MIMF

I planed the rough radius into the fretboard while it was still reasonably easy to hold in the vice: DSCN0480.jpg To transition the fretboard to the headstock I used a few layers of masking tape on either side of the transition, sawed the bulk of the waste out with a coping saw, and roughed out the ...

Tapering the fretboard is fast, quiet, and easy with a plane: Time to give my clamps something to do: It doesn't seem to matter how many I buy, I could always do with more clamps...

Thanks David :D Me too ;) I think I'll be coming in hot, since I still have to carve & finish the neck, wind the pickups and machine the bridge before I'm really on the home straight. Gluing in the truss rod with 5 minute epoxy and a scrap of pine: DSCN0469.jpg Cutting the fret slots was a bit s...

Thats looking great!
I'm always glad to join the challenge, it gives me a push to do something and an excuse to try new things.

Great, thanks

Charlie, to clarify, "midnight (server time) Sunday, May 20th" - is that the midnight at the start of or at the end of Sunday? ie if one were to go to bed promptly at that time, and slept for 8 hours, would you be waking up on Sunday or Monday.

I thought I'd add some more oil before setting up to cut the fret slots, and its building so nicely that I thought I'd share. Tru-Oil is fantastic stuff. I'm loving that colour the more I look at it: DSCN0458.jpg Detail of the cutaway - in this picture the colour of the pine is dead on what it looks...

I printed off the fret charts from my software and got cracking on the fretboard. First I marked a reference line - the software references both scales from the one mark to ensure the angles stay accurate. The charts it gives take into account the fact that the fretboard blank is an untapered rectan...

Thanks Owen :) My wife says it looks like Spectrolite, a precious gem that comes from Finland. Pretty appropriate colour then for a local materials challenge :D Anyway, I stained the back black, cleaned up the edges and gave it its first coat of Tru-Oil: DSCN0453.jpg I just love the way the heat tre...

Lovely!

A bunch more sanding leaves dark blue in the "deeper" parts: DSCN0443.jpg Then I made a rather dilute blue with a drop of green in it and applied that over the top: DSCN0445.jpg The result is a little darker than I was shooting for but I dig! When the light strikes it at an angle it is lik...

Lots of sanding leaves a zebra effect: Next I use a very dark blue as the main colour: I'll sand that back and use a much lighter blue as a highlight. I may mix in a little yellow to give it more of a cyan/turquoise look.

Next up I laid out and drilled for neck mounting bolts. I'm using ferrules on these, so I counterbored them with a 15mm Forstner bit for a nice clean recess: DSCN0429.jpg Here is how it looked after sanding: DSCN0430.jpg I've decided on a blue finish, so I have just applied the first coat - black. T...

Thanks Josh! Yesterday after completing the rough sanding I took a break by drilling the rest of the holes that needed to be made. First came the jack hole: DSCN0424.jpg Then I drilled the long hole through to the pickup cavities - investing in a good quality extremely long bit is well worth it: DSC...

Sure does, Michael. I've been playing around a bit on scrap this evening after I finished sanding the body. The unfair thing is that there are so many great looking combinations! Sigh. Choices choices.. With the body now sanded - I went a bit overboard and took it to 600 grit already even though I'l...

Lots of carving tonight! Primarily with a gouge, although I did use a rasp a bit to blend the curves a bit. The top: DSCN0411.jpg Plenty of rasp and spokeshave work on the back to give it a simple bevel for the most part, with a broader bevel around the ribcage area: DSCN0416.jpg Before starting the...

Carving, carving, and more carving! I started by wasting away most of top contours with rasps, then started carving the top. I'm doing this by hand, with a gouge: Carving is fun! This is where I left it off this evening. Plenty more to do, then a LOT of sanding...

This evening I spent about and hour and a half with surforms, rasps, spokeshave, and files and got the shape refined. I also drew some guidelines to help with the top carving.

I've got some devious plans regarding the pieces I cut out of the top, lets see if they come to fruition:

The 1.5mm holes were just big enough to slip a fretsaw blade through - I proceeded to carefully cut around the outline of each pickup: DSCN0375.jpg I cleaned up the pickup cutouts with rasps and files - on a whim I chose to bevel the edges slightly, this should look interesting when finished. Note t...