Wow. There is some serious work going on here. The caps and the headstock look great.
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Wow. There is some serious work going on here. The caps and the headstock look great.
Weird Bits, it's absolutely amazing what you've done with this kit.
Go straight to the top of the class, Weirdbits!
Just shows what can be done with patience and perseverance.
Folks, there is ALWAYS a work around, Weirdbits has just proven me right 8-)
Well, the delivery I was waiting on didn't show up so I couldn't do what I planned to do… so all that was left was to do something reckless.
The neck fit was quite snug in body of this kit, but the bottom of the neck pocket itself was pretty rough with a deep gouge and undulating machine marks. So, although the fit was good the contact patch to the body wasn't great… and it was bugging me. Sanding wasn't going to be enough so that left only one option… doing something stupid and reckless that could potentially ruin the body. Re-rout the neck pocket! Well, this is my experimental build, so I guess go big or go home, right?
First, a warning: Don't try this! I mean, really, DO NOT try this! So many things could go wrong and it could ruin your beautiful Pitbull kit.
Ignoring such wise advice I started by filling the deep gouge with Timbermate so that once it was dry I would have a nice contrast to the wood so I could see how the smoothing was progressing. Next, I needed something to do the routing. In the first set of images below I present to you the patented WeirdBits' neck pocket fixerupper smoothing/ruining routing rig. The rig consists of a Dremel reaming bit in an electric drill mounted in a stand/press with the mount reversed and locked, an aluminium sheet slide bed, loads of clamps, and sheets of non-stick baking paper to allow the guitar body to slide freely. Jealous, aren't you? ;)
After some careful measurement, a straight-edge, lots of eyeballing and umming and ahhing it was eventually revealed that the neck pocket had an almost imperceptible angle to it that I going to have to take into account with my re-routing (this was one of those things that could go horribly wrong). A little packing (about 3mm) attached to the back of the guitar body behind the neck pocket angled the body to the routing rig enough to match the existing neck pocket angle (fingers crossed). I couldn't afford to remove too much material from the pocket or else the neck would sit too low in the body. As such, I set the router to take the smallest amount of material possible with each pass (I had to manually adjust it each time), took a deep breath, and started. What followed were three extremely nerve-wracking and scary passes over the neck pocket, where it always seemed to be taking off way more than I intended, and every moment I was terrified I was going to $#&* it up.
In the end I stopped after three passes as I couldn't risk taking any more wood away. The neck now sits a couple of mm's lower into the body, but the alignment looks good and after doing some string and straight edge tests looks like it's at a good angle for the saddle heights <sigh of relief, for now>. I wasn't able to get rid of the gouge in the pocket completely, there's still a hint of the Timbermate there, but all of the other marks and undulations are gone and it looks pretty damn smooth. A much better contact point for the neck.
The second set of pics below are the (rather poor quality) before shots of the neck pocket. I played with the contrast to try to get all the gouges and undulations to show, but they really aren't coming though in the image. It was a lot worse than it looks here. The last set of pics are the after shots, with my smooth, even, and almost gouge-free neck pocket.
I'm still not entirely happy, and the routing wasn't perfect, but at least I didn't destroy the body (at least, I don't think I did). Would I do it again? Probably… not. Too nerve wracking.
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...outing_rig.jpg
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...cket_gouge.jpg
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...t_smoothed.jpg
The experiment continues… this time it's a neck plate recess. I mean, every bolt-on deserves recessed neck plate, right? It's probably unwise to try, but, hey, it's an experimental project.
Usual warning: attempting this could ruin your Pitbull kit and make you very sad. If you do decide to try it, be very careful about the depth of the recess and the length of your neck mount screws!
My Dremel was going to be doing the routing so the first thing I did was make a template/guide to match the bit and mount I would be using. I then did a test on a bit of pine and tweaked the template with some strategically placed tape to smooth out a couple of spots and did another test before I was happy with the fit for the neck plate. The next step was the point of no return. I put the neck plate in position on the body, used a sharp hobby knife to score around it to get a clean cut on the grain and minimise tearing, then clamped the template in place around the neck plate. After removing the neck plate I was ready to start (carefully) routing.
I did a half-depth rout on the first pass. Then I set the depth to the full thickness of the neck plate, reduced it slightly to allow for clean up and sanding, and made the final pass. I made a small sanding block with corners that matched the rout, stuck on some 180 grit, and smoothed out the base of the rout. I used a combination of the block and the hobby knife to tidy up the edges and fine tune the final fit of the neck plate. In the end, it actually turned out better than I hoped. Once I've done the final sanding of the body the depth of the plate in the recess should be just what I was aiming for (I think).
Ok, the pics…
First set images show: a) The Dremel, template, neck plate and initial pine test rout. b) Template in position around neck plate. c) Template clamped and neck plate removed ready for routing.
Second set shows the results of the routing and clean up in progress.
Third set set shows the finished product after sanding and clean up!
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...e_recess_1.jpg
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...e_recess_2.jpg
http://pitbullguitars.com/wp-content...e_recess_3.jpg
Wow, that's impressive. What's the benefit with doing this? Is it purely aesthetic, or is there a playability factor?
Hey Weirdbits,
Great to see some experimentation :D
Don't go too crazy routing bits out of the body though! 8-)
Nice work! Very brave too!
I think 'too crazy' may already be in the rear view mirror, DB. But, I'm not planning on doing too much more to this kit... maybe.
Adam, it's partly aesthetics, partly feel and partly to just see if I could do it.
There are three good reasons :D