Doug Kauer Custom Instruments

We're moving!

2010-01-25T21:39:00.000-08:00

Well everyone, we're moving the blog over to our website, www.kauerguitars.com . Don't worry, this entire blog will be moving over and rehosted there.

In the mean time, swing by, we put up our first blog post of 2010, some pictures from visiting the Winter NAMM show. Check it out! http://www.kauerguitars.com/blog

4449-18CH

2010-01-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Left handed, Chambered Mahogany Body. Pau Ferro fretboard instead of the normal Wenge board. Should make for a very happy lefty out there somewhere.

4449-9

2010-01-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

4449-9. Another Korina, clear finish (no grain filler). My absolute favorite neck, a thick, deep V profile. Very Fender'esque. We're hooked on these Korina guitars!

4449-8

2010-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

4449-8 is a little unique in this batch. Korina with white grain filler then lemon yellow shot over it. It also has a tapped P90 in the bridge that gives you two different outputs (8k and 14k). This Daylighter is REALLY awesome. D shaped neck again, nice and chunky.

4449-7

2010-01-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

4449-7. Korina body and neck (with some Limba streaking). Medium output P90's. Big D neck, Tonepros wraparound bridge. Its a Rock'n'Roll machine!

San Rafael Guitar Show

2010-01-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to invite anyone in the area to come by and check us out at the San Rafael Guitar Show held at the Marin Civic Center this January 9th and 10th (this weekend!). We'll be there with a bunch of Daylighters to show and for sale. A map to the Civic Center is below. Hope to see you there!

View Larger Map

4449-17HB

2010-01-03T22:29:00.000-08:00

4449-17HB. Second Hollowbody prototype. Wenge/Maple binding on the fretboard, TV Jones HiLo in the neck (REALLY cool!). FANTASTIC hollow body tone! Best thing, its easy on the shoulders!

4449-3

2010-01-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

Solid, 1 piece Mahogany body. Ivoriod inlays, Ivoriod tuner buttons. First 3 pickup Daylighter, certainly not the last!

4449-14CH

2009-12-30T18:25:00.000-08:00

4449-14CH. Its in a state of flux trying different P90's in it right now but I'm really enjoying this one. Been way to long since we've had a P90 guitar around here!

4449-10

2009-12-29T10:52:00.000-08:00

4449-10SB. Solid Black Limba Body, Wormwood Maple Cap, Korina Neck. Wenge Fretboard / Maple Binding. MOP Trap inlays. Kauer Steam Powered + pickups. .86-.96 Medium C neck profile. 10lbs.

4449-11CH

2009-12-29T10:50:00.000-08:00

4449-11CH. Chambered Black Limba Body, Wormwood Maple Cap, Korina Neck. Wenge Fretboard/Maple Binding, MOP Trap inlays. .86-.96 Medium C neck. WB Vintage Pickups. 8lb 13oz

4449-15

2009-12-29T10:46:00.000-08:00

4449-15CH. Chambered Mahogany Body, Wormwood Maple cap. .92-.96" Fat C neck. Fantastic sounding!

4449-19

2009-12-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

4449-19 is finished! Left Handed, Semi Hollow, .89-1.01 D shape neck. WB Firewater Pickups (split coil on the neck), 2 Volumes. Should be killer!

Scott the owner was kind of enough to shoot this video for us! I hope you enjoy.

Skipping ahead

2009-12-20T21:59:00.000-08:00

Lots of stuff to upload from our last post but for now these teasers will have to do!

Tool of the Day

2009-12-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

So we're Shopsmith fanatics around the shop and the other day we picked up a 60 dollar Shopsmith off Craiglist. The Shopsmith is an amazing tool for horizontal boring and its a great drill press too but going back and forth gets old. 'Specially when your working on a dozen guitars and I forgot to bore something after you stood it up.

So we did this:

Took both apart

Made an 1.5" thick ply core set of end caps for the rails

Bam! One fixed in the boring position and one fixed as a drill press!

Nice thing is there is nothing permanent here so we could easily go back to 2 separate machines. When we get a little free time we'll go through and restore the "new" one.

more out of the booth!

2009-12-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

Missed a few in the last post, this fills out the guitars from the last post.

4449-10

4449-11

4449-12 - The Hollowbody Daylighter

4449-13

These just in!

2009-12-04T20:21:00.000-08:00

12 out of the booth!

