A tale of two STs

[DanMade]

It's all looking the goods Scott.

Neck screw ferrules are nice and neat, very classy.

[wokkaboy]

yes Scott both axes look very classy. Love the mods and the attention to detail to make it all fit together. As Brendan said nice looking fingerboards. Cool idea with a clear tremelo cover, you should leave it on !
What colour are you going to stain these ? You may have mentioned earlier in the thread

[WeirdBits]

@Brendan - yeah, there's a few rough spots on the fingerboard but that's a small price to pay for the grain, I'm really pleased with it. Even the headstock has some nice grain.

@wokka - The 'Brownie' ST (with the neck ferrules) will be in Columbian Gold with gold hardware and a white pickguard, and 'Blondie' will be Wudtone Colourless with chrome hardware and a white pearloid pickguard... and maybe a clear trem cover.

[wokkaboy]

cheers Scott, that columbian gold with gold hardware will look off the chain, can't wait to see it after some colour coats. By the looks you aren't far off that stage. Just keep in mind April GOTM you will probably be up against Pest's ST-1 in carmine gypsy !

[gavinturner]

Looking great Scott. As usual your attention to detail is paying off in spades. Always makes me wonder what details i am missing in my own builds! Will be great to see the finish go on both these bad boys. I'm particularly interested to see how the clear finish looks. Keep the updates coming!

Cheers,
Gav.

[lawry]

I feel a bit like a parrot here.... but, it does look classy and clean. I really like the gold finish and the fretboard grain is sweet. And, yeah, your processes are very nicely defined. I'm taking them on board.

[maxaxe]

Wow . . I love it all, but especially the ferrules and the clear back cover. After all your precision work on the cavity it deserves visibility! I reckon the gold hardware is the right choice too.
Maybe you can have more fun with blondies?

[WeirdBits]

It seems like Brownie is determined to fight me all the way. First, it was the crack in the headstock, then the crack and seam in the body, and now it's the trussrod.

While the neck is attached to the body I wanted to check the height of the action as accurately as possible, which meant straightening the neck which currently has a back bow. However, the end of the trussrod is skewed just enough to stop the allen key from seating. I spent close to an hour trying to wrangle the allen key into place, levering and wiggling, applying pressure, but all to no avail… I just can't get it to seat. I can sort of flex the collar a bit, but not in a way that allows me to slot in the key. In the end I gave up before I did something violent and unrecoverable. It's hard to get a good pic that really shows the issue.



I don't want to start smearing lubricant around if I can avoid it, so tomorrow I'll try bevelling the edge of the allen key a little and see if that helps to guide it into place. If that doesn't work I may have to look at shaving away a bit of the access hole so that the key gets a straighter run at the socket, but I suspect that once the tension is slackened it may allow the rod to line up better anyway, so I'm reluctant to take carving away.

Other suggestions?

[WeirdBits]

After several attempts and a whole lot of frustration I was finally able to get the truss rod loosened. I didn't want to start carving away at the access hole until I could see where the truss rod would sit with the tension off, but I just couldn't get the allen key to seat even after putting a bevel on its edge. So, in the end I had to gently pry the truss rod up a bit using the tip of a screwdriver pivoting on a wooden block while wedging in a thin wire rod to keep it in the raised position, sort of. Even with the rod jammed under the truss rod collar it took ages to get the allen key to slot in for each little turn, but it eventually worked and I was able to slacken off the tension. Huge relief...



With the tension off the truss rod it is now more accessible and sitting better (compare it with the pic in the earlier post), but the allen key still takes a bit of wrangling to get it to seat so I will have to modify the hole slightly. I'll probably have to file it out a bit, add some tension to the truss rod, test allen key access, repeat etc., hopefully without having to take too much away from the hole. I just don't want to end up being unable to adjust the truss rod again and have to repeat this process, especially once the finish is on.



Note: "Truss rod access" is now on my list of things to check when doing mock builds and test fits.