MIMF

So many ways, and no one does it my way... although it comes virtually step for step from the Benedetto book. I slot the flat and square fretboard. I taper it to size accounting for binding width. I add the "purlfing" binding to the tapered, slotted fretboard, and slot the binding. I glue the flat, ...

It's been done, over the decades (centuries), mostly an arch in one direction, with the grain. The nuance of a traditional arched top guitar, with the flowing curves and the recurve around the edge, is impossible as far as I can see. If I wanted to make a guitar like that and didn't want to carve th...

I have a Godin Artisan TC tele-style electric that is a bit of a plain-jane, just finished in creme lacquer that is distressed now. It's a superb playing guitar, so I am thinking of a bit of a refresh for it. I want to plane it down by 3/16" (it has a german re-curve around the outside that is about...

I like curly redwood too, I have one more top set that I'm waiting to glue up and use. I really like your design. I did a sunburst on my first one to try to get the curl to pop a little bit.

I made a jig that is functionally identical to that one. Would have been easier if I had seen it first, but I invented mine from whole cloth, so to speak. Mine is two jigs, I have one to route the neck dovetail and one to route the body. I used a tapered bit, to get the dovetail, they kind of confus...

Thanks, guys. Now that I know it's a taper, if I ever make another one, I'll just make a tapered routing template. In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. Easier to make a template and a thousand bodies than it would be to make a thousand necks not tapered. In the meantime, this body is shimmed and t...

I looked up the dimensions of a Fender bass neck, and the heel was noted as 2.5". Perhaps naively, I assumed the heel was rectangular, that I would route out a rectangular recess to accept the neck heel. I bought a Warmouth neck, and it needed shimming to match the heel. No problem sez I, I probably...

My take is that the wood in that log is perfectly fine. You don't need quarter-sawn maple to built out of, you could rough it with a chain saw, if you could get pieces that are 8" - 10" wide you could make a traditional archtop back and sides set out of it. I've built with maple from trees that fell...

I've used fiberglass cloth, very light, applied with epoxy, when building. I cracked an archtop top plate before the box was closed, and since I was using the FB cloth and epoxy to reinforce the F-holes, and the crack was from one of the F-holes to the top edge, I just extended the reinforcement. Wo...

Thanks! I may get a "window" of dry tomorrow, and I do have a place to let it set after it flashes off (no longer wet) which doesn't take long. It's just to put a protective coat on the twisted neck I have, which I have managed to untwist. Maybe. Time will tell, but I am increasing my odds of sucess...

I would like to spray some water based EM6000, but it's quite humid around here right now, and looks to be persisting for a while (like till Christmas... :roll: ) I know that spraying Nitrocellulose type lacquer is risky, you get bloom, but has anyone tried the water based stuff in hot/humid conditi...

Do I spend $75 for a pretty cheap one, or do I spend two times plus for a good name brand one? King at $75 vs Porter Cable at $180? I doubt I will use it much, but you never know, do you?

Thanks

"I would definitely take off the fretboard and remove the truss rod and steel bars. Trying to straighten the neck with the rods in place would be difficult, if not impossible." My thought as well. If I do a good job removing the fretboard, I can then see what the neck wants to do, if it wants to be ...

Man, I would hate to try to take the fretboard off a brand new (if a year old) neck. And then be worrying that I got it stable. It's a one piece flatsawn neck with a separate maple fretboard, has two steel bars and a truss rod in it. I have rarely seen a piece of wood that's been dried and cured tak...

I bought a Warmouth bass neck a year ago that has developed around a 10 degree twist. It was stored in my shop, but left unfinished, and there is no warranty because of that. Can anyone dream up a way to un-twist it? it has a double action truss rod and two steel stiffening bars. I can only think th...

Just an anecdote, really. Yesterday I picked up two of my archtops, both happen to be solid carved curly redwood from the same tree - "ancient" sinker redwood. Picked up the first, sounded great, action was around 1/8" at the 12th fret. So I get the stuff out, measure the relief, make sure the bolt ...

I start with 1" thick boards, so resawing a 6/4 board is a non-starter. My first archtop was a 2X8 of fine grained fully quartersawn cedar from Home Depot, in their decking pile. It's not book-matched, and it's a four piece top, but I think it came out great. What I would do is buy utility grade pie...

I have virtually no science behind any of my bridge musings, not least because the hours I've spent trying to research how vibration moves through materials and joints between materials has come up no trumps. Nada useful at my level of math. So my personal experiments are purely anectodal. I find th...

Not a big fan of the osage, I'm sorry to say. I'd probably go rosewood on a fretboard. I like the 501 tuners, there are other higher end choices and one of the things that blings out a big guitar are custom wood knobs. For me, and it's just my opinion, if you need to have a control panel in the side...

I've made top-mounted floating tailpieces, for various reasons abandoned and replaced with traditional. Most down to poor planning and execution on my part. What I found was that I couldn't get the axis of the tail piece (the point the string load goes directly through, and that determines the break...