4449-7

4449-8

4449-9

4449-15

4449-17

4449-18

4449-19

4449-20

Lemon Drop!

2009-12-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

First time I've tried doing a burst like this. Lemon, hint of red (pretty much faded to pink), coat of clear then some clear with a little vintage amber, drop of orange and red brown. This one is going to have to stick around for a while, its getting a set of out of phase "peter greens"

Sunburst day!

2009-11-28T18:00:00.000-08:00

BUSY day today!

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

4449-12

2009-11-27T20:11:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

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!!

2009-11-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

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

jig of the day

2009-11-18T22:53:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-11-13T18:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

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

4449-12

2009-11-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-11-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

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

Happy Halloween!

2009-11-01T09:31:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-26T07:48:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-23T17:23:00.001-07:00

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!!

2009-10-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

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

4449-8 and 9

2009-10-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2009-10-13T19:30:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-04T21:16:00.001-07:00

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!!!

2009-10-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

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

Daylight...twilight?

2009-10-04T20:51:00.001-07:00

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

Joes Thunderbird... the finale

2009-09-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Joe's Thunderbird is done!! Shipped out last week, hope he enjoys it!

Big Boy!!

2009-09-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

BIG BOY update!! Skipping a lot here again but lots of the same process can be seen in the "daylighter" updates.

We mixed up some cherry tinted lacquer and shot the entire guitar with it (save for the maple faux binding). Since this is Billy-Bo inspired and those are solid red it felt right. Carbon Fiber rear covers here too.
The blackberry camera does NOT do this justice, it looks like the Cool-Aid guy is about to jump out of the top. Way cool

Just about finished. One more day of clear and this guy is done!

(day)light at the end of the tunnel!

2009-09-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

Hang on this is a MASSIVE update... two or more weeks worth. So where'd we leave off, binding the necks I believe! Here we go!!

I've skipped ahead here a bit. Last update was gluing fretboards on, here's -5 with the neck roughly in place. We inlayed, fretted and shaped the necks of 4449 1-5 at the same time.

-5 mocked up

While we all got the joy of leveling and fretting I was the only one with the camera so here is Steve leveling out his inlays. We got smart and screwed the blocks down to the bench and worked over them. MUCH easier.

The Arbor Press we converted over to a fret press.

Shaping the neck. I'm skipping a fair amount here but its the same process we've covered before.

Once 1-5 were shaped, we final sanded we started oiling the tops with Boiled Linseed Oil. The normal MO for bringing out the figure in maple tops was to dye them direct and sand back. We decided to use BLO instead because I didn't want to color the spalting with direct dying instead we opted to spray tinted lacquers.

The caps after oiling and sealing. Since these are called "Daylighters" I was aiming for a sunburst that roughly matched the colors of the actual train.

The Yellow'ish center color.

With the red/orange bursted edge.

Now skipping ahead a bit again I bursted the rest of this batch. After getting the fronts shot I worked up a back color and started shooting them.

These guys are going to get blacked headstocks with a special treat I have worked up.

There we go! About a 1/3rd of the way through the clear coat process but things are REALLY looking great!

This is 4449-6 that we ended up adding a matching headstock to.

Sealed and ready for its burst.

Bursted!!

4449-5's bursted and back color applied.

Wenge/Maple binding that we did.

There we go, #5 is coming along great too!

I PROMISE the next update won't be so far behind!

Daylighters and binding...

2009-08-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Today we made a bunch of Maple and Wenge binding strips and started binding and gluing fretboards down.

Strips of binding material

We made this jig for trimming binding to length on the end of the fretboard.

Test fitting a few strips

End pieces glued on

This jig is notched to clamp the binding into place.

All clamped up and waiting for the glue to set.

Once the glue was set we drilled the side dots, put them in, scraped them flush and started getting ready to glue fretboards down.

Before putting them into the clamping jigs we knocked the binding down to fretboard height.

Rosewood and Wenge...

Wenge and Maple

There we go. Can't WAIT to pull them out of the clamps tomorrow.

The Challenger

2009-08-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

Drew this guy up sitting in Seattle-Tacoma Airport waiting for a flight that was 2 hours delayed.

The carve doesn't show that well... going to be Goldtopped, P90's and cream binding. :D

4449-3 through 6

2009-08-22T18:31:00.000-07:00

Been a busy few days ...

6 Daylighters in the rack now

'3 bucker all mahogany body for a customer

I take each neck blank to the correct heel thickness on the table saw. After I fit each neck Dad cuts away the extra material on the band saw.

