Drew's ES-5V first (ish) build

[blinddrew]

:thumbup:

[blinddrew]

Well today has been a mixed day.
The turps rub highlighted a couple of other minor glue smears that I was able to remove as well as showing that I seem to have done a reasonable job with the main ones. We'll mark that up in the 'good' column.
Next thing was taping up the fretboard and tackling the fret levelling. Tapped in a couple of high frets, marked and levelled the length of the board, apart from one fret not staying down (i'll tackle that another day), it all seemed to be going well. Another 'good'.
And then I removed the masking tape.
Which took with it a whole load of the top of the fretboard. Hard to show in photos but if you zoom in around the 11th and 13th you can see what I mean:

I guess I should have oiled it first. Notch that up under 'bad' column.
Having decided to leave that particular problem for another time I turned my attention to the other end of the headstock. Firstly I trimmed it down so that it was a bit more symmetrical, which went ok, and then started to reshape the top. Whereupon I managed to break a chunk out of the face - quick bit of glue and clamping leaves it looking like this now:

I don't know how difficult that's going to be to sort out longer term.
Anyway, whilst I was working on the neck I noticed another thing to notch up on the bad column.
Have a look at the next couple of photos, particularly the amount of fretboard underneath where the nut will sit.
Left side:

Right side:

basically, the fretboard doesn't have a parallel base.
So if you look down the neck you can see that the headstock (indeed the whole body of the neck) is offline with the top of the fretboard:

I am thinking that I will just have to live with this and offset it with the bridge angle. Ho Hum.
Finally though, I sanded the body and applied a first coat of sealant, which is looking quite nice:


So we'll mark that up as a 'good' and call it day there.

[FrankenWashie]

That body looks great Drew, bugger about the fretboard.

[blinddrew]

Yeah, think the body's going to come up lovely, I'll just distract people with that and hope they don't notice anything else...

[blinddrew]

Had a bit of time to work on things today, so after doing a mock up build to check alignments and fret / bridge heights, it was time to work on the neck.
First up was finishing shaping the headstock. I think I've made it more symmetrical and tidied it up. On the front I've put a chamfer on three sides and then gone for a heavily smoothed effect on the rear.



Looking again after the first coat of sealant I haven't done such a good job around the heel, more sanding is required here. It is distinctly tricky to get a smooth finish over the different bits of wood around that three dimensional curve.

[blinddrew]

Had another look at this today and decided I really hadn't done a good enough job last week. Hadn't done a good enough job with the 240 before going to the 320 and the sealant.
So basically did all that again, 240, 320 and then a more generous application of the sealing stuff.
No pictures becasue it looks identical to last week!

[Simon Barden]

It's all character-building stuff, Drew.

Bitter and twisted character-building, but still character-building.

[blinddrew]

Yeah, I'm just glad my character isn't being built as much as yours at the moment.

[Simon Barden]

Touché!

Hidden text to make 10 characters

[blinddrew]

Today I have worked out that I can use my dremel-alike as a crude lathe and have been making a tone and volume knob - because I really don't like the plastic ones that came with the kit. Going to have a stab at a wooden truss rod cover as well. Aiming to get the knobs and cover the same (I'll be happy with similar) colour as the bridge.