Weighty matters

I played around with the new guitar some last night and thought the neck felt 'heavier' than on my other instruments so . . . .

tested the balance point: just behind the neck plate at this point, it'll move back into the body some more once the pickups and electronics are installed but with the pickups being single coil alumi tones they aren't all that heavy . . . the neck falls nicely into the hand when sitting though, and a little pressure of the right forearm fixes the instrument in place nicely . . . no strap buttons yet, but I don't think there will a tendency for neck dive as the balance point in already behind (if not by much) were the neck button will go.

tested weight: . . . holy mackerel . . . only ~ 5.5 lb for the whole instrument right now, that's less than just the body of my mahogany jazzmaster (let alone after installation of the pRails pickups) . . .

Last ... hopefully ... cuts on the body

So I REALLY want to finish this before the end of the month because we NEED to demolish our shed and rebuild a new bigger one which obviously includes quite a bit of work . . . including moving quite a bit of earth to level the bigger site . . . and cutting off some lower tree limbs so it'll fit . . . and demolishing the old chicken run (which hasn't been used since we moved in) . . . which leads to => we really should pull the old fence posts - - - - which are possibly set in concrete. So it's clear that when that all starts there will be little time for extended extra curricular activities.

With that in mind, I think these are the last cuts that define the body . . . .

First routing out the top part of the upper front bout to the 'lower' level'





















This wasn't QUITE what I intended but a 'spur of the moment' thing . . . the original idea was to curve the lower step around with the outline and cut the upper step straight.

Next the step . . .  drawing the curve using a ruler as a batten, not really recommended, but everything else I tried to use was either . . . not straight to begin with . . . or didn't bend quite easily enough. You sometimes just have to go with what works.

So I first free hand routed close to the line (<1 mm outside was considered 'good enough') and then I sanded in the rest of the curve . . . how ??? well you need a piece of sandpaper on something that bends smoothly with the curve . . . I first considered a piece of 1/8 lexan . . . no go, once again it doesn't bend easily enough . . . next sandpaper rolled around a large dowel . . . works but is slow due to the small contact area . . . piece of 1/16 aluminum would work ... probably ... but darn if I can find my large piece I KNOW I have ... somewhere. So in the end I sacrificed an old thin 6" ruler which was a little stiffer than I really wanted but . . . available . . . sandpaper affixed with some painters tape and super glue and away we go . . . 120, 220 ... 320 . . . and done.

Next one more hair raising operation, drilling the holes for the neck screws . . .

Ok, so this is after measuring everything at LEAST 5 times and drilling the first 2 pilot holes with a 1/8" bit with a Dremel in a stand. I've said that I don't own a drill press before, that's not - strictly - true, I do have a stand for the Dremel and it comes in handy, but only fits small jobs and has limited reach but for some neck screw pilot holes it works . . .

The hair raising part was that the locations of the holes were taken off the neck, were they seem to be centered exactly ... as you would expect from - what is likely CNC - drilled holed from the factory. Also the neck pocket was formed using a StewMac neck pocket jig centered as exact as possible over that maple stripe in the middle ... .... ..... so . . . why do the front holes in the neck pocket seem to be ever so slightly out of true when lined up with a neck plate . . . I checked, rechecked, rerechecked, checked on the other side, carried measurements from one side to the other, rererechecked . . . and . . . it just is it seems, EVERYTHING checks out, the plate seems to sit correctly and evenly . . . BUT . . . the holes seem askew . . . in the end I drilled them and . . .

And I used some ebony Minwax penetrating stain on the upper step ... not sure if that will or will not eventually make a difference . . . or if it even makes it that far, it just may get sanded off before the 'real' finishing starts.

Performed the ULTIMATE check, I attached the neck with some #6 wood screws (standard neck screws are #8 . . . more on that later) - slightly undersized for 1/8" holes, they don't -quite - drop through but don't have a lot of 'bite' either . . . AND . . . it all lines up . . . so I'm still at a loss as to WHY the holes look askew . . . they STILL do . . . but there is a guitar there . . . Oh and that headstock will eventually need some reshaping . . . haven't worked that out yet, partially because the top curve starts just slightly north of the last tuner hole which is 'too close' for my original idea, on the pictures at the Warmoth site it seemed that I would have more 'room' there.

NECK

AND . . . the neck got delivered from Warmoth. And cudo's for a fantastic sanding job (it's smoooooooth) on a perfectly looking neck.

