LP jr - JohnH's #5

[JohnH]

Good to see it went to a good home. Still a bit bummed out for Bobby, and I hope he can get back onthe horse, so to speak, in the future. I like the sound of your plans JH, will watch on with great interest.

Yeah, me too. I hope I can do the build some justice and that he likes how it comes out.

That fretboard has some character. I plan on doing a hand rubbed burst myself, so I’m keen to see how your effort turns out. Good luck with the build.

Thanks DarkMark - I think I'll use my router to copy the body shape on some ply scrap I have lying around, and practice the burst a few times on those! Figure there's no such thing as too much practice.

[JohnH]

Also, I've just routed the binding channel for my MPL Megacaster, and figured that as the router was all set up for it I may as well cut binding channels on this one too. I'm putting in an order next week for some maple binding for one of my acoustic refurb jobs, so I'll add some plastic binding to the order - maybe cream?

[bobby_boy]

Really glad the kit went to someone with a passion for JRs. I’ll be watching the build with interest.

[JohnH]

Really glad the kit went to someone with a passion for JRs. I’ll be watching the build with interest.

I hope you like how it eventually comes out!

[bobby_boy]

Love the idea of the binding already!

[JohnH]

Love the idea of the binding already!

Ha ha ha, excellent! Sadly I didn’t quite get to it yet - the whole family has some kind of plague, and it’s the worst. It might mean that by the time I get to it I’ll actually have the binding on hand to just do the whole job all at once, which would be nice.

[JohnH]

Made myself a master template out of MDF today, so now I can cut half a dozen copies out of ply and can practice my burst technique to scale.





While I was doing it I realised I probably can't actually bind the body, as there is already a bevel sanded around the outer edge which is greater than 2mm. I suppose if I was doing a solid colour I could cut the channel and then use grain filler to hide the gaps, but as that isn't the current plan I might just leave it

[JohnH]

Getting back into this kit this week - started shaping the headstock, marking out the holes for the neck, etc

I thought I'd use my round over bit to do the edges, but then hit a bit of a snag. If I use the round over bit to do the whole way round the back, it's going to take the edge in under the neck plate.

I took a couple of quick pics to show what I mean. The pencil line is where the bit will round the edge to, and the neck plate will clearly hang over the edge.

My first thought was to use the bit to go around almost the whole back, but leave the sides of the neck join and then use a file to transition to a thinner curve.

I guess I have two questions:

1) will it look dumb to have a uniform radius around 90% of the guitar but then a different (much thinner) radius just around the neck join?

2) if this is what you would do, where would you start the transition?

[JohnH]

After spending ages trawling forums, it seems I found the answer to my round over question:

http://www.strat-talk.com/threads/lets-build-one.760/

(post#19)

Now I can see it it makes a lot more sense to me, so will try to tackle this sometime this week

[wazkelly]

That was an interesting read.