Stack of necks...

... and a stack of bodies

No action shots but I use our tapered jigs with a plunge router to cut the correct amount of neck taper I want before shaping.

Mockup with a Wenge fretboard

Getting ready to glue a fretboard down

And glued!

Another mockup with a Pau Ferro board this time.

Tomorrow will be busy, wood binding a half dozen fretboards.

The Big Boy 4004

2009-08-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

So Mike at Potvin Guitars is a good buddy and a ways back he built a BillyBo (Aka Gretsch Jupiter) guitar. I'm not sure what happened but something sparked for me and I just had to build one. Decided to build it around the same neck as the Daylighters to simplify things.

My norm- the chambered mahogany body.

Picking out a top.

I decided to try something new on this one. I've seen a few builds do this, the recessed electrosocket and I wanted to try it. So first I drill the 1" OD recess.

Then change the bit for the 7/8 thru bore.

There we go! AWESOME.

Back of the Big Boy

With the neck pressed in. So this will get Filtertrons and a Bigsby... can't WAIT.

Daylighter update

2009-08-04T21:55:00.001-07:00

Did a little work on both Daylighters today

This is my home brewed neck angle "straight edge". Basically I designed it to sit right on a raw neck. The "ball" at the end is bridge height for a TOM bridge. If everything is right it will sit flat right on the neck and just touch the top of the guitar or hover above it.

Drilled for recessed electrosocket output jacks.

Firebird "JR"

2009-08-04T21:50:00.001-07:00

Finished up another Firebird! I've been calling this one the "JR" since it draws some inspiration from the Les Paul Juniors.

African Mahogany

Pau Ferro fretboard, MOP inlays

Seymour Duncan P90

Gold Steinberger tuners

Cellioud Tortoise pickguards

Push/Push on the tone pot with a .0047 cap wired for 'cocked wah' tone

Absolutely RIPS!!

4449-day 3

2009-07-12T16:13:00.001-07:00

One last update for the day. Roughed out a couple necks for the Daylighters today. One solid chunk of mahogany, no scarf joints.

The all solid one weighs in right now at 8.2lbs, the semi hollow feels to be around 6.5 (hasn't been on the scale yet). I figure by the time I finish removing the extra material off the neck but when I ad hardware this will probably be close to the final weight.

Thundering Forward...

2009-07-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Back to work!!! Its Tbird time!

How I ended up making the truss rod work. Basically I flipped it over so that I could leave as much wood under the adjuster as possible. Im going to do them all this way from now on.

On to drilling the fretboard for side dots.

Installing the dot filler rods

...and done

Clamping the fretboard down for glue up. I reused the same jig from the firebirds a while back.

Glued on!

Then it was time to start shaping the neck. First I started with roughing in the heel.a

From there it was time to start roughing in the neck. Since Dave wasn't in the shop today there aren't any action shots but the process was the same as doing the firebirds again.

Knocking the edges off.

The EB3 provides inspiration for the neck shape. This has got the greatest half-baseball-bat chunky C neck ever.

Steve doing a little tweaking to the heel after I shaped the neck itself.

FRIGGIN AWESOME! The neck profile is spot on.

teaser shots...

2009-07-12T15:43:00.001-07:00

I'm still waiting on the friggin tuners to come off back order but it was time to polish and assemble what I can on the "JR". Two down.. Five to go.

Also managed to get color on Dave's 'bird over the last few days. I"ll get the clear wrapped up on his this week then move on to the next one.

Some P90's in the morning...

2009-06-14T21:50:00.001-07:00

...is good for the soul I think. :D

Shoreline Gold in Nitro with Sherwin Williams Nitro Clear
Lollar 50's Low output P90's

Cuts through the mix better than any other guitar I've ever heard!

a minor firebird update...

2009-05-23T17:52:00.000-07:00

Murphy left the area long enough to get color on this firebird... for the third or fourth attempt now. Huzzah!

5/28: almost done with clear, had to roll it outside with the good camera for a real picture.

4442-2

2009-05-23T17:47:00.001-07:00

Small update for today... got the semi hollow's misshapen top off, recapped and rerun. Came out pretty nice!

the start of 4442...

2009-05-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Well, its time to introduce a new project that I've started calling the Daylighter after my absolute favorite Steam Engine ever. Ever ever. Its been kicking around in my head for quite some time but I finally took the plunge and started up this last weekend.

