Members triestobeat Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 personally, the reason why i think les pauls are so good is because their solid. the new gibsons where they hollow out parts so that it's less heavy just doesn't sound as good. just my opinion though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Sean-Patrick Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 personally, the reason why i think les pauls are so good is because their solid. the new gibsons where they hollow out parts so that it's less heavy just doesn't sound as good. just my opinion though. Dude. Come back when you're sober. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members axegrinder Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Awesome! Thanks for the words. What I don't get is this. In this thread I see you using a forstner bit do take out the bulk of the pocket. How in the world are you getting a correct angle at the bottom of the pocket? I will try to answer with the limited experience I have had. I believe you are asking how do you guide the router to cut a sloped pocket. The answer simply is by using a sloped template. I remember in the guitar making class I took that we would staple a strip of wood (1/8" thick maybe ) onto the bottom of the template to rest somewhere toward the bridge area of the body. This was done to create the top plane of the template to be parallel to the neck. I will leave it to you to determine the rise:run ratio that is equivalent to 4-degrees...your pop-in-law can surely help with that. Hopefully this makes sense to you. I am so glad you are thinking of this ahead of time. I learned the hard way the first time and now have a setneck guitar with no break angle. Finally, regarding the headstock I will echo the sentiment that a garish headstock shape won't fit well with the simple shape of the LP. I like the Zemaitis stock shape, personally (without the metal plate). If you want a strong tie in, use that beautiful walnut for an overlay...maybe even on the back of the headstock too. IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted August 18, 2009 Author Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 I will try to answer with the limited experience I have had. I believe you are asking how do you guide the router to cut a sloped pocket. The answer simply is by using a sloped template. I remember in the guitar making class I took that we would staple a strip of wood (1/8" thick maybe ) onto the bottom of the template to rest somewhere toward the bridge area of the body. This was done to create the top plane of the template to be parallel to the neck. I will leave it to you to determine the rise:run ratio that is equivalent to 4-degrees...your pop-in-law can surely help with that. Hopefully this makes sense to you. I am so glad you are thinking of this ahead of time. I learned the hard way the first time and now have a setneck guitar with no break angle. Finally, regarding the headstock I will echo the sentiment that a garish headstock shape won't fit well with the simple shape of the LP. I like the Zemaitis stock shape, personally (without the metal plate). If you want a strong tie in, use that beautiful walnut for an overlay...maybe even on the back of the headstock too. IMO Thanks for the words, but I'm not really asking about the angle. For using a template/router setup, I definitely like how I was getting my 3.5 degrees. My problem is that, despite my best attempts at making the template smaller than the mortise needs to be, they keep coming out looser than a B-squad cheerleader. It's more about how big are people making their templates and how they're anchoring them. Or, should I go in AJ's direction, how are you making a slope accurate enough with a forstner bit and chisels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members triestobeat Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Yeah. This is the basis of this project-- carved out. The next one will essentially be an R9.At this point, I'm scrapping the whole straight string pull thing and going for some 40's design. I like the larger 30's/40's Zepher headstocks. Might do somethiong like that. by all means do what you want, i'm not telling you what to do. i would probably do chrome hardware, but only because i hate gold on things. keep the volume/tone knobs gold though. i think a pickguard would look nice too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members axegrinder Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 I forgot to suggest trying some double stick tape under the template and THEN clamping. That thing shouldn't slide at all then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members irishstu Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Loving this thread! Subscribed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Busk Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 I vote for carved top, but I think it might push the complexity of the build over the top, and risk wonkiness. Flat top is still very cool, with chrome hardware and a high-gloss clear finish. This thread rules and can only get better if a master builder shows up like DT McNaught or Bob B. himself. I hear Bob is a cool guy. I know his wife is cool as I once emailed Bob for a photo of a guitar he built because someone was building one for me and I wanted that finish, and his wife emailed me back in a day with may photos and a nice note. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted August 18, 2009 Author Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Well... How about something like this- A bolt-in neck? Sorry, I forgot to answer this. That's actually the exact same system I used for the guitar in my avatar, and while it worked, I don't think I'll use it again. I'm not really in the business of taking necks off once I have a guitar, so it's not all that appealing to me, plus I just love the feel of set necks anyway. Feels like it's crafted to a higher standard. I'm definitely a G and not an F guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members xoeo Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 man i want that guitar in ur avatar and the one your building,but especially the one in your avatar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Elias Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Awesome! Thanks for the words. What I don't get is this. In this thread I see you using a forstner bit do take out the bulk of the pocket. How in the world are you getting a correct angle at the bottom of the pocket? I mean, I can see how you can take out the sides as it's just a straight down throw, but the 4 degree incline seems impossible to do it accurately. I'm talking like this: I want the bottom, but are you telling me that you don't really go for that? It seems like if you could take care of it with the router and template method it would be such a clean, precise surface that would maximize surface area contact. Am I just being picky or is that a valid point? In regards to your first question, well, that's just my question. I'm not exactly sure what it is that's failing, so I was hoping someone could tell me. I would welcome pictures of someone else's neck templates for a router and how they clamped them down without having to move them to accommodate the router base. The body doesn't seem to provide a large enough area to clamp to. My father in law suggested screwing the template to the face, but that's not something I'm prepared to do. I've definitely been away too much this summer... I can't believe this is the first time I've seen this thread! It's neat to see this come together and learn different and better ways of building. For me it worked pretty good to hold a template in place with double sided tape to get a good start on the mortise. To get the angle at the bottom, I ended up making a few jigs- one to hold the body at the correct angle and another one to hold the router nice and level. I busted out some trigonometry skills in order to lay out the body correctly- if the length of the body is the same as the plans (17-1/2" I believe), the neck end should to be raised by just under 1-1/4" (1.22" to be exact). Hopefully this helps, and I'm looking forward to seeing this come along! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hellion_213 Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 YOU built the guitar in your avatar? Kick Ass Man!!! I remember someone asking you that question a while back, never saw the answer, but DAMN!! Absolutely incredible. Oh, and I'm liking your progress with this guitar as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members meandi Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Good advice offered here by several individuals.The only thing I can add that would not be repetetive, when I'm doing something for the first time, that I haven't done before, is to do the procedure on cheap wood as many times as necessary to feel comfortable with the outcome, before cutting into your good wood. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Harvester1199 Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 i cant wait to see the finished product Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Guitzilla Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Awesome! Thanks for the words. What I don't get is this. In this thread I see you using a forstner bit do take out the bulk of the pocket. How in the world are you getting a correct angle at the bottom of the pocket? I mean, I can see how you can take out the sides as it's just a straight down throw, but the 4 degree incline seems impossible to do it accurately. I'm talking like this: I would welcome pictures of someone else's neck templates for a router and how they clamped them down without having to move them to accommodate the router base. The body doesn't seem to provide a large enough area to clamp to. My father in law suggested screwing the template to the face, but that's not something I'm prepared to do. I would bet that your template is slipping also. I had some problems with it on one of my builds. I haven't read the whole thread, but if you haven't routed out pickups, you could make a template where the screws fall in the middle of the pickup cavities. Once you route out the pickups, the holes get routed away also. If you wanted to do the fostner bit method and wanted to tilt the pocket angle, you could build a wedge shim that you could attach to the back of the body. When you would use your drill press, the guitar would be angled to the bit which would cause your neck cavity to have the proper angle drilled in and the sides would still be vertical. I hope that I explained this wasn't well enough that it isn't confusing. I'm going to read the whole thread now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Sean-Patrick Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Sorry, I forgot to answer this. That's actually the exact same system I used for the guitar in my avatar, and while it worked, I don't think I'll use it again. I'm not really in the business of taking necks off once I have a guitar, so it's not all that appealing to me, plus I just love the feel of set necks anyway. Feels like it's crafted to a higher standard. I'm definitely a G and not an F guy. Well, I've found bolt-ins to be pretty darn cool, and I prefer being able to remove the neck, personally. You can certainly craft them to fit play feel. Of course, there is the option of countersinking the neck bolt holes, and applying some wood, to make it appear like a set neck. This thread exemplifies. http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?t=2085461 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ajcoholic Posted August 18, 2009 Members Share Posted August 18, 2009 Awesome! Thanks for the words. What I don't get is this. In this thread I see you using a forstner bit do take out the bulk of the pocket. How in the world