love the body design, can't stand the pickguard.
Thanks (body design).
Can't please everybody (pickguard).
I actually like the pickguard a lot, but I know it's a very strong statement in this design and strong statements tend to draw out strong feelings.
roberthabraken said:
I really like your fret saw jig and your sanding block! Was it easy to sand it by hand or did it take long?
Thanks - and thanks to you for your thread! I've been enjoying it very much!
As for the sawing jig - that was a real exercise in frustration at first as I would drill, cut, screw together THEN discover the error of my ways - disassemble, reassemble and discover NEW gremlins in the mix...
The most important aspects (to me) for a fret sawing jig are:
1) wide enough to accommodate the fret board (obviously)
2) RIGHT ANGLES!!! Making sure not only the sides that guide the (presumable square) fretboard blank are square too, but also the blade guides are nice and perpendicular AND parallel with regard to the slotting area - if that makes sense...
That was hard to do with wood - drilling - the 'little nudge here and there' that always happens when you go to screw in a critical guide piece... UGH!!!
3) the clamping mechanisms. There are actually two in mine - the one that uses the wing nut to tighten down on the shims that hold the FB from above - and the shims that I jammed in to hold the FB firmly against the side of the jig.
The sanding block - after brainstorming and tons of research here and abroad on how to create one, it occurred to me that the router and scrapers method seemed most accessible to me.
Now that I've done it - I honestly cannot think of an easier way to go about it. Using the fence and gradually worrying away the radius was almost too easy. After the routing, I could technically have gone straight to sanding and not bothered with cleaning up the router trails (they were barely there and at best were less than 1/32" ea. if that... so I'd imagine they'd have little impact on the fretboard's radius.
But cleaning up the rout tracks with the scraper was super easy and seeing a perfectly smooth radius was nice.
Sanding the fretboard - that took time and elbow grease. I estimate it took about an hour (at least) of actual sanding - spread out over 4 hours. So I'd sand for a good 4 or 5 minutes... pause... look at where I was... go back to sanding.. pause... look... sand... etc...
It's my first time, so I was probably extra cautious. I've also concluded that if I created a tray with vertical sides to guide the block and hold the fretboard, I could probably knock it down much more quickly.
By the way - I only used 1 sheet of 100 grit sandpaper to sand the entire radius. I kept knocking the dust out of the paper and cleaning it off of the FB - which I am sure helped.
By the way - the sandpaper you see in the picture above is the very same sheet I started with - and that picture is POST radiusing...
...
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. I must say I do that myself too, but I bought the fb tapered (done in the store, probably to get more boards out of the same piece of wood :scowl