The initial CAD drawings I made up. Now there is some tricky things here due to the way our CNC works. Because its a 3 axis only, the router always cuts at a 90* angle to the table. This is fine 99% of the time except for a guitar that has a sloped cap that matches the neck angle. So I'd been mulling this over for quite some time how to solve this problem.

First we glued up some blanks and caps. Im using something new (to us), Wormwood Maple. Its really neat stuff, some spalting, some figuring its really nice stuff.

I decided to build two of them this time, one full solid and one semi-hollow. They are from the exact same pieces of Mahogany and Maple so it will be interesting to compare them tone wise. I won't lie, my back will prefer the semi-hollow!

Gluing the caps on. Can never have enough clamps... though I really need to get my vaccum bag setup running again.

This is coming back to my problem on the CNC. The solution came from a friend and really was a simple solution. Build a simple ramped spoiler board that creates the angle I need to mill the neck angle, pickup pockets and neck pocket. Now I *can* mill the angle right off the face of the guitar but the problem is the pickup pockets will "lean back". This solves that issue.

"ramped" on the CNC, working like a charm.

Off the CNC you can see the angles and pockets cut. I couldn't be more pleased and it keeps right in line with the Keep It Simple Stupid solution. From here it goes back on, flat like normal to cut the carve, shape of the body and bridge placements.

Now I said I did two... this if the first one. 90% of this went off with out a hitch but I got a bit overzealous and ran this with out doing mockups. Well I goofed up the carve program and it ran right through pickup routings. D'OH! No biggie, I'll plane the top off run it again with the fixed programs.

After fixing the carve programs I ran the second body and it ran with out a hitch. Its tough to see but this is how the carve comes out straight out of the cnc. From here I just blend it out with 120 grit on a palm sander.

There we go, basically sanded and ready for the next steps (making the necks).

and a shot of the back. Really nice tight grained African Mahogany here. Well till next time folks... :D

DRS Racks.com

2009-04-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, some of you may be following may remember the roll around rack I built to store guitars in progress. Well a friend of mine has been bugging me to build one for him... but something nice enough to please his wife. So one morning I woke up and realized what was wrong with my original rack, implemented some improvements and sent him pictures.

Well the response was SO positive that people coming by started wanting to buy racks as well. With so much interest we decided to launch www.drsracks.com So swing by and check out what else we are up to!!

Guitar-b-que 09!

2009-04-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

So last Saturday we held our "Guitar-b-Que". We decided to have an open house to cut strat or tele bodies for people all day. Along with cutting bodies we drug out the Weber, cleared out some space in the front office for amps and threw a party!

Everything started here. You could see in my last post that Dave, Steve and I prepped a bunch of material. Dave and I spent most of the following week sending bodies through the wide belt to get them completely prepped.
Around 9:30 people started straggling in and sorting through blanks. I made some guides that showed the tooling path of the CNC.
Here is where I spent ALL day... standing in front of the CNC.
Strat style body about half way run. While this was going on the BBQ was fired up and food started to be cooked.

This made Charlie quite happy
She even made a new friend!
People scarfing down on some food
Guitars were EVERYWHERE! (keen eyes will notice the strat on the right is the "CourtneyCaster"
While everyone was enjoying some food Dad was flush trimming and edge routing bodies.
Cleaning up the neck pocket.
Running the round over

Then it was off to the dreaded part. Everyone was responsible for sanding their own bodies.
sanding.... so much sanding!

Now the REAL party room was our front office. The day before we gave it a much needed cleaning out and freed up some space for people to bring amps to try.
Mike from www.phatdaddyguitarworks.com came down with a Greer Amplification Thunderbolt 30. UNBELIEVABLE amp, already have one on order!
The black and wheat amp in the back corner is my new Greer Oktal Grinder. Another fantastic amp from Nick Greer!
Soon the guys from Brownnote showed up with 3-4 fantastic amps in tow and soon the "amp room" was so crowded you could barely stand in there!!
My Firebird got A LOT of play time during the day!
Dad and Charlie the Shop Dog
More people hanging out by the CNC watching their bodies run.
More Dad working hard. I have to say, Dad, Steve, Dave and even my wife and my mom worked their ARSES off during the day. We couldn't have done it with out their help.

After the BBQ the bar that Dave and I play at weekly hosted a jam for us. Unfortunetly only a few pictures turned out.

"Good night Sacramento, we love you!"

