BREAD . . .

No not the kind you can spend unfortunately.

This is why there has little progress with the guitar the last weeks.

I wanted fresh home made bread . . . and the wife wanted a dough board before she would make some. Thus, strips of cherry and maple with food safe oil . . . we'll see how well it holds up.

It did teach me that I'm not really set up to do something the large (it's about 30" on a side) . . . especially the flattening jig need to be enlarged if I'm to make another one.

In control . . . somewhat

Well LIFE got in the way again . . . so progress has been somewhat slow . . . BUT . . .

First we got the jack . . . and that's were it needs to go . . . and checking for angle

So I don't have any pictures from actually drilling the hole . . . first I drilled a 7/8 hole using a fostner bit in my hand drill about 1/8 - 3/16 deep as a countersink

and then tried a 3/8 fostner in my hand drill to do the rest but that was slow going so I switched to a 3/8 spade bit to drill through to the control cavity. This is the final result with the electrocup nice and countersunk.

The end were it went into the cavity needed some work to enlarge it so the female jack would fit but some careful work with a rotary rasp and 220 grit sandpaper took care of that . . . sorry no pics here.

Next up the cut outs for the volume & tone controls. If I had a drillpress I would have used that with a Fostner bit but . . . yep . . . don't have one, so this called for a template and some router work . . . 

Some careful measuring, routing and work with a 1" spade bit later we have a template that fits perfectly in the cutout were the control cutouts need to go . . . and some work with a top bearing router bit later we have the cutouts for the controls. And as you can see I annotated the template after the fact. This last photo also shows the 'headache' I've put off dealing with, a rather large tearout at the back of the lower front bout. Still wondering what I'll do to fix it . . . which is on the 'menu' for next weekend . . . together with the removal of some material from the top front bout . . .

And finishing up on this . . . . the relief on the treble side of the neck pocket

And then there was THIS

Two pieces of 3/4" plywood laminated and banded on the long sides to form a base for my wife's lathe . . . for now it can be clamped to my work table or the old picknick table in the back but eventually it'll get the rest of a stand attached.

What's this?

Nope not some iron age tablets . . . . 2 oversized 'anvils' for leather working, the front is for stamping and the back can be used for cutting. Each is made from four 1/2 x 3.5" pieces of oak and a piece of 8 x 10" 1/16th mild steel ... and 4 machine screws.

Another day, another glue up . . . .

 Last time it was the back, this time it's the front . . . cherry and figured maple

 The finished product with some mineral spirits after flattening out the strip and 120 sanding . . . . .

And for good measure the back with mineral spirts . . . but unsanded, it has a bit of a bow and one of the cherry backsides is still rough cut so it needs to be flattened first. Debating wether to go 'old school' and trying a number 5 plane or finish my router jig first and use that for flattening . . . .

Any ideas yet ???

Start of a new . . . . . . .

Ok so this is the start of something new . . . . and not so new . . . so maybe that's somewhat new . . . partly new . . .

flattening edge

Routing for parallel edge

So I don't own a jointer . . . nor do I space for one and I currently don't have a router setup for jointing so this is how I join non-dimensional wood to make a larger panels . . . and it generally works well . . . although it does definitively require test fitting and fine tuning on occasion to get the best results possible. And even then the seams are not always 'perfect', but you have to inspect to work pretty closely to see that.

Always check . . . even if you KNOW

Checking for length

Accent strips in place

First glue up

And I did NOT have a piece of walnut quite long enough so it has a join as well . . . . this was made by cutting both pieces at a 45° angle, putting them together and recutting the join which makes both sides equal, checking and redoing if needed . If done carefully this does make for a perfect join and using a razor saw the amount of material removed if the fit is close but not prefect is minimal.

REALLY leveling accent strips

Leveling accent strips

Planes have been a fairly recent addition to the workshop ... they save a LOT of sanding but I'm still learning how to fettle them . . . and yes this is were the expression 'in fine fettle' seems to come from. A good level is flat (to within 0.005 I think in this case) so it makes for a nice - if somewhat narrow - sanding beam.

Cutting some cherry to length

So That's nice but not nearly wide enough so some cherry. I've had this (and the maple for the middle) laying around for a year+ so it's as dry and stable as it's going to get at this point I think. If you haven't tried a japanese style pull saw get and try one . . . it's worth it and you may sell your western style (push) saws after using one for a while . . .

Next glue up

24" clamps aren't cheap, but they do come in handy .. .. ..
. . . edit: Oops those are 36" . . . . .

One (mostly) finished back laminate

And one 'finished' panel for the back, it still needs flattening on the inner side but it was 4 o'clock so it was time to clean up) . . . next time the front panel . . . the weather was nice here this last weekend so the door was open . . . Below the panel is a 2 x 4 ft board with cork being banded with hawthorne as a pin up board for our 'school room' (and it'll also cover a hole in the wall were a cadet wall heater used to be installed).

Stupid mistakes . . . and a redo of the wiring diagram ... again

AND . . . one more time

OK so I managed to do a number on myself with the last revision of the coil selection switches . . . it was WRONG (mea maxima culpa) so that's been corrected - thanks to another question about humbuckers and series switching, I should trust myself a little more . . . SD humbuckers connect red to white for series . . . and that just wasn't happening before. The tone stack has also been revised. The 'grease bucket' (tm)  circuit has been removed as I couldn't figure out how to build it and a regular tone circuit on the switch ... I'll try that one again when I have some more time . . . AND . . . I wanted to try a treble bleed from the beginning so that's in there now with an on/off switch so I can see what and how much it does.

Making progress . . . . .

. . . . so far all the checks seem to come back as they should.

Left to do, build the treble bypass, finish the tone switch & knob . . . . . and wire it all to the jack. And ... transfer the harness to the actual pickguard and wire in the pickups . . . .

Oh and it turns out that guitar making IS a transferrable skill.