are you getting a correct angle at the bottom of the pocket? I mean, I can see how you can take out the sides as it's just a straight down throw, but the 4 degree incline seems impossible to do it accurately. I'm talking like this: I want the bottom, but are you telling me that you don't really go for that? It seems like if you could take care of it with the router and template method it would be such a clean, precise surface that would maximize surface area contact. Am I just being picky or is that a valid point? In regards to your first question, well, that's just my question. I'm not exactly sure what it is that's failing, so I was hoping someone could tell me. I would welcome pictures of someone else's neck templates for a router and how they clamped them down without having to move them to accommodate the router base. The body doesn't seem to provide a large enough area to clamp to. My father in law suggested screwing the template to the face, but that's not something I'm prepared to do. Becuase I generally make my neckpocket parallel to the guitar's back and take the angle in the tennon. If you want to leave the Tennon parallel and take the angle in the pocket, just shim up the body (make a board, with a fixed shim that the body will sit on holding it at the correct angle and no matter how you move it around on the drill press table you are always at the required angle and your depth stop still works. AJC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 Success Kid for the win. First off, many many thanks to Meandi, Axegrinder, Elias (I'm loving your current build-- race ya to the finish!) and especially Guitzilla and AJC. You guys rock. For some reason I was stuck in the notion that you really needed a template placed on top the body so that you can rout out the pocket. Your posts helped me think outside the box and I learned something in the process. I greatly thank you. Also, Jamie if you're reading this, thank you so much-- I couldn't be doing any of this without you and I'm deeply indebted. Call me at 9PM for tech support whenever you want! Alright. So because I had been focusing so much on being able to perfect the neck joint, the body got pushed to the side. I needed to complete something successfully to get the ol' ego back on track, so I decided a little work on the body was necessary. So this is where we left off. The top was glued to the body. Not much to look at, but it shows the overlap that I left on the top. Now we need to get the top ready for the shaper (essentially an upside-down router with a base), so we need to trim off all but about 1/4" from the sides on the bandsaw. Then, on to the shaper with a follower bit. This thing evens out all the overlap and gets it completely flush with the rest of the body. After about 10 minutes with the shaper, taking it VERY slowly, we get this. Only, wait. Apparently it wasn't slow enough. Here you can see that I rip some chips out. This happened because I was stupid and thought it would be OK to fight the grain around the horn. There was some kickback and this is what happened. I'm not too sad about it though because at that point the walnut is going to be maybe 1/16" thick and there will be binding, so I can fill it in with a little dust and glue. No prob. I've always had a torrid affair with routers and I'm still learning to effectively use them, but at least I'm not scared of them anymore. Anyway, nothing that can't be covered up. So here are some of the *7* pockets that i tried to learn on. It's just fir scrap, which may have had something to do with my lack of success, but all of them failed and I just couldn't get it right, which explains the past page and a half of me whimping out. Let's just say this: The template-for-mortise method does not work for me. I tried a bunch of different variations and adjustments, and they all sucked. Here's proof. A closeup of one of them. It looks fine, but it was sloppy as hell. ... .... If hell was sloppy. .... Which, if it existed, I would imagine would not be too sloppy. Yeah. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 On with the show. Here's the neck pieces before I glued the heel area together about a month ago. Not very exciting, but I thought I'd show. While I tried hard to match all the sides up, I wasn't entirely successful so I had to plane the sides down, which in the end, should be done anyway, especially considering that I'm going to be needing perfectly square sides coming up in a second. Here they are planed. So Jamie's got a mill. And it's freaking old and heavy duty. And despite my initial hesitance on using it, we wound up using it and boy am I glad we did. In this pic you can see that we cut a line in the bottom with the tablesaw with a 3.5 degree angle. This was to get a uniform edge and angle on both sides of the neck and to act as a guide for the bit path. Notice the bit. Setting the swivel of the mill to 3.5 degrees so that our forward/backward travel will match up. We want the lines to match up perfectly and have a straight line down the neck so we measure carefully the inner mass and outer mass to make sure everything's level. First the inside. Then the outside, tapping with the wooden mallet to get it right. That's one strong neck-- didn't think it was wise to abuse it like that, but that was in no way an issue (and at one point I was sure hitting hard). Everything's level so we start cutting. Got the angle perfect, set the dials to zero and go at it. Crap. For those of you that noticed the error in bits when I pointed it out, good job-- may I interest you in a career in machining? When we first started doing mock-ups for this job on the mill, we were using that scrap fir with worm holes in it. For some reason it didn't even occur to us how much chatter we would encounter with the maple, so we just went right ahead with job. That was a dumb thing not to notice. So in one rotation of the bit we encountered an 1/8" lengthening of cut as the bit slipped out