We did get some video though! Steve posted a lot of videos to his youtube account.. check them out!! Just don't hold my playing against me... I badly sliced 3 finger tips on my left hand during the bbq and was playing with band aids on!

Guitar-b-que

2009-03-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

WAY behind on updates here. I've been lagging partially because there hasn't been a ton to show. Sealer and grain filling has been on the Firebird's but they are waiting for paint. Joes Thunderbird is cut out, I'll update that in a separate post.

In the mean time, we are having a BIG BBQ at the shop for guitar building hobbyists like ourselves. We stocked up on material and we'll be running bodies all day. Steve and I went out and picked up a truck load (literally) of Mahogany and Alder. Today, Steve, Dave and I started cleaning up the material and gluing them into billets.

ROUGH Mahogany. This is one of my favorite parts of woodworking... running nasty looking wood through the planner.

Steve and I are doing a light cleanup, getting the material down to about 1.85" thick.

Rough Mahogany in, clean Mahogany out :D

This is how we straight line. The jig at the front basically pinches the the board in, works really well. Nice thing is I can straight-line 10' boards here with out hassle.

I did have a couple 12 footers though, I chopped 2 feet out of them to straight-line separately.

Doug: "What does that mean?"
Dave: "Kauer Custom Instruments, duh!"

Once everything has been straight lined I run them back through the planer on edge to true the edges.

After the edges are trued, we started cutting them to length.

FILLED the rack with materials!

We only have so many clamps in the shop so we'd glue 2 billets at a time.

Steve digging through all the blanks to match them up into nice two piece bodies.

And there we go... All of the Mahogany ones are glued, a few of the alder ones started. Tomorrow we'll get another 10-12 alder ones glued up. After this everything goes through the widebelt till they are perfectly flat.

-d

fabulous beard brothers guitar builders...

2009-03-03T20:59:00.000-08:00

Well I promised an update... Im late but here it is. So the "fabulous beard brothers" got together again to do some more fret work.

Here I am putting the edge bevel on frets.
...then leveling the frets.
The start of crowning
Crowning REALLY wears your pointer finger out!
Poor Dave, we had to pull a couple frets and one chipped.
So we just mixed up some dust with some CA glue.
...and filled it up. Forgot to take a finished picture but it came out nice.
Started on the "JR"
and finished the P90GLT
Dave working on his... working the corners of the frets.
So that was it. Brought a few home to start grain filling. The grain filler does make them look nice!

Third time's a charm...

2009-03-03T20:54:00.000-08:00

I think I should start this post... third time's a charm.

So yes, its been quite a while since I've posted an update. There is a reason for this. Just as we were getting ready to try machining I notice a problem. Because the I left the walnut strips wider than how I originally intended I found a problem down the road. I started laying drawing a fullsized mockup and realized that I spaced the walnut strips out to far... they'd run right out the sides of the neck about half way down.

DOH

So I debated and decided to just cut the outter strips out and reglue. So I cut it apart and realized that the strips were slightly skewed anyways (though its possible I skewed it when I ran them across the table saw).

When I realized that I just threw them in the firewood pile and started gluing up a new neck section. I just used 2, 1/4" wide walnut strips this time and made SURE they would be INSIDE the neck width. Joe and I had talked and we both agreed that we would rather have less pieces of Walnut if they were wide enough to actually DO something.

So off I went, glued up another nice laminated neck. Nice and long to give me plenty of material to chop the headstock section out to scarf joint ect ect.

Awesome right? Nope here's where murphy strikes again. Pulled it from the clamps, let it sit for while I worked on other stuff. Came back a few days later to put the wings on and I do a double take... the last foot and half had decided to twist nearly an inch to the right!

UGHHHHH. Cut that one back apart and threw the entire thing into the firewood pile.

SO this week I just started from scratch. Went and picked up more mahogany and started completely over. This time I took a bit different approach and relaminated the neck section nearly an inch wider than I needed. Formed a jig on the bench to make sure when I clamped that this thing would stay true. Now I should mention that I've always made my laminations with alternating grain directions and spend A LOT of time doing this. Every one of them has been as stable as a rock... just had a lot of visits from Murphy on this poor bass.

Then I worked it through planer and then widebelt till it was the width I needed. THIS FINALLY worked! Straight as could be, the walnut strips are with in a 1/64 true all the way down 80* of laminations... finally.

