TL-1 (Factory second)

[peterh]

@tweaky,
Thanks for the great info. Much appreciated.
I gave the truss rod another 1/8th turn and it's just about dead level all the way down the neck now. Holding the straight edge at the 9th fret, the nut end is perfectly flush with the straight edge; at the heel end the gap is less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. The straightness is perfect up until the last 4 or 5 frets, then that small gap starts to show up.
I watched the video - will have to come back to that once I get to the point of putting the strings on.
Those fret protectors look pretty handy - I added them to my shopping cart on Amazon with the other bits and pieces. I ran the fret rocker over the neck again and I think there are only a few that are in need of a shave, so hopefully I can get away with just doing those but I may do the whole thing anyways just to be sure.

Had a couple hours on my own today so I got a first sanding done on the body with some 3M Pro 220 grit sandpaper. Took a while to get some of the machine marks off the edges but I think it's looking good so far. After the first round of sanding, I dampened the basswood and had another go at it. The wood seemed to pill up (like on a sweater) when I was sanding it - not sure if that means I had it too damp or not. It still has some roughness to it so I'll throw on a fresh sheet of sandpaper and have another go at it later.

I also did a bit of a mock build on the body and found the pickguard isn't too well shaped to match the routing in the body (see pics below). If I put the pickguard so it matches the neck cutout, there is around a 3/8" gap where the bridge goes. If I try to match the bridge location, one hole in the pickguard is almost in the neck pup cutout. If I wanted to have the pickguard in the proper location and move the bridge up to the cutout in the pickguard, I'd have to do a major routing of the bridge pup cavity.
Is this how the pickguards normally fit? When I ordered the kit it was supposed to come with a white pickguard but I asked Adam for a black one instead. I'm wondering if they might have been slightly different shapes?

pickguard matching neck cutout:


pickguard matching bridge cutout:


bridge moved to fit pickguard cutout (pickguard in correct location):


I also noticed that there is a hole drilled between the neck pocket and the neck pup cavity - not sure what, if anything, this is used for - there's no wiring going to the neck - is it for some kind of grounding? Or is it not used at all?

[Tweaky]

Seems your problem is just a scratch plate that has been cut too small around the neck area, going by your photos the middle one seems about correct , the space between the bridge plate and the scratch guard is supposed to be like that, and is the same on my USA Fender Tele, the short fall around the neck area seems a bit large though.

As for the neck pocket and the neck being 1mm out and showing a gap, it could be that the neck is a slightly different shape at the very end and as such, the neck isn't fitting snugly into the body.
What you want to do is to make a paper template of the neck pocket so it fits exactly into the neck pocket, and I mean exactly.


You should have at least 3 know straight edges [Red arrows ], I'd get a right angle and check just how square they are to each other to make sure [cheap plastic one for school maths from the newsagent will do], if they are are square to each other that's fine...make your template and then trace around it onto some graph paper, keeping those 3 edges as close to the graph papers grid as possible.

Then all you need do is place your neck on another piece of paper and trace around the portion of it that will fit into the neck pocket.
Cut that piece of paper out, then line the 3 know straight edges up on the graph paper [especially the bottom of the neck with the bottom of the neck pocket], then using a different colour pen trace that over the neck pocket tracing you did earlier....any differences will be immediately obvious, and depending what size graph paper you used [what size the squares are] you should know straight away in mm just how far either the neck pocket, or neck is out.

Having a good look at the photo you posted, I think the problem area is where I marked with a black arrow, it doesn't look quite square to me, it seems to have been rounded off a fraction too soon, result is that small bit of wood is stopping the neck going all the way into the neck pocket....using the graph paper trick will prove if this is correct or not [ the tracing of the neck will overlap the tracing of the body's neck pocket a fraction in the suspect corner], if it is this, it's a easy fix and you can get it sorted so the neck fits perfectly.

Hole in the neck pocket to the neck pickup cavity, that's a new one.... grounding should be to the bridge plate, so that hole has me stumped

[pablopepper]

The hole in the neck pocket is simply there from drilling the hole for the wires between the pickup cavities. It's a means to an end. Nothing to worry about.

As tweaky mentioned there should be a gap all the way around between the bridge and the pickguard.


Your bridge should be positioned by measurement of the scale length not where it sits with the pickguard and as some of us have found, this sometimes means moving the bridge pickup cavity forward by up to 5mm.

