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Looking to build my first guitar from scratch


Dub-T-123

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Here they are fretted and ready to be trimmed. Sorry I don’t have a better pic on that it was getting a little late so I was powering through this part. The frets are pressed in with a radiused caul and they came out soo nice. They are perfect and much better than I could have done with a hammer so I’m stoked with that. I wrapped them in plastic because I want to keep them clean at this point. 
 

btw notice the board on top is from my buddy Carlos at work. The last few inlays got a little shifted towards the bottom of his board. We made a whole jig for that and the template was off at the bottom 4 frets so I shifted the template over when I drilled my last 4 holes to compensate. 
 

Overall we pretty much did every trick in the book to avoid tear out when drilling for the inlays. I used a brand new (cheap) brad point, burnished a piece of masking tape to the face of the board to support the grain, drilled super slowly, and pressed the template firmly into the board to prevent the grain from lifting around the hole. The results were really good. There is no gap or tear out to be filled around the inlays

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Nice job sir [thumbup]   dots are pretty easy as they go but then as you know its very easy to screw up too...  Try some trapezoids  🙂  

You know that when you glue the fretboard on you should cover the trussrod with some tape.. Always best not to get glue in there..

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Thanks bud! Despite the relative ease the bit that I had REALLY wanted to tear out on my sample so I was fortunate that everything worked out. I can imagine how much trickier other shapes are!

 

We are gonna have our CNC guy make us some 12” radius clamping cauls to glue the fretboards

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Thanks Uncle Fester!

 

I did some work on the fret ends last night and started the side dots. One fretboard is all ready to be glued, the other will be ready tonight. 
 

I probably should have drilled locating pins on the fretboard before I installed the frets and inlays but no prob. I’m going to use the template to make matching blind holes in the neck and fretboard. 
 

Here’s a video of Ben showing us how it’s properly done (aka not the way I’m gonna do it now lol)

https://youtu.be/MX1cxFKRXG4

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Thanks retired! I’m hoping to glue the fretboard today so I can start shaping the neck first thing tomorrow. Got the rest of the side dot inlays done in anticipation (fret ends haven’t been filed on this board). Not a great pic but there’s a little bit of super glue around the holes. When the whole thing is filed/scraped/sanded that will disappear 

 

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Why thankyou ME 😃 I cracked open a beer, eyeballed the marks with a scribing awl, and let it rip with a handheld drill. It was the least precise part of the build process so far but the work area is small enough that I can probably eyeball it more precisely than I could measure/mark it. It looks great in person. Doesn’t look wonky or homemade yet at this point

 

I’m feeling good. Watching lots of neck shaping videos on YouTube tonight trying to soak up any more info before I dive in tomorrow.

 

The fretboard is not getting glued on today after all. Just didn’t have time before work this morning to do it properly. I’ll get it done first thing tomorrow morning 

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1 hour ago, Rabs said:

Good stuff..   All looking good so far  🙂

The three best bits for me are. Getting the neck glued on to the body, putting finish on the wood and then the first strum...

Cool to see someone else on here doing it [thumbup]

It was always interesting watching you build your guitars Rabs, Now we can watch someone else do the builds. 

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Yesterday was a big day! I glued the fretboard on first which was more work than I was expecting. I didn’t have a toothpick so rather than go across the street to buy some, I made a 1/16” dowel out of maple lol

 

That went well though and I love the fretboard locating pin trick despite the fact I did it in just about the most difficult way possible 

 

While that was clamped up I got the body all sanded since it will be much more difficult to sand when it’s all put together 

 

Then I started shaping the neck which was the most fun part so far. It feels great at this point, I like the profile. I’m just going to take a bit more meat off the “shoulders” so it feels more like my R9 but I’m really happy so far. Just need a little more work on the heel and headstock transitions, removing a couple little bumps, and sanding. 
 

I almost don’t want to post a pic right now because it’s going to get quite refined in the next pic but here we are at this stage after the preliminary rough shaping 

 

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Thanks Fester

 

I’m using the Indian rosewood board from here https://www.stewmac.com/tonewoods/electric-guitar-bodies-and-necks-and-wood/electric-guitar-fingerboards/slotted-fingerboard-for-gibson-guitar.html?lac_guid=da0a718e-e113-eb11-8102-ecb1d775572b&utm_campaign=EMAIL-SHP&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Shipment_Confirmation

 

What are you planning on building?

 

The radiused caul is really useful. You can use it to sand your inlays flush, sand the board without changing the radius, and you can use it to clamp the fretboard to the neck. I cut slots on that caul in the pattern of the frets so that the caul only touches the rosewood and not the frets. Then used it to clamp the fretboard to the neck. 
 

The reason you want to clamp with a radiused caul is to apply even clamping pressure to the radiused fretboard. If you used a flat piece on top of the fretboard while clamping for example it would press the center of the fretboard harder than the outer edges. If you used a caul with a smaller radius it would press the outer edges more than the center of the board 

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