 The raw neck on the left . . . nothing special, 1 11/16 nut, 25.5 scale, 1605 frets, modern tiltback in roasted maple with malachite face and black side dots . . . got 2 coats of the Osmo Polyx oil. Yes (for the purists) it IS a floor coating product but after playing my modified 'jazz master' for a while which has a roasted maple neck finished with the same I like it. It looks good and holds up well on back of a neck.

And the finished product . . . the difference in tone & tint wasn't as great as last time, the raw wood had a lot more caramel tint than the neck of the JM had before coating, the headstock look a lot arker than the fretboard here but that's mainly because of the angle of the reflections . . . move your eye (or camera) and the head stock has the same tint as the fret board, I just couldn't get a good picture from that angle. 

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.

Coutours

So it's been a while . . . life sometimes has to happen too . . .

The next step is to rout the major contours into the body . . . the treble side first . . .

You can nicely see the difference in color between cherry that has been exposed for a while and freshly cut surfaces which are MUCH pales . . . unfortunately the IS some tearout along the backside of the 'horn' - such as it is - The options are to round over the edge, defeating the right angles of the design, cut a piece of closely grain matched cherry (I looked for the chip but was unable to find it) or I may inlay some quilted maple . . . we'll see later . . . maybe thin out that whole area one step further still (NOPE that IS NOT going to work, just checked and there's a relief cut in the back there, see the previous post) . . . have to check if I hollowed out the back there though. The middle picture shows were things went wrong when cutting away the 'waste' from the face of the 'waist'. I know what NOT to do the next time.

Next cutting the 'reveal' for the pickup switch control cavity.

It's actually 1/32 or so deeper than it should be ... one again live an learn, next time I'll drill a 1/4 hole into the cavity once I'm within an 3/16 or so so I can check the exact placing for the last router cut. This time I just advanced bu 1/16's or so and that didn't quite work out the way I thought.

And the mailman came by delivering the brass for the pickup rings and the control cavity cover . . . I don't remember ordering quite this many of the blanks for covers, but then again I'm bound to screw up at least one and now have plenty of spares. BTW brass is A LOT more work to cut that aluminum.

And then, the arm relief carve ....

Once more a bit of an experiment, a rotary rasp on my drill . . . I think I like the carving blade on my angle grinder better, it removes wood faster with more control, but this also works and makes slightly less of a mess. Ofter the removal of most of the waste it was back to a hand rast and file -once again notice the contrast between the fresh cut and the longer exposed wood - I'm still not entirely happy with this, I think the edge should meet the edge of the control rout but I didn't want to go 'too far' here.

And finally for some belly relief . . . not as extreme as the first one but it feels quite nice.

Marrying a body . . .

So first I needed to finish cutting the cavity for the controls in the back. The procedure was basically the same as before although I free handed the curve along the outer edge of the guitar . . . thought that making a template was too much work and with a sharp bit and careful thin passes that turned out to be true . . . it wasn't completely smooth but some sandpaper takes care of that . . . and it's the inside.

 Next, well the cable run from the rear pickup to the control cavity (painted with shielding paint here . . . and the hole for the bridge ground . . . Done, ready for the ceremony.

And it pratically impossible to have enough clamps. The boards put pressure on the middle of the glue up . . . important to keep everything flat . . . 

So while waiting for the glue to dry I tackled another project that had been kicking around for quite some time. My JM has staggered Gotoh HAMP tuners . . . advertising says that they don't need string trees . . . advertising may be right in some cases but that group doesn't include mine. Since I got them installed they look good & function well . . . BUT . . . the D string has been twanging behind the nut pretty much since I got the nut set up. Now I COULD just take a couple of winds around the post tho bring the break angle up but that kinda defeats the purpose of locking tuners. Thus back to string trees, the 'problem' is that the hardware is Cosmo Black (aka black chrome) ... try finding some roller string trees in that (hint Gotoh doesn't make any, and what they do make does not roll, though it's OK probably. Finally find some chinese ones that looked likely on ebay . . . and once they arrived they have been kicking around in my box for ....

So her they are ... AFTER ... some judicious use of a file on the left example . . . if I want to stagger them and have the same break angle on all 4 strings and have the stings exit parallel to the headstock to the tuners some modifications were needed.

And here they are installed, looks good (even if the screws are still flat black (and half a size to small). More important, the twang seems to be GONE.

After that it was time for operation drip control . . . the starting situation on the left . . . and mostly cleaned up on the right. For the eagle eyed, the glue up was indeed not perfect there is a slight glue line indicating that I need to do a better job flattening the parts before putting them together , , , I may but a 1/8 (or 1/16) wood binding there to hide the boo boo if everything else works out fine . . . I 'll just need to do a better job next time . . .