[peterh]

Well after a week in Cuba, I'm back at the build and making decent progress and having some fun.
I sanded, then sanded again, sanded a 3rd time with 220 grit. Then sanded and sanded again with 320 grit. It really took a while to get the machine marks out of the edges of the body but I think I've got them all now.
Debated about sanding again - just because - but it felt pretty good so I pulled out the analine dyes and started mixing. Never having used them before I wasn't sure how much to use and in the end I think I should have used much more. The mix is about equal parts Van Dyke brown, Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna + 2 drops of black. It gave the body a nice caramel sort of colour but I want something darker so after a bit of cleaning up and light rub (steel wool or more 320 grit?) I will go at it again with a more intense version of the same colour (double the # of drops of each dye) and see what comes out. Worst case, I can always sand it back and try again, right?
I did find one glue spot on the front face near where the crack between wood pieces was glued but it's relatively small - could have been much worse given the size of the crack
Here's a couple pictures of the progress to date anyways. The close up (middle) picture is probably the closest to the real colour - the bottom one came our rather red looking.





I'm thinking of staining the back of the neck the same colour. Anyone see issues with staining the back and leaving the natural maple of the fretboard?

Peter.

[Tweaky]

If the glue spot doesn't come out with sanding, be ruthless, get some really coarse grade sandpaper and really give that area a work over, then use some appropriate coloured wood filler to get the area flat with everywhere else....any staining should impregnate the filler, leaving you with a even looking finish to the rest of your guitar....try getting rid of the glue first though.

With the dyes, are you using powdered ones or premixed ones in a bottle?

[peterh]

If the glue spot doesn't come out with sanding, be ruthless, get some really coarse grade sandpaper and really give that area a work over, then use some appropriate coloured wood filler to get the area flat with everywhere else....any staining should impregnate the filler, leaving you with a even looking finish to the rest of your guitar....try getting rid of the glue first though.

With the dyes, are you using powdered ones or premixed ones in a bottle?

I think I've got the glue mostly taken care of. I didn't have any Goof Off / Goo Gone handy, so I tried the suggested technique of using a small brass bristle brush to work the area with the glue and it worked surprisingly well. Just roughed it up a small amount - didn't have to press very hard - and the second round of stain went on quite evenly. I used the darker mix of dye (doubled all the dye) this time and the colour is much darker this time. I think I may leave the face this colour and then go for an even darker side/back. I'm using liquid aniline dyes from www.woodessence.com. I'll try to get some pics posted of the face after the 2nd staining.
Any suggestions on what to use to remove any fluff from the basswood that gets raised through the staining process? Don't want to remove the stain - just smooth out any fibres that got raised.

Peter

[Tweaky]

That will happen with any wetting of the wood surface.....depends if you intend to put more dye onto it, or find it dark enough.

Wait till you get that correct, then swab off parts you deem too dark as best you can before it dries.

You want to wet / dry swab out, dye as best you can to get the colour you want...... If you have a veneer top, you only have .5mm of veneer to work with, so sanding is NOT what you want to be doing to adjust colour.

You also have the problem of possibly over saturating the veneer, making it lift...so be careful..... it's a fine line between whatever you choose to do.

A solid top like yours..... well you have a lot of latitude , and very little can actually mess up to such a stage that you need to think of a total refinish.

[dingobass]

Dont worry too much about any fibers that may stand up.
No need to sand as this will give you extra tooth for stain and finish coats to hang onto.

[stan]

Nice progress Peter , keep going mate

[peterh]

Progress has been slow, but progress none the less.
I was a bit afraid of going overboard when dying the body just because I'd never used liquid dyes before and didn't know how much to use or what the combinations of colours would result in.
After the first round of staining had dried, I really wanted something a bit deeper - especially since I wanted to do the sides/back a really rich dark colour. In the end, I did one more round with the same batch of dye I used the first time and it got a bit darker but I wanted something a bit richer looking so I mixed in an equal part of Amber to give it a bit more of a yellow tint rather than the brown I had been using. This has worked out pretty well I think - I'm pretty happy with it although overall it's just a tad darker than I wanted the face to be.
The back/sides were a bit more of a challenge - it just wasn't getting dark enough, so in a fit of impatience I said to heck with it and put in 6 drops of black. I saw someone else had posted a black stained tele recently I think and liked how it looked. It can always be sanded off, right? As it turns out it's pretty much bang on what I wanted - blackish but with a chestnut hue to it as well.
I thought I might as well try a slight sunburst look so I rolled the darker colour onto the face just for an inch or so. It was tougher than I thought to get a smooth transition. In the end I did one more coat of the lighter face dye and blended it back into the darker colour - that seemed to work better than trying to go from dark to light.

Final stain


I also went ahead and cut the headstock to shape. I used a template I found online but it didn't quite match up with the kit so I just lined up the holes (that part was okay) and used what curves I could and freehanded the part close to the nut. I used a coping saw to cut it to shape - it did leave a few kerf marks that took a bit more sanding than I hoped might be called for - that maple is a lot harder than basswood . The rough sanding is done but still need to do lots of finer sanding before I stain it. I'll leave the fretboard natural but will stain the back of the neck the same colour as the face of the body I think.


Long weekend next week so I hope to get a bit further with the neck.
Does it make any difference if you finish the neck before / after doing a fret job (other than the chance of dinging the finish if you do it afterwards)?