On better news though, I did get to run the mockup and it came out PERFECT! Should be seeing the real deal roll off the CNC by end of the weekend.

I sacked up and put the actual blank on the CNC and this is the result.

Came out great!

The "CourtneyCaster"

2009-02-28T17:42:00.000-08:00

My friend Courtney has been dying for a nice guitar of her own and I decided it was time to build one together. Its a nice 2pc alder body that we took down to 1.6" thick to help save some weight. Courtney is like 5'1" tops so the thinner body is good for her.

Anyways, some pictures of todays work

...before buffing
The buffer is still the best investment this year!
Tonerider Classic Blues pickups, PIO .047cap
"CourtneyCaster"!
Strung up, intonated ect ect

I need to take another picture with the owner *in focus* before she leaves! The smile through my camera completely out of focus!!

Day 1 of Fretting Day...

2009-02-27T22:31:00.001-08:00

Stars must have aligned today. Some replacement parts for the CNC that were due today didn't make it so we all bailed out of the shop early. Right around the time we were calling it a day I get an email from Dave - "Have 3 hours to kill today after work, you working on guitars?"... well I guess we'll have too now! So I cranked out an extra rack to keep at Steve's and headed over to get a jump start on fretting.

Dave in fancy work clothes... knocking down the sanding sealer I shot last week.
Rolling out some fretwire in Steve's home built radius jig.
Cut and ready to press in!
We've been using Steve's drill press with the StewMac caul to press the frets in.
One down...
Three down.......

We did end up using CA glue on these to make sure they stay seated.
Working our way down. One unexpected upside to the drill press is we could lock the quill while the glue set.
hammering the ends a bit over radius.
Snipping the ends of the wire off at the board.
I don't know why but I thought I was making a funny face here...

After showing Dave what to shoot for he took over.
Before Dave got there Steve and I did my bound 'bird. Steve's using his homemade fret nipper.
pressed and edges filed.
Leveling the frets
And recrowned.

I PROMISE on Sunday we'll get some better shots of the various steps. Dave has really taken over as official documentarian!

revisiting an old friend

2009-02-27T22:20:00.000-08:00

Brought the first strat I built out of retirement to try some new Paper in Oil caps of different values. Well anyone who has owned a strat knows every time you pull the pickguard you have to unsolder the ground and output jack. Major PITA to say the least. Well, Steve turned me on to these mini "molex" connectors used in RC cars and such. A buck fifty each and you have an instant disconect.

Unhooked...
hooked...
and back together.

One last thing...

2009-02-22T17:40:00.001-08:00

Dave did bring a couple of other projects to work on over the next few days...
This guy needs a refret
And the one Im playing needs a new nut cut. We'll work on those when we get some time.

Moving forward... fire-ward?

2009-02-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

Another Sunday... another update. Today started drilling my tail piece holes, chasing out tuner holes ect. The 2 'birds from the original batch needed the pots and output jack holes drilled as well.

This jig is for the 2 original bodies that only had pilot marks for where to drill.
Because of the way our CNC holds parts down I can't drill all the way through (plus it will blow the back side out) so we had to chase all the holes through. Using some old butcher block as a backer.
Another one of the originals that has to be drilled from scratch. This template lines everything up.
Dad hard at work drilling headstocks.
Starting to drill for tailpiece bushings.

The blue tape is to remind me NOT to drill the bridge holes. Those use a different size bit...
After the drilling was done I decided to shoot a few coats of sealer down. Normally I wait till after fretting but since the weather has been oscillating between warm, wet, cold ect I decided I might as well spray a couple coats of sealer on to protect the wood.
Same contraption as last time only on a grander scale.

Masked up and spraying. Three seems to be the magic number, enough room to work around.

Time to put Dave to work again! Thought he should learn to use the spray gun...
He got the hang of it eventually!

Happy Birthday Dad!

2009-02-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

Was Dad's birthday today so besides the regular old dinner and presents routine we went out and sat in with Dave and some friends tonight. Was a fun night and the Tele we built together sure sounded good!

Took the weekend off

2009-02-15T13:16:00.000-08:00

It was Valentines Day AND a 3 day weekend so the wife and I got out of town. Took the dog and went to visit my parents at their cabin up by Mt. Shasta to get away. Don't fret though... I still brought a guitar!

Next weekends update should be good though. Start fretting some guitars, get a couple of stalled projects back into motion and hopefully picking up some Black Limba I've been waiting on.
-d

NGD!!

