It almost looks like a neck

After having dried for more than a night, it was time to turn my sawing and glueing project into something that remotely resembles a neck. Since I wasn't all too neat with my glueing and clamping, the headstock wasn't exactly level with the rest of the "neck". No worries, nothing al little planing won't fix ;-)

Since planing just got rid if the enormous differences, it was time for another round (more like 15 rounds) of sanding. To make things a little easier, I turned my workbench, vacuum cleaner and sander into the beautiful (cough) sanding table, shown below. Best plan I ever had: both hands free to sand the neck, and the vacuum cleaner actually got rid of most of the dust because it didn't have to fight gravity as well. Very satisfied with that ;)

After sanding out the rough spots, this is what my neck prototype looks like. I'm not at all dissatisfied with the result. I know it still looks like a stupid piece of wood, but creating it proved to me that I am able to actually do some of the things required to turn a piece of wood into a guitar! Who knows, this project might succeed ;)

I'm in doubt whether I should shape the headstock (which is too small, by the way, so it would look a bit silly) and maybe shape the part where the neck would meet the body, just for practice, but right now the time of day at which I can actually put my neighbors through the noise that would make has passed, so if I feel up to it, I might do that tomorrow.

What?? He's finally started building?

..No, of course not, don't be silly! ;-)

But I have started building (yet another) prototype. Frustrating though it may be, I think one cannot practice enough, before destroying a perfectly good (and expensive!) piece of wood.

So what have I been up to?

Today I wanted to practice building a neck with the headstock at an angle. Multiple sources, including the book mentioned earlier (which, believe it or not, is falling apart by now) describe the procedure for doing this as follows:

I've taken an old piece of pine (I think it was part of my bed once) and sawed this piece of wood in 2 pieces at a small angle (mine is around 11 degr).Than I put the short piece on top of the longer one, in order to be able to sand it to become one plain. This will ensure the headstock will be level later.

Then I put liberal amount of glue on the longer piece and let it dry for approximately 3 minutes.

At last I clamped the short piece to the longer one, as shown below:

I will let it dry overnight, and tomorrow we'll see how it turned out!

The mailman strikes again!

Wow, just on my way out my neighbor stopped me with the magic words "Hey, I got another package for you!". Yes, another one, since whenever I order stuff, I'm not around when it gets delivered, and my poor neighbors have to be the ones to receive it. Guys, if you ever read this: Thanx a lot and I'm so sorry for the inconvenience!

But now, more important matters: what did the mailman bring this time? Well I consider it to be something of a special treat, since I've been waiting quite some time for these:

For the people who just see some stray bits and pieces, you're looking at a brand new EMG 60 active pickup and the wires and pots that go with it! And it's the one that is going to be my neck pickup. I also got an EMG 81 active pickup for the bridge position today, but since I expect the contents of that package to look exactly the same as the stuff shown above, I left it wrapped up, nice and safely, for I don't know when exactly I will be installing these.

One thing this will help me do right away, is finish de routing design for th body, because I now have the exact size of the pickups. As soon as I've finished that, I will pay my colleague Kees a visit and we will use his self made CNC router to route a template of the explorer body. This template I will take to the wood shop, to ensure the wood that I buy for the body will be of an adequate size to make the body.

So why EMGs? Well, the answer is quite simple: these are the exact pickups of the guitar I want the War Machine to resemble.

MAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIL!!!

I'm usually not so thrilled when it comes to receiving mail, since it's bills most of the time. But in this case I'm very happy:

Some of the stuff I ordered came in today!



From top to botom:

• 1 Piece of maple to turn into a neck
• 1 Piece of rosewood for the fingerboard
• One 12" radius block to hold sandpaper when shaping the fingerboard
• One fret saw with depth adjuster

From left to right, top to botom:

• Fretboard protector
• Volume and tone knobs
• Neck plate
• Nutt
• Strapholders
• Neckplate screws

I had actually planned to go to the wood store last weekend, but had some trouble finding time for it. Furthermore, when I go out to buy wood for the body, I would like to bring the MDF template I´m planning to make, using my colleague´s CNC router, to make sure the piece(s) of wood will be big enough. So until that´s done, I'll first see what I can make of the neck.

Sanding part 2

Well, I waited a good week for the finer stuff to harden... Hell, I even went skiing (the things I have to do for this project). After some sanding this is what the result looks like (after some heavy histogram leveling):




Well, at least the dremel helped creating a tighter letter. And the superfine white milliput, does seem a bit stronger, although it still doesn't quite make it through the finger nail test :(

So, it seems my little I'm to lazy to create proper inlays plan failed big time! I will have to create them from proper plastic, since I still think mother of pearl is way too shiny to put on a guitar called the war machine.

This weekend I'm going shopping to find some wood! how exciting ;) Will get back with the results!

Hmmm...

Ok, I´m a little disappointed there with the "rock-hardness" of the silver/grey milliput. It dried out nicely, and after sanding of the residue, a nice T is visible (at least as nice as can be expected considering that I kind of suck at engraving precise shapes with a large chisel). But after I put the nail of my thumb in it, it was quite easy to scratch it... imagine what a nice nickelbound .046 string will do :(

So next try...

I engraved another letter ("E" this time, since it comes after "T" in test). This time I used a borrowed Dremel, with a bit far too large to do any fine work, but the result is way better than me hacking the poor old piece of pine to shreds. This time I´ll use the superfine white grade Milliput. Since I bought it anyway, might as wel try it.

We´ll see what this one looks like after sanding it tomorrow!