avengers63

1) I want one of those. 2) If I did one, I'd be accused of copying you, which I would be doing. 3) Yes, do put a shirt on. 4) I'll be doing the chrome edging on my next Retrotron, And I'll be accused of copying. It's wxactly what I wanted to do the first time around, but couldn't find it, so I might be able to get away with that one. 5) I bet I can name more characters than you. I've been reading Marvel non-stop since 1981.

Nah. It's a really old technique woodworkers have been using. Wood is probably a little more resilient than cotton, dontchathink?

The acids are already there. The vinegar is simply causing a chemical reaction to turn them black. As for adding them with the powder, I can't tell you. That part of the process was taken from an article in Popular Woodworking. I'll trust them to NOT give you something that would damage the wood. Maybe a dye/stain could get a similar looking effect, but that's it. Using one of them would mean having to put a finish on or risk rubbing it off. OK, maybe not so much with the dye, but it would still just be on the surface. The vinegar actually turns the wood fibers black from the inside out, not color them on the surface. I don't know how deeply it penetrates, but I know it'll never rub off. The wood itself will have to be worn away for the color to be lost. And that's the #1 reason I went with this method. I wanted a natural-feeling, relatively unfinished neck that was jet black. To my knowledge, that wouldn't be a feasible long-term possibility with dye. Oak is simply too heavy, so walnut was the only realistic choice. It works out pretty well that walnut has a great tone.

But we didn't get the mandatory "every clamp in the shop on the fretboard" shot. Just a little teaser on the end.

He'll have to chime in on that one. I remember the post, but I didn't know what he was talking about. I figured he'd show us eventually.

Won't the cherry base make this thing a real back-breaker?

I'm currently putting some sanding sealer on the body. That'll take a couple of coats because the basswood is so spongy. Then it gets primed. This'll show me the uneven parts that will need to be addressed before the white paint goes on. From there, it's putting the top on, then doing the binding. In the meantime, I have some ebonizing to do on the neck... First, dissolve a steel wool pad in a quart of white vinegar. When it's all gone, strain it thoroughly. This vinegar/iron mixture then gets applied directly to the wood. A chemical reaction takes place with the tanic acids in the wood, turning it black. The amount of tanic acids directly correlates to how dark it'll get. Oak and walnut turn virtually solid black. For this, I carefully painted the mixture onto the walnut with a relatively small brush. The line along the fretboard was where the actual care was most important. Everywhere else was actually pretty sloppy. I put enough on to puddle on the surface and scrubbed it into the grain. A brushfull cover about the area of a half-dollar. I'll let it dry overnight and do it again tomorrow. The grain gets raised, so I'll need to buff it with steel wool. I'll be sealing it in with a wiping varnish - just enough to seal the wood but not so much to cover the feel of it.

So after some love with the hand sander, files, and rasps...

...take away the majority of the corners with a sure-form... ...and connect the dots with a spokeshave. It still needed some finessing into the final shape, but this was pretty darn close. Then I bolted the neck into place, took it outside (YAY!!!! It's Spring!!!!), and went to town with the angle grinder. We now have a belly cut and some killer upper-fret access. This obviously needed some finessing as well.

My fret press insert came in yesterday, so I could get back to work on this monster. I made a really high-tech tool to use the insert with. I even came up with a super cool name for it: Block Of Wood. I routed a groove the same width as the insert into a piece of oak, then cut it square and rounded the corners. The insert sits nicely in the grooce. I then hammered the frets in, but with essentially equal pressure across the width of the fret. I gotta say that it's the best fret job I've done yet. With the edged beveled and dressed, it's on to the back of the neck. Bandsawn to thickness... VERY basic shaping with a rasp at the 1st, 12th, and halfway in between...

I feel ya, brutha!

It seems right in my mind for the bottom end of the t/r to stop at the 20th fret on this one. That leaves quite a bit of the t/r nut sticking past the zero-fret line. My necessity, all of this extra at the end of the neck HAS to be there. There's simply no getting around it. Maybe it just because it's a headless and I'm in semi-uncharted waters for me, but I'm not liking the feel of this. I can't explain why, but it just seems like there's going to be an issue with the rod with it all placed like this. Something feels hokey up in the area between the "nut" and the end of the headpiece. Logic tells me that I've had the end of the t/r sticking out this far past the nut before, so there isn't an issue. It still doesn't feel right somehow. On another note, does anyone have some short bits of whatever it is I'm supposed to use as a zero-fret that they can let me have? I use Stew-Mac #141 frets, so I THINK that I just need some really tall fretwire, but I honestly have no idea. I'd need enough for the guitar and the bass.

Cool. My Stew-Mac order just got here. Now I can fret the Iceman. I needed to put a divot and small shelf in the ned of the fretboard so that the headpiece will fir on properly. In all likelihood, the divot will be taken care of with the neck taper. The shelf will still need to be chiseled out by hand. Not a big deal. And here is where the real issue in my mind is.......

The headpiece also has a hole in it to adjust the truss rod through. Better see how that's going to work out... The channel is easy enough to rout out. So is cutting the end bevel. Doing the hole however... The hard grain of the pine made the bit wander. At least that's what I'm HOPING it was. I'll have to set up some kind of jig when I do the real thing. Yea... that's all kinds of off center. I CAN get the wrench in there and into the t/r nut, but we all know that's entirely not the point. Still, it's good to know I have a little margin for error.

TEST NECK With this headpiece, I feel like a rookie again. i really don't know how the whole thing is meant to go together. I looked for a loooooooong time for something resembling instructions or pictures, but it just ain't there. At least it's not where I can find it. So...... It's time to go through the motions of making a neck with some pine and see what happens. With any luck, I can sort out the unknowns with this instead of dorking up the wenge. Here's the blank and the slotted fretboard. ...and here are some shots of the headpiece. Based on what I can see in this headpiece and the headpiece on my Steinberger, this isn't supposed to have a nut, it's supposed to have a zero-fret. It also looks like the traditional 5/16" fretboard is going to be too tall. Lastly, the end of the neck has to be beveled to accommodate the headpiece. That's 1 out of 3 that I don't really need to think too hard about.