2009-02-11T21:21:00.001-08:00

If you haven't noticed Steve helping me around the shop, he's in my blog below. Steve is my father in law and chief "giver of G.A.S." so to speak. Last September I cut a Firebird for him that he finally finished tonight!!
Steve's new Firebird on the left. The strat on the right is the first Strat body I ever cut. Steve does all his own finishing, cuts clear pickguards to back paint them ect.

Back painted clear truss rod cover Steve made.
Same thing here. Steve printed a mirror image of the Firebird logo on decal paper. Then applies it to the backside of a clear acrylic pickguard he cut and paints "behind" the decal to match. Comes out sharp!
Fiesta Red wings, Tonerider Rocksong bridge pickup, Duncan P90 in the neck.
Running it through the paces in Steve's bandroom!

Brother and Sister here...
Had to give mine a play too...

Slow day at the shop

2009-02-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

Actually, we got a fair amount done it just didn't look like it. Also, forgot my camera at home so only a couple pictures from today. Basically, we got 3 more guitars inlayed today. Brought 2 of them home today out of boredom.

So there we go. They are going to look pretty sharp on the wall :D

inlay day!

2009-02-01T17:00:00.001-08:00

Another Sunday, another day working in the shop. I know its blasphemous but its Superbowl and we all would rather be here working then watching the game. Today I finished the last 4 necks and started the inlay work.

Some Mother of Pearl taped down ready to get cut on the CNC. This stuff murders bits... my day ran short because it fragged my last 2mm OD cutting bit.

Block inlays on my "GLT-P90" laid in.

The other Dave... working on his Firebird. Dave plays in Steve's band.

Steve and Danny hard at work sanding here. SO much sanding in guitar building...

Getting ready to work the MOP trap inlays down

Inlays worked flush to the board. This board is REALLY pretty, pictures don't do it justice.

Danny's 'bird with block inlays.

Back at work shaping in necks.

Over at the other side of the shop Steve and Dave are drop filling a couple spots with epoxy. This fretboard has a worm hole that showed up after cutting the radius. Luckily its after the 22nd fret so we just filled it with epoxy.

Steve back at work sanding down inlays with the radius block.

Danny... still sanding

The "GLT-P90" all done. First attempt at binding and it came out very nice!

Danny finally done sanding

We did a little work on Dave's Harmony Rocket today as well. Running it through its paces after stringing it back up.

Danny showing off his hardwork.

the closing shot ;)

Making sawdust...

2009-01-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-24T17:48:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Firebird fretboards

2009-01-11T21:01:00.000-08:00

Got a late start today but started making fretboards for firebirds today. Dave came down and took a bunch of pictures. We got a couple done, have a couple more radius' and ready for the fret slots tomorrow.

Starting off slicing up some rosewood

A piece of Bolivian Rosewood and a couple Indian Rosewood sticks going through the sander

Attaching a board down to a spoiler board to run on the CNC

ahhh... the required BFH to remove loosen the collet

out of focus fret slotting bit. Tiny bastard. Im going to talk to our saw blade sharpening guy about grinding down one of our old CNC's saw blades (it has a 4" dia blade to cut back grooves) to do slotting. The router bits take FOREVER!

Speaking of forever... when I cut things on a radius like the fret slots (they get cut to match the surface radius) our CNC won't cut those to depth in incremental amounts. So I have to manually program the machine to cut a bit deeper each time over about 15 passes.

Well this requires standing there for 30 minutes hitting start every 3 minutes. PITA. Finally I got bored and found a stick, wedged the "start" button down and went in the office to play guitar with Dave :lol:

checking inlay pocket depth...

Ahhh poor Dave. I gave him the joyous job of scraping double side tape residue off.

Daves FB finished!

Dave's awesome use of the focus but his board with side dots installed.

I forgot to take pictures of the others tonight so this will have to do. I routed mine with blocks and started binding it today.

fun day :D

Todays project...

2009-01-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a while since I last posted. Holidays and all that jazz has kept me pretty busy. Now that Im back it was time to start a new project. I've been really wanting to get a buffing rig setup for my finish work. Right now I've been doing it with a hand car buffer and it works ok but not great. So this is what I came up with.

With the covers off...

With the covers on. So far its working out well, can't wait to try my first buffing job on it! I've got a Tele Custom body that's been waiting for buffing for a while that I think is going to be my first trial run.

Thunderbird...

