avengers63

I really enjoy everything about the construction. It's applying & buffing the finish and doing the wiring that I don't like.

Well, I don't have much to do...... It sounds like the perfect project for Pete. Be sure to point it out to him when he comes back.

Sealing up the top After a successful test of the ebonizing process I found in Popular Woodworking magazine, I decided to give it a shot on the neck & body. If it doesn't work out so well, I can always just paint it black. The first thing to do is seal off the top, just in case some of the solutions used seep through the tape. I don't know that it'd totally prevent any coloration, but the theory behind sealing the wood is to prevent moisture from getting in, so it SEEMS like it would be the right step to take.

+1 to the router, bits, and templates. You'll save untold hours with a $100 investment. While no power tools are truly necessary, if you have the means, buy one, borrow one, whatever. But until then... This is said with the presumption that you will start with a flat blank that is at the desired thickness. * Hammer & Chisel The chisel can remove small bits of material with care & finesse, but that's not what you're wanting. I personally feel they are too imprecise for large-scale removal, so I prefer other tools. * Several Rasps/Files These are GREAT at rapid removal, but the area is almost guaranteed to be uneven & will be very rough afterwards. If you shape the outline with these, you'll need to clean it up afterwards. But they WILL get it all off in a hurry. * Several Screw Drivers Not for wood removal. Put them away and use the right tool. * Plane This would be your go-to tool to smooth out the sides after gnawing at it with the rasps. Or you could just use planes to begin with and rasp in the corners. * Electric Drill Not for removal around the edges. You CAN use it with some forstners to hog out the control cavity and pickup holes. * Several Hand Saws These would be a great choice if a band saw is unavailable. * Spoke Shave For carving & rounding over the edges, beveling, etc. * An assortment of Sandpaper (Coarse & Fine) Sandpaper wasn't invented until power tools were invented. It's ONLY purpose is to remove marks left by the machines. Before that, scrapers smoothed out the surface. Don't try to use sandpaper for wood removal. Band saw or hand saw the outline as close as you physically can so you have as little material to remove as humanly possible. Take all the tools you have and practice using them on some scrap before trying them out on your body blank. Ultimately, you'll find out which you like the feel of and can work with the best. When you do, those are the best tools for YOU to use.

You do know that you suck, right? Just sayin...

It looks really clean & crisp. Nice job. For the P-90 switch, why not just use a push/pull pot for an on-off?

I got the Delta jointer, and I couldn't be happier with it. I've never had any issues with the blades, though I DO have to spend about 2 minutes every week re-aligning the fence with a combo-square. Unless you plan on working with pieces longer than 2ft or so, the shorter tables shouldn't be an issue. +1 on getting an inexpensive router. I use a pair of Ryobi routers. One of them came in a combo pack with a small table for $100 at Home Depot. They're well worth the investment. If there's only one tool you don't go cheap on, make it the band saw. You'll find yourself using & abusing it constantly, soit's well worth a little more investment.

I'd love to get ahold of one of those old pawn-shop-beauties. Not many folks will claim a Tiesco was a top quality ax, but there's still something funky-retro--junk-cool about them, and there's something in the pups that I can never put my finger on that is just great.

Yea, that's pretty much it. You can still use rubber tubing or springs for height adjustment. Also, you'll need to route the cavity shallower than normal, but you have it right. Oh... make sure you use wood screws.

Color wise, sapele would blend in too much with the walnut.

A p/g on unfigured wood isn't a bad thing. It breaks up the monotony of the solid color. With walnut, I personally would suggest cream or tortoise.

Moving back to the neck.... gluing in the inlays with 2-part epoxy sanded down and radiused to 12" moistened with mineral spirits

Getting some poly on it. Like I said - I hated to paint over the sapele & maple, but it was necessary.

And that would be why I hadn't heard of them until I stumbled upon them in the catalog. Different verbiage for the same product.

Here's something I came up with after drilling a bunch of 7/8" side jacks, and seeing them drift. First, don't use a forstner, use a spade. Second, make a pilot hole that's about 75% of the diameter of the center spike of the spade. It's a LOT easier to make this level & square. Drill the pilot all the way through to the control cavity. Then drill with the spade. The center spike will follow the pilot hole with very little chance of drift, AND you'll be certain that it'll be as level & square as the pilot.

Ya know - I gave some serious thought to spray painting the inside of the back panels black. In hindsight, I probably should have. At the time though, I looked at the semi-acoustics out there and saw that the vast majority of them have raw insides, so that's what I went with. And mentioning it a few days ago wouldn't have helped. The pics are currently on a +/- 2-week delay. [tease]I'm currently in the finishing process.[/tease]

It's OK guys... laugh away. If I were afraid of being laughed at for it, I for dang sure wouldn't have posted it. When you do this, you cuss. A lot. Then you get really mad and want to break something. Then you think "Am I really that much of a bonehead?" Then you get dejected because you know that you are. Oh well. At least it was fixable. It's 99% invisible at this point.

Now it's time for the first, and hopefully last, blunder of this build. I put the control cavity on the wrong side. When you do something like this, all you can do is cuss, then fix it.

It has a velvet-like quality to it.

I'm gonna finish this one up and put it on consignment. It's getting the Epiphone neck I have, the pups I salvaged from a Warlock, and chrome hardware. Here are some shots of the headstock painted black and getting the first coat of water-based poly. I made a TRC from some quilt & dyed it up. You can see it in the 3rd pic. As much as it pained me to do it, I had to paint the back of the body black. Even with the maple/maple neck, it looked fruit with the black burst on the face. and natural wood on the back. I'll get some pics when I have them. It actually looks REALLY good, I just hated to cover up the wood.

http://grizzly.com/products/searchresults.aspx?q=spokeshave Grizzly has a great reputation for decent quality at a reasonable price. I got mine from there, as well as a number of other items, and I have yet to be disappointed. I'm not going to say that there aren't better out there, because there are, but the price is right and the quality isn't bad.

And I've discovered why. I'll post those pics and the explanation when I get to that stage. In the mean time... thinning down & shaping the heel Notice that I tapered the horns at this time as well. It's not readily evident with these pics, but it's there. It'll be seen more clearly in future shots.

That's one of the major reasons I got the one I did. I wanted to resaw tops and other items, but I didn't want to drop an extra $100+ on the riser blocks and them install them. This came in on sale with an additional discount for ordering it on-line and picking it up at $360. Another $40 for the fence upgrade made it $400 with tax.

Figures. My first was/is a 10" Ryobi with a 4" height. For just cutting out the body, as well as many other functions, it worked great. I got the bigger one because I outgrew it as a woodworker. In and of itself though, it worked great and still does.

I love the wood, but I'm not so hot on the shape. I AM a fan of the multi-layer binding.