It's a fold-out leg rest.

Right now, all I have are WIP pics of the bodies. So starting with the bass.... I misremembered the bridge positioning when I took that pic. I thought the bridge was going to be really far back on the body. Oh well. You can see from the underside of the bridge that there's a little shelf where the unit is screwed to the body. Then the tuning mechanism drops down so that there's a good break angle for the strings to go over the saddles. What all of this meant for me is that I had to put a recess into the body. I didn't take a picture of the template I made for it, but the whole thing was pretty straight-forward. I routed the the dropped shelf about 1/32" deeper than the actual piece. This gives me a little room for error and finish. The remainder of the large recess in the back wasn't completely necessary, but looked better than just a big crater behind the bridge. It ended up leaving a little less that 3/4" of wood back there because you need enough room to get your fingers around the tuners. Also, I had originally tried a square edge in the bottom of the recess, but it didn't look right. I rigged up a way to get a core box bit in there and round out the inside corners. Lastly, the angles match the body sides. If it didn't, it'd look all kinds of wrong.

Did you miss the whole point of the theme?

This is the guitar bridge I bought. They have a virtually identical bas bridge. The pics aren't the best quality, so I emailed the seller, then talked with him on the phone. I was able to ask some specific questions, and he convinced me that they were worth checking out. I'll post some pics of the units later.

The two body templates were made from tracings of Gibsons. They might not be 100%, but they're pretty darn close. With 8/4 white limba being hard to get around here, I had to use 4/4 and thickness glue them. About 5 minutes of investigation told me that the original and current V and Explorers are both 1 9/16" thick, so that's what I made these two. Wanting the twins to be as identical as I can, I bookmatched the fretboard blank. It'll be one of those small details that you wouldn't notice at first, but is revealed upon closer inspection. The guitar is 22 frets at 25" scale. The bass is 20 frets at 34" scale.

I've been eyeballing some headless hardware on eBay for quite a while now. With the sale of some Warhammer armies that I haven't used in probably 6+ years, I was finally able to get them. I was REALLY pleased with the construction. From what I can tell, they're all brass and steel. I don't know of the design was stolen from ABM, but it's totally different from Steinberger. The ball ends are held behind the nut, while the strings are wound around large spindles in the bridge. Like with all of the guitars I work on, I've spent countless hours thinking things through in my head as to exactly what I want to do. Then, like with all of the guitars I work on, I start the work and things have to change for whatever reason. The original idea I landed on was to have a pair of instruments - one guitar and one bass - that are for all intents and purposes identical. After looking through a LOT of body shapes, reasing the headstocks in the pics, and doing a lot of measuring and calculating, I decided on a pair of headless '58 Explorers. Now, not everything would be exactly like the original. First, the hardware is black, not gold. Second, the neck and fretboard are both wenge, not korina and rosewood. Third, the pickguards are tortoise, not black or white. All of that aside, there'd still be no mistaking that these are an homage to the '58 Gibsons. When I got in the hardware, the first problem didn't waste any time spitting in my eye. The way the guitar bridge is made, you have to have basically unlimited access to the back/bottom of the unit. The tension spring is back there as well as the lock. Were that to go onto an Explorer, there would have to be a huge chunk of the body cut completely out. Well, that just looks like crap, so the guitar can't be an Explorer. The wood was already in hand though, so the '58 theme was locked in as far as I was concerned. But Gibson made another great model in 1958: the Flying V. PERFECT! Putting the bridge at the back of the body let me have all the access I could ever need while not carving away a big chunk of the body. And it'd look great headless. The only other specifics to note at this point are the pickups. The bass is getting a Carvin Music Man pup I found for $32 shipped. The guitar is getting a pair of Rockfield Mafia HBs I landed for $55 shipped. To recap: Both are getting white limba bodies, wenge necks, wenge fretboard, tortoise pickguards, and black headless hardware.

Yes - lacquer, shellack, or polyurethane. Paint drips & sags I've found can be smoothed out by hand with 220 grit or higher and a very light touch.

Avenger mkIII build thread BODY Avenger shape 1 1/2" chambered goncalo alves body 1/2" poplar top - beveled black banding strip between layers NECK 5-piece maple/chechen neck black bolt attachment 22 fret 25.5" bocote fretboard goncalo alves triangle markers HEADSTOCK ergonomic headstock with angled tuners goncalo alves overlay bocote deco-esque overlay HARDWARE & ELECTRONICS black hardware Wilkinson tuners hardtail bridge with string-through ferrules Hamer pickups SG style wiring open faced black pickup rings with tortoise inserts tortoise pickguard mounted directly to the body 2 HBs, LP style wiring tortoise jack plate FINISH cream paint on poplar top and headstock tuner bevels semi-gloss water-based polyurethane on all painted areas all natural wood areas buffed to 4000 grit, then oiled I have to say that this thing is pretty heavy. It's in the solid Les Paul range, despite being chambered. The back bolt and the tilted tuner areas were a real learning process. The back-bolt construction allowed me to have a neck-through-like hell, that is to say it's pretty muck not there. The upper fret access is AMAZING. I have enough room to actually touch the neck pickup without stretching. The tuners hace a very natural feel to them. You're not twisting your hand & wrist at all to get to the knobs. The neck is very thin all the way up and is pretty darn comfortable to wrap my hand around. close up of the inlays different angle of the pickups view of the jack plate & cavity cover down the top of the headstock