2008-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

Joe's Thunderbird blank sanded to thickness. Sure is gonna be purdy

Thunderbird...

2008-12-09T19:26:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie. Got the wing blanks glued onto Joes Thunderbird today. As cold as it is right now the squeeze out takes quite a while to dry... might not get sanded till thursday.

shopsmith

2008-12-09T14:05:00.001-08:00

I recently picked up an old Shopsmith MKV for free. We tore it apart last week, cleaned it up and started using it as our new drill press and horizontal boring machine (amongst other things...).

Here is my tele output jack alignment jig. Screws down to the table and indexes the bodies for drilling.

Here is a body on the machine ready to be drilled.

And the final product. Not bad for a 50 year old machine!

tele's

2008-12-09T11:11:00.001-08:00

Just a few tele's in the rack right now... most of these are going out including the left handed one (first lefty I've gotten to make!!). The crummy cell phone shots don't do it justice, the lefty one has just gorgeous grain.

Building Joe's Thunderbird

2008-12-08T20:53:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post Im building a Thunderbird for a friend of mine.

Started with a large blank of lightly skimmed African Mahogany.

Joe's is a little more involved since he wanted to do the Walnut strips like the Gibson's have. So I cut the mahogany into strips and grabbed some Walnut to do the neck section.

Here she is all glued up. Next things to do are chop the headstock out of it, attach the blanks to form the wings and sand it all to thickness. Then it'll be time to go on the cnc machine!

firebird cont...

2008-12-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

Here I am back cutting a neck. This seems to speed things along pretty well when it comes to the final shaping.

There we go... pile of back cut firebirds. Next up: Cutting fretboards.

2008-12-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

So now that the intro is out of the way I thought we'd get caught up on the last couple weeks projects. I've decided that one Firebird simply isn't enough so I picked up another 24' of 8/4 African Mahogany. I am building a couple for friends and a Thunderbird for a friend.

I do the vast majority of my machining on our in house SCMI Tech99 CNC (Point to Point technically) router. The machine is from the mid 90's so its pretty antiquated by today's standards... but I can trick it into doing some of the more complicated things (like doing the radius on fretboards ect).

So I forgot to take pictures from raw wood stage but this as bodies started coming off the machine.

First batch coming off the CNC. From left to right its: My FirebirdJR, my Firebird VII (3x P90's), Daves Firebird VII (Mini Buckers), Dad's Firebird V (2 full size humbuckers) and my Firebird VII (3 fullsize 'buckers)

Now there are 2 more firebirds here... both for Nick Greer (www.greeramps.com). Though I accidently routed the trussrod to deep on one of them so I glued in a maple strip before rerouting. I actually think this is a blessing in disguise to help reinforce the neck.

All done waiting for the next step!

So this is the next step. What I do is back cut the necks to (more or less) the final thickness I want the neck to end up. What I do is build a couple jigs that have the amount of rise I want (in this case .15") to taper.

Since one of these is Dad's after all... and he was down at the shop anyways, I decided he had to do some of the leg work.

I guess its time to start this

2008-12-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! I figured I might as well start "blogging" my various projects and such. First a little back story- I've been playing guitar for the last 10 years. My main job is doing custom cabinetry in the family business (www.kauerkreations.com) so I don't know I didn't think of building guitars till the last couple years.

This is the first guitar I started actually 3 years ago... I still haven't finished it because I keep going off on other projects.

That's as far as that one has gotten... its chambered Walnut and Maple. Its got a Warmoth neck but I did everything else. Part of why I've been procrastinating on this guitar is I learned a lot of valuable lessons on it and maybe thats why I haven't completely finished it yet.

In the mean time I've done a few others:

So those were the first few I got done. All of them have Allparts or Warmoth necks but same routine, I cut the bodies from scratch, do the paint ect. I know that some view this as cheating but the way I look at it, I could barely buy the materials for that price.

Right now I have a few projects that are various stages of finishing... they have been derailed by my new obession but that will come up in a bit.

Telecustom body I cut... painted in Ice Metallic Blue.

This one is chambered African Mahogany with a maple cap. One of these days I'll get around to finishing both those...

But here's the main reason those projects have been put on hold. This has become my new building obession:

Now... the building process for these is much longer than I care to do in one post. Since I dont want to back track that much I just happen to have 8 more (not ALL for me I swear!) going right now and Im still near the start. Thats where I'll start blogging those!

So there are more projects floating around, I'll get to them eventually!

-doug