Tony first Scratchie

[Simon Barden]

@ Andrew yep he good old Aussie safety boot, should probably be wearing something a little more robust- especially when working with chisels.

I find that toes are very overrated and so 2016.

Looking great. It's a real shame about the extra fret slot. but a lot of guitars have some form of inlay on that last fret.

[vh2580]

Got back into this today and made a trem cover out of some Ebony headplate. Next build I will inset into the body.
Decided to fix the extra fret slot I had cut . cut another slot line and removed the end of fretboard and glued in and shaped some black MOP to suit.

[vh2580]

Had a crack at shaping the neck and now know why everyone uses CNC to do this stuff, took most of the day
Rough shaped the main neck area down to 24mm to get the basic profile I was happy with and then worked on the transitions to the headstock and neck joint. Did some more shaping and got the neck down to 22mm at headstock end tapering down to 23.5mm at the joint end. Measurements are with fretboard unprofiled so may drop a little in thickness once thats done and final sanded.

[Zandit75]

Nice work Tony!! Love the shaping around the neck too!

[vh2580]

So fitted some Black MOP fret dots and radiused the fretboard. Bent my fret wire and installed frets and only had an issue with one pesky bugger that needed to be CA glued in.

[vh2580]

Got a Babicz trem for this build and I am so sold on these things, man there is some meat on the tone blocks.
One issue though is that Babicz, when manufacturing, obviously didn't take into consideration that I would have a thinner body than a standard strat. (LOL)
So will have to remove about 3mm off the top where it screws into the baseplate. Plenty of thread to accommodate.
Just have to find a jobbing shop and give it a mill.

[wazkelly]

Hi Tony, bummer about the long trem block. Hope it is not too hard to trim a bit off?

[Simon Barden]

It's important to get a really flat surface on the block to maximise the contact area and sustain. Make sure that after the main height reduction that you rub it down on increasing grit numbers to level it and get the top as smooth as possible. You can also use flat oil stones (fused for sharpening tools and knife edges etc.).

[wazkelly]

Would it be easier to file it back from the bottom where the springs connect?

[Simon Barden]

If the block is like a traditional Fender one, then the string ball-ends should sit just below the surface of the end of the block. Cheaper alloy blocks often have much deeper holes so the ball ends sit much nearer to the bridge, and this is supposed to detrimentally affect the tone and sustain (the string end is then only pulling against some of the light mass of an alloy block rather than the heavy mass of all of a steel block). But if you file the bottom end of a block with the ball ends just below the surface, then you'd also have to re-drill the insert holes otherwise the ball ends would sit proud of the block (and you wouldn't be any better off). You'd probably also have to deepen the spring claw holes. So it's really less work to remove the depth from the bridge-plate end.