That veneer looks really fantastic. There's always little slip ups, luckily they will be hidden!
I have had great success with simple eBay bone nuts, they work well are super cheap and the 42mm ones are an excellent fit, several have needed nothing doing to them other than gluing in, maybe I've been lucky!
Did the tummy cut...last week when I was doing the forearm contour, I just forgot to do this part and just now got back to it. It's fairly deep in the body, but I decided to blend it in to go with the whole round or soft aspect of the ergo features I'm going for, so it's a bit hard to see in the pic, but, I think the final result will be... "elegant" I guess is the word.
...and I glued/set the neck:
Today I'm going to glue some wood to the heel so I can get the smooth transition I want and eliminate the sharp/square end where the pocket starts, sorta emulating a neck-through guitar visually. Will take lots of sanding, but I think it will look and feel way better.
Gonna do a test run on applying black dye/stain and sanding it back on the body and headstock to get an idea on how the maple is going to look. I hit it with some naptha, and it looks pretty insane...we'll see how that translates to actual application.
On the nut...I guess my thought on building a kit guitar is that rather than emulating and trying to recreate a classic guitar, I want to create something unique...so I'm interested in trying uncommon things or adding features that weren't included in the original design (mod platform). I saw some stuff on these Gibson z-fan nuts and the zero glide, and I thought it would be something different and boutique-ie. The reviews I'm finding are pretty split -- some people love 'em, some people hate 'em. I'm a self-taught bass player who sometimes noodles around on guitar, so what do I really know about guitars, right?...haha. After 38 years of bass playing, I'm actually thinking of getting formal guitar lessons (nobody want to listen to bass around the camp fire), so I thought, what the hell...I'll build my own guitar
I'll probably just get a nice Graph Tech nut in the end, but I think half the fun is trying out weird stuff
Last edited by geddyfan; 29-09-2018 at 10:14 PM.
...and my wife responds, "If only it was that easy."
Time to sand...
Looking good man! Love the flow of your "tummy cut".
I'm still standing at my letterbox and looking up and down the street for mine. Adam suggested back orders may be filled next week.
Shaping the heel.
Cut three pieces of the 1/8" maple and sandwiched them to fill the void...
Free-handed some of this with the grinder, then attacked it with 60 grit...I was actually really worried about this, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. Lots more sanding, but I'm pretty happy.
Nothing as sad as someone standing wistfully at the window...waiting for the postman to arrive...Originally Posted by cork sniffer
Everything I've ordered from Pitbull, I'll get an email from Aust Post...
'Your parcel from A.B will be arriving tommorrow'
'Your parcel from AB will be arriving today' at which point I can narrow down my mooching by the front door down to a 12 hour window.
cheers, Mark.
I like it!!!Shaping the heel.
Cut three pieces of the 1/8" maple and sandwiched them to fill the void...
Free-handed some of this with the grinder, then attacked it with 60 grit...I was actually really worried about this, but it turned out to be easier than I thought. Lots more sanding, but I'm pretty happy.
You'll probably see something similar on mine after the postman's been.
Smooth melding works for this neck body type opposed with the sharper edge on my previous build shown in post #14.
Well, I'm having a surgery next week and might not be able to do any work on the guitar project for six weeks...AND winter is fast approaching (I'm in Montana), so my window for spraying finish is rapidly closing (I do it out on the porch)...so I did some stuff to try to get ahead of the curve...
I did the stain on the maple top...not sure what to think of it. Of course, all guitars should be red and black, so I stained black, sanded back, and went over with the red. I got a lower grade of veneer this time, and the result not quite what I was expecting. Leopard spots is the only way I can really describe it. The pic doesn't really capture it (in person, it's a bright, deep red) and there's not as much "shimmer" as I was hoping for. I actually did it twice. Completely sanded it back and re-applied, same result...so I'm going with it.
My hope is that the lacquer will make it shimmer and pop.
Put some sanding sealer on last night and lightly sanded with 400 and this seems to bear out when I hold it in the light. It'll still be cool, but I liked what I achieved with the bass better. That's what I get for changing grade.
Put a couple coats of sanding sealer on the rest. It's too bad that I dorked up the body when the bearing flew off my router bit...I like the wood, and I might have gone trans red or black on the rest to show the grain. Oh well...solid black nitro it is...
Happy with the way the heel turned out. I rounded it out all the way around...no sharp corners on this guitar (well, except for the pointy thing I did with the head stock).
Looking at hardware for this thing. Thinking about using this Wilkinson wraparound bridge:
https://www.guitarfetish.com/Wilkins...dge_p_865.html
Anybody have opinions/experience with these? Was going to go with a Badass-style, but I saw this and it seems to go with the aesthetic I'm trying to achieve.
I was going to put an obnoxious number of pickups in it, but decided to go for simplicity and just one in the bridge position...but I'm thinking of a humbucker rather than single coil. I'm happy with the pickups I got from GFS last time, but am also open to other suggestions...not opposed to spending over a hundred bucks on the pickup...musically, I lean from classic/hard rock to metal...suggestions?
Last edited by geddyfan; 06-10-2018 at 12:54 AM.
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