Making sawdust...

It's sunday, so we all know what means, guitar time! I had the full "crew" (of volunteers) again today... Steve, Dave and Danny. Today we started shaping necks on this batch of Firebirds. Everyone brought guitars they liked and we set off.

First I had to build a rack to hold all these finally... was a fun side project. I probably way over built it but I ALWAYS do.
Since we already back cut the necks to the general thickness I grabbed the trusty microplane attachments. They are like cheese graters that hook on our palm sanders. They work great for roughing in the neck profile.
Here I am starting to rough one in.
Like I said, everyone brought their favorite necks in to compare. Of course, I brought my white firebird in for a reference. Dave (left) and Danny are comparing necks and the way I did my heel.
Dave would get mad if I didn't post his cool stop action belt sander picture...
After shaping the neck Steve took over to form the heel.

Finished product!
Danny and I comparing profiles and thickness'
Starting another one.
Danny doing some work shaping the heels
PILE OF SAWDUST!
There we go. Got 5 of the 8 shaped today!

a very.... VERY late Christmas present

Today's project started oddly enough as a Christmas present for my Father ... *last* year. Well, in all fairness it started out as a Strat project. I cut the body, painted it, wet sanded and buffed it quite a while ago but it sat and waited for some money and time to finish the rest (neck, misc parts). As it sat Dad started to borrow my Telecaster from time to time. That slowly became all the time and I hadn't seen the guitar in months! Finally I decided if I was going to get my Tele back I should probably build one for Dad. So here's what we came up with.


Here is what I started with today. Alder body that I cut, AllParts "TMO-V" neck. The color is ReRanch "Coral". This is actually run from one of my earlier CNC programs but over all the fit is excellent. Mostly the tweaks came in regards to the way I drill the string through holes on the CNC now.
The body after wet sanding.
One thing I was very excited about was this is the first time I got to try the new buffing station I built. I don't know why I waited this long to build one, this is the ONLY way to go! Here is Dad doing some buffing work.
Look at that shine!
Buffed headstock! That buffer makes those maple necks feel so nice.
Now... pretty much every picture shows someone else working but I insist, I DID work on this guitar today! I just end up taking pictures of everyone else! Dad doing a final hand buff.
Wowzers.... the buffing station might officially be my new favorite tool!

Now that the body was polished, I fitted the neck and tuners and moved on to wiring the control plate.
Pretty standard stuff here, 250k pots, CST 3 way and a .047 PIO cap.
Drilling the pickguard and control plate holes.
Bam! Dad trying out the finished product! I spent quite a bit of time doing the final setup, setting the neck angle, action, filing the nut ect. I told Dad to play the guitar for a week then come back over and we'll make any final tweaks to the action then.
Our Tele's
Now normally this would be where I'd post some nice photo's of the completed guitar. The problem is it came off my bench, right into the house for Dad to try then right into a case to go home and play!! I guess I'll have to get better pictures next week!!

I can wait though, I'd be anxious to play it too! The final specs are:
2pc Alder body
RR "Coral" with Sherwin Williams clear Nitrocellouse Lacquer
Joe Barden Bridge
ToneRider "Vintage" tele pups with a .047 PIO cap
Kluson Deluxe tuners

So far right off the bench it sounds fantastic! The bottom is very, VERY tight and its got good ... spunk for lack of a better word. I'll mess around with pickup heights and get it completely dialed over the next week. The arm-scale says this guy checks in right around 7 pounds.

The day a guitar starts to look like a guitar...

Well we had another productive sunday in the shop today. Had the full crew today, Steve, Dave and Steve's son Danny. I finished running the fretboards a couple days ago so today we drilled side dots and glued boards down.


This is one half of the fretboard clamp jig I came up with.

The top uses 3 of these radius' to match the board to end up like so...

This is the general idea. Seems to have worked very well.

While I was doing that Steve worked on getting truss rods fit. While the channel is cut on the CNC sometimes they take some tweaking plus.

first the sanding at the head stock to allow room for the TR nut

Steve resorting to the BFH... a general trend around here

Over at the Shopsmith (!) I turned Dave loose drilling side dots.

Last week I made a Lexan template for doing this to make life easy.

Dave hard at work.

Once the side dots are drilled, installed and scraped it was time to start gluing the boards down.

First I tape off the general outline of the board to keep the glue from getting everywhere. Also the end of the board is marked out exactly to keep the scale length correct. Then spread the glue out...

Getting the fretboard down and lined up.

There we go! Board clamped down. It works well I put the middle one one first then tighten that one up while making sure the ends aligned.

Danny checking out the progress. I forgot to mention Danny installed the side dots and setup neck jigs. Thats his guitar in the clamp.

Lunch break..


"Firebird JR"


dave's firebird

My VII P90 and VII with full sized buckers

This is an indian rosewood board. I ordered a couple indian blanks because I wasn't sure I'd have enough of my material to cover both of Nick Greer's firebirds. Well I saw this one board and kept it for myself...

So there we go. Nice busy sunday!

=

making lemonade from lemons...

So my buddy Dave has been helping around the shop quite a bit lately. Ya, sure one of those Firebirds is his but still I felt bad that he's been working for free. Well about 2 months ago he bought one of those cheap Squire Tele's with the "Duncan Designed" P90s. I'd be lying if I didn't think it was a fantastic sounding guitar, 'specially for the under 2 bills price he picked it up for. The only real gripe he had was it was NOISY and had cheap, flimsy pots and switch.

So I decided I better repay his Kharma and help him work on that tele. Im not going to post before pictures, we all know what an Indonesian guitar looks like inside. No shielding, crappy pots ect ect.



After shielding the pickguard, rewired with good CST pots, .022 Orange Drops and a Push-Pull pot on the neck pup to reverse the phase.



Shielded cavities... Dave did a hell of a job on that part.



The finished patient!

fretboard day cont...

First attempt at binding... so far so good. It should shape up nice when the board gets finished off with a radius sanding block.




I'll drill it for dots tomorrow. Cut a simple board with dot inlays today too.