Thanks gents!!
Wizard, The neck was $350 for everything (frets, nut, holes drilled, etc) except finish. Pricey for sure, but it's a stunning piece of wood and the craftsmanship is top notch. I'm ok with shelling out a bit extra for something that can turn my guitar into a real player!!
And now for an update. :goodtimes: We made some very good progress over the long weekend!!
So this is where we left off last time
Now that I have the neck we could make the neck pocket jig. It feels like we're making jigs for almost everything!! That, and drawing centerlines... everything has a center line on it. ??? Still, once you have all these jigs making another body will take a whole lot less time. Neck gets clamped to the board 3" into the board, which is the length of the neck pocket.
We clamp and screw a few pieces of wood together sandwiching the neck in nicely... hog out some wood and use the pieces of wood as routing guides.
Result! One shiny new neck pocket template... routing supawood is terrible though... it turns to dust and gets everywhere...
Fits perfectly!
Time to start routing the pickup cavities
Done. Had one tiny little hiccup with depth adjustment on the final pass of the neck rout, but it'll be invisible once the pickups are in... :-[
Neck pocket jig attached
And done
Very happy with the fit
Stuck the controls to the body with presstik to find out what's the most comfortable...
Ended up with a straight tele style config. Spacing was based on what felt comfortable...
Rear access rout and countersink for the cover was done next... Spent an hour making the jig for the counter-sink rout which took less than 60 seconds to cut... ???
Mockup with controls installed with a paper pickguard template... Looking good!
Last bit of work we finished was installing the binding on the back. I don't have fingerprints left on either of my thumbs and forefingers from superglue squeeze-out as we held the binding in place...
That's it for the body... on to the neck!!
I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I wanted to give the neck a slight vintage tint to accent the flame, but didn't want it to go too yellow. Messed around with stain ratios and ended up diluting the stewmac vintage amber stain 1:100 in alcohol and giving the neck 1 light stain coat... I'm very pleased with the result. The raw wood was too white for my liking, this looked great to me.
Applied the first coat of tru-oil this morning. Applied using one finger dipped into the oil and rubbing onto the neck, trying to get it as thin as possible. It's going to take many many coats to build (especially around the decal that I need to apply), but this seems to get the best result according to the people in the know. One coat in though and it is looking stunning. The flame isn't quite a prominent as the flash makes it seem in these photos, but it's not far off. Will try and get some decent shots in sun light when the weather clears a bit in Cape Town.
All in all a good weekend's work... I can't describe how excited I am to see and play this beauty once done!!
