I'm not covering anything special looking.
 
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#190
RichterScale said:
That's at least a 10 min game misconduct and should probably be illegal.
My big 'ol board was quarter sawn and all the grain was straight on the large face, with no figure. My body wings won't show any figure until the edges, where they get rounded and shaped, so, even though it's still wrong, it's a little less wrong that I'm covering a large portion of the body Wenge because I'm not covering anything special looking.
Click to expand...
I remember when I was picking out this piece of wenge, I spent a lot of time staring at it. My hardwood lumber yard (Rockler affiliate store) had a nice selection, so I had choices. I picked out the one with the most grain pattern on it on purpose. You'd be surprised though, once you start rounding edges over and carving bevels, wenge does some cool things. Don't be discouraged yet, it'll turn out better than you thought once you start putting the details in it. :thumbsup:
 
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#199
Hiding Your Tears (or: CYA 101) -
For those who don't recall, I had to do something about that nasty tear-out that the router gave me on the side of the lower body wing. Here's the shot, for reference -
20220101_150257.jpg


I had kept that piece that came off, but for whatever reason, it did NOT want to fit back in there like you'd think it would. :meh:
So we need to do something about this. Let me think, how would Dwizum fix this.... Hmm.... What would Ripthorn do (and what ever happened to that dude)? Well, I don't hear any force ghosts talking to me so I guess we'll make this up as I go.
So here's what I did (didn't take a lot of photos): I clamped the body wing in my bench end vice, tear-out facing up, and used my #5 plane to flatten it off at an angle. Basically smoothing a bevel in it. Maybe not the best idea, but it's the only idea I had. I then grabbed a piece of the body offcuts that had fairly similar grain and running in the right direction and beveled that off at the same angle using the #5. Once I got them matching up, bevel to bevel, as best I could, I used CA glue to glue it on. Here's a shot of some nastiness during the glue up. -
20220107_191616.jpg


Lemme explain a bit here. When I beveled off that offcut it was a fairly big piece. It was easier to work with while it was big. I wanted to get the bevels mating the best I could, then trim it down to size. So that was the method I used. Again, maybe not the best method, but it's the one I went with here. Hopefully others will learn from my mistakes, or something like that.
So anyways, with this big ugly glued onto the side of it, I then took it to the spindle sander to shape it from there with sandpaper rather than trying to stress the joint with a router bit flinging around at a bazillion rpms or whatever. So in the end I now have this -
20220107_192029.jpg


20220107_192037.jpg


Keeping in mind that the top will cover the unsightliness there, so don't freak out too much on that part. Let's take a better look at it viewing pretty much only what we'll see -
20220107_192044.jpg


Yeah, I mean, I think it'll work well enough. With some sanding it may not even show at all. That should work fine. Those who really paid attention will notice that my repair actually goes down into the wenge a bit, so there was also a line I had to match up too. There's still a lot of final shaping/sanding to be done, so I'll keep an eye on it during the final shaping and see how it looks, and we'll go from there. I don't think it's the end of the world for sure. :)

On to the next thing....what was the next thing again? Hmm..... :cautious: :eyebrow: :nailbiting:
 
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