Sunburst day!

BUSY day today!

I'll let the pictures do the talking... more to come!

4449-12

There are ALOT of guitars in the booth right now but we pulled this one to snap some pictures. Thats just sealer... tomorrow we start shooting colors.

Dougs Tool of the Day pt2

Revised our fretboard clamping jig today. We've been trying to come up with a way of clamping the fretboard and making sure that it doesn't shift around during the process. So here's what I came up with:

        

Basically a same idea as last time with some changes. Once side has fixed blocks that will come up to just below fretboard height. The other side has cammed clamps that rotate and pinch everything into place.

Neck glued up

Fretboard on, pinched tight into place.

Simple clamping caul, this time its just 1/2" plywood. The last ones were 3/4" and radiused to match but honestly the 1/2" ply bends just about right on its own.

Doug's Tool of the Day

Actually, I can't take credit for this. We needed a tool to sand the milling marks on our knob recesses and Steve said "to bad we don't have an old exhaust valve or something". Well heck, I called the machine shop around the corner that we've known (and worked with) for years and Steve went over. When he told Rick (the owner AND guitar player and hobbiest builder) what we needed he milled a scrap valve to the size we needed.

A little 3M Stick-it tape and chucked up in the drill these sand the marks out effortlessly!

The full crew today!!

Not sure how we did this but we managed to have a BUNCH of help in the shop today.

Theresa cutting and nipping frets for the next few necks coming up.

Steve hard at work doing the final sanding and QC on guitars. These are getting prepped for grain filler.

In between running some new necks and fretboards I started applying grain filler.

... and in between that drilling the last couple output jacks.

We also started epoxy filling any worm holes. Mostly this is on the maple tops (since they are Worm Wood) but this Korina Daylighter had 2 small ones to fill.

     

4449-21 sanded and better pictures finally. We cut the neck and fretboard for it today.

There we go! LOTS of guitars sitting while the epoxy fills the worm holes. They'll get resanded tomorrow and final grain filling. Should start seeing these in sealer in the next few days.

4449-20 and -21

-20 on the left and -21 on the right. Some big plans!!

jig of the day

A friend asked me to snap some better pictures of my neck carving fixture. This one is just temporary, the full working one will be free standing and bolted to the ground.

Since all the necks are the same right now, I have a dowel at one end to lock into a tuner hole and the other end has a rotating piece that locks the neck into place. Nice and simple.

Lots of stuff going on in the shop, we're WAY behind in updates!

4 of a kind...

Another 4 Daylighters with the necks set in them!

4449-10

4449-11

4449-13

They will start getting final sanding the next few days.

4449-12

I know parents aren't supposed to have a favorite... but we do! How can we not?

4449-12

We've been running a lot of fretboards this week. We wanted to share the evolution of one special one.

        

This is the Fretboard for 4449-12 Wenge, our offset 5mm dots, Maple Binding.

The problem in our view is the maple is just to similar to the Korina.

We started drawing on the neck and decided to rabbet it like so:

Test fitting some Wenge binding on its edge

MUCH BETTER!

A couple new pictures...

Sometimes it's nice to see a finished product again!

Happy Halloween!

Might be a day late but this is how we spent most of our Halloween in the shop.

4449-14

Another P90 Daylighter. 4449-16

Full Hollow Mahogany / Maple Daylighter. 4449-17

Some Limba and Mahogany Daylighters including lefty 4449-19.

We spent most of the day fitting necks to individual guitars and back cutting the neck to their approximate profiles.

4449-19's neck fitted and back cut.

Probably a repeat but here's our trusty back cutting jig in action. This jig is set for .115" taper from the nut to the 12th fret. The "Big" neck is a D profile .89-91 at the nut to .98-1.0 at the 12th. Our "Medium D" neck is .86-.95.

We also started making fretboards and wood binding them. Here's a pair of Bolivian Rosewood boards.

And some more...

...and more...

Rack full of necks fitted and back cut!

4449-12 Hollowbody Daylighter

This is a guitar we are VERY, *VERY* excited about! First, this is the first guitar we've ever built from Black Limba (not for lack of trying mind you). Second, its the first almost completely hollow, carved inside of the maple cap Daylighter as well. This should be just a featherweight guitar and if the way the semi-hollow's sound is any indication these might just become our very favorite version of the Daylighter.

Here's the body hollowed out and ready for a cap to be glued on.

What an AMAZING looking piece of Black Limba!

Inside the cap after it was carved, this is before sanding out the machine marks.

The two halves ready to go together. We started using a 5mm wood dowel to line the tops up perfectly every time.