due to chatter. Absolutely beyond unacceptable. So we went and rustled up a 5" bit and restarted. Take two, take your time. Worked well, and hardly chattered at all. Nice. So let's flip it and do the other side, right? Natch. Here we go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 Crap. At this point, as much as it hurt to see this nice wood butchered, it was almost funny. And though I can say that now, at the time it wasn't so much. Luckily, we hadn't cut the headstock angle yet, which was on purpose because I had a feeling something stupid like this might happen. So it wasn't the end of the world, but damn that could have been a game changer. So we knocked the edge back about 1/4" and re-ran it on the table saw, made the appropriate change on the first side and worked on the bottom. And the day was saved. And now on to the body. Due to the restrictions of the space where the mill is, not to mention that it's not the world's biggest mill (it's not the size that counts...), we have to go back to the long bit. It's not too big of an issue, though, because the walnut and sipo are infinitely easier to work with. Actually, because of this cut I learned just how nicely sipo machines-- it's relatively soft, doesn't make a bit chatter, didn't have any tear outs, and it smelled good. As per this method, we tossed the idea of using a template and simply measured out the dimensions for the neck onto the walnut, then cut within the lines. This is executed by raising the body up to the magic 3.5 degrees like Guitzilla and AJC suggested. We did this by, again, starting with the tablesaw to cut a wedge of scrap to the correct 3.5 angle and flat on the bottom. We then wedged it underneath the body until it was the correct angle and firmly supported. You can see it underneath the guitar here (that long piece sticking out). We don't have to secure it to the body because the mill has clamp rails built into it, which you can see towards the neck end. Because of size limitations, we had to clamp the body at the end with normal wood clamps, but they held just fine. Not worried about any marks being left in the walnut as that area will be shaved down for the carved-top. A close up. The first few passes were tests essentially, seeing how close/far we could go. You can see us slowly creeping in (which in retrospect we should have been creeping out), to find the right width. After a shallow pass, drop the body out of the bit's way and see how the neck feels. After the 4th check we got it, which you can see here. I believe each of those lines is 1/100". You can get down to the 1/1000, but that would take a pretty long time and we were ballparking it (which sounds funny when you're in the thousandths of inches). That's the power of using a mill-- *extreme* accuracy. After doing it this way, I don't think I'll ever be doing it differently. Here you can see all the controls for horizontal, vertical and depth control. On old mills like this there's no computer dial telling you to rotate one way or another, and after you've spun those things a few hundred times you tend to forget which way you're supposed to be turning, which can lead to very bad things. Luckily I only did it once, and it wasn't too bad of a screw up. Seriously, I probably turned those things a thousand or more times, and when you get to the bottom like I am here, your arms begin to burn. And here's the end result. Deep pocket, straight lines, awesome mortise. Yes, those steps on the right aren't accurate, but it's blown out of proportion in this picture, I'll be cutting away a lot of it and, frankly, the rest of the joint is so tight, it's not any concern at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 A proud, headless papa with his baby, swinging it around to see if it'll dislocate an arm. It won't! A little bit closer up. From this pic you can see that the top of the neck really does need to go down farther, but because my body is about 3/8" thinner than what the '59 LP plans call for, I'm going to take it out of the tenon and be done with it. You can also see that the shoulders of the neck aren't touching the body, but that's because I apparently rounded out the top. I'll have to take the neck out and square the top on the disc sander (just a touch), then we should be honky-dory. The thing's really tight. Like I had to take a mallet multiple times and whollop it in tight. I've read a few times here about that possibly being a bad thing, but then I also read about people wanting a joint where only microscopic particles can pass. What's your guys' take on it? And we're one step closer. Next, I'll probably be cutting out an F-hole, setting the headstock angle, gluing on wings and contouring the top. Should be fun. I feel that this was the biggest obstacle for the project to me, and while I know there's still a ton of work to be done, this is, for me at least, a major mountain I just conquered. Thanks again for all your help, guys, and I hope you're enjoying the ride. I know I am! (This guy deserves a re-post.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members newbuilder Posted September 2, 2009 Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 Wow, that is just awsome! We need an emoticon for hands clapping or standing ovation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 And look what came in just now: Overly expensive tools! WOOHOO! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted September 2, 2009 Author Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 Wow, that is just awsome! We need an emoticon for hands clapping or standing ovation. Just re-post Success Baby. Post him far and wide. That's enough for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members meandi Posted September 2, 2009 Members Share Posted September 2, 2009 Patience is indeed a virtue, eh?Almost too much fun at times.Lookin real good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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