After machining and rough sanding. A little Naptha to help show the color of this top... have we mentioned this one is going to be our favorite yet?

Even with the guitar being hollow, we still wanted rear cavity access to make life a little easier for everyone. Anyone who has change pickups on a traditional hollowbody will appreciate this!

There we go! Next up, neck fitment!

4449-18 First Left Handed Daylighter

We're currently in the process of a large batch of Daylighters here in the shop. I thought it was time to build a left handed Daylighter, so here goes!

Chambered 1 piece African Mahogany body

With the top picked out and glued on.

After maching...

....and after sanding. It'll get a neck fitted tomorrow.

Favorite top of the day

Spent the afternoon prepping material including getting a bunch of tops ready for glue up.

This one is my favorite by far.... big plans....

Mahogany!!

Had to share....

This is the biggest piece of mahogany ANY of us have ever, ever seen. Honestly the biggest chunk of solid wood that has ever been in the shop.

Daylighter R&D

This is been a back burner project for a while. I wanted to make a completely carved, INSIDE and out daylighter. Right now the current semi-hollows are carved in the mahogany but not the inside of the maple. It took a little bit of creative thinking with our CNC but this is the result (PLEASE NOTE THIS IS JUST A PLYWOOD MOCKUP... not the actual thing!)

and bam! Carved inside. A few program tweaks to make but over all, it worked great. Nice nominal thickness of .25" thick every where in the carve.

Firebird build spots open

We just glued up another 4 Firebird blanks. These are open for sale... more coming up soon!

4449-8 and 9

4449-8 and -9 in the rack now. Both Korina, one with P90's and one with a pair of full sized humbucker routings.

Start of 4449-7

No rest for us. Its time to take some Korina and Black Limba that we have and turn them into Daylighters.

This piece has great flamey korina running through the top...

... and neat Black Limba spalting on the back.

I just grabbed one of the last mahogany necks from the first batch to test fit. Nice tight fit in the pocket, just the way it should be.

Wrapped up Daylighters first batch

To much to talk about... just look!

4449-1

4449-2

4449-5

4449-6
Couldn't be happier. The Wenge sounds and plays great, LP'esque tone. Weight is good (9lbs for full solid, 7 for semi hollows) and the balance is fantastic. I'd write more but Im going back to playing them!

Big Boy!!!

First off, I have to apologize for such terrible pictures. Finished up the Big Boy today. This thing is COOL!

Shielded Cavity. You can see the home brewed Varitone here. Caps are .001, .047, .01, .022, .047. The Tone Pot has a push/push the actually turns the Varitone on. This lets set the Varitone where you like it and leave it!

I promise we'll get better pictures when the sun comes back out!

WB Pickups

Will Boggs from WB Pickups came by the shop today. We we're trying a set of WB Vintage Tuned's in one of our Daylighters. WB is almost local so they wanted to come by and check out things.

Big Boy!!!

Almost there, just waiting on a box from TV Jones and my bridge :D

Daylight...twilight?

Been burning the midnight oil. In our last update I had just finished spraying the first batch of Daylighter's. Well enough time has passed that it was time to start wet sanding, wiring and setting them up. We are still waiting on a few parts to show so *HOPEFULLY* by mid week we'll have the first couple guitars up and playing.

Now some of you may have noticed that I do the final stages on a guitar at my own house. There are a couple reasons for this but mostly its to get away from the noise and dust of the shop.

Dad hard at work wet sanding...

and this was the result after buffing! GORGEOUS!

A little washed out by the sun but the bursted, matching headstock

and the back

Another Daylighter wet sanded and polished. This guy gets a TonePro's wrap around tailpiece

Now while Dad was hard at work wet sanding, I made some templates for cutting shielding tape. Trying a little different approach here and by the third guitar we had the process just about perfected. Im a little iffy on the shielding tape. I honestly believe its much more effective than the shielding paint but I won't lie, the shielding paint looks a LOT nicer. We'll see..

Template for cutting the shielding for the "floor" of the cavity. This jig serves double duty that I'll touch on later

First I shield the walls. The guitars after this actually have the tape overlapping the floor.

Then apply the "floor". We went back and made a small strip that joined it all together on this guitar.

After I cut a few guitars worth the shielding I started on prewiring a few harnesses. You can see my template back in use here.

And the finished product.

Lastly some teaser shots of 4449-1 just about ready to go. Just needs tuners and the nut slotted!

Reflection shot of the bench guardian!

With a little luck the next update will be only a couple days out with a tone report on 4449-1! Over all I couldn't be more pleased, there are a few production tweaks I want to make for the future guitars but its all very minor stuff. For as quickly as the Daylighters have come together I am positively over joyed!

-d