curtisa

From the CBGitty website the wiring description for the mini humbucker reads: So the wiring colours are not the same as Bareknuckle and some translation will be required in order to make it work equivalently: Bareknuckle red -> CBGitty red Bareknuckle green+white -> CBGitty black+white Bareknuckle bare+black -> CBGitty bare+green

Yes, they're a good in-between size, useful as a jointer on shorter stock and a smoother/leveller for general purpose use too. This is actually my second 5 1/2. I bought the first one from a second hand store for not a whole lot of cash some years ago. Same make and era, but in better nick. I haven't done anything more to that one other than keep the iron sharp and re-varnish the tote. Given how little I paid for it and compared to some of the eye-watering prices that other older Stanley's go for, I'm assuming that the 'made in England' and 'made in Australia' hand planes aren't considered the proper collector's items or museum pieces, so I don't feel so bad giving them a full strip back and polish (and occasionally a respray). Fun fact - the Australian Stanley factory was actually located here in Tasmania, about a 20 minute drive from my house. They wound up operations back in the mid 90s. The building is still there, but has since been subdivided up and leased out to various other small industrial businesses.

I could dunk the whole shebang into a pot of rust converter, but I'm somewhat leary of handling such chemicals if I don't need to. Plus the black japanning on the sole and frog is actually in OK-ish condition and there's no real advantage to stripping the whole lot off and respraying it with modern black paint. So the decision has been made to get rid of the majority of the rust using soft wire wheels on the grinder and with a Dremel. The iron and chip breaker are the most straightforward of the parts to de-rust, so it's off to the bench grinder to wire-brush it off: I may revisit these later on with some wire wool to even up the sheen, but for now I'm not going to fuss over it too much. At least the worst of the rust is gone: The frog is the next to get tackled. Common internet concensus appears to be that the mounting surface of the frog where the blade is pressed against should be as flat as possible, and that a fine file will get most of the surface rust off while flattening the surface again. The again, the internet is full of crap, so don't judge me too harshly for what I'm doing here: A 600 grit diamond stone helps true up the overall surface a bit more evenly than the file: And then a baby wire wheel in the Dremel to remove the rust from the more fragile parts and to avoid the black japanning: One final scrub with a nylon-bristled brush and some naptha, and the frog is starting to look a bit more respectable at last:

I can't find any mention of Sound Foundry pickups when I do a Google search. Got a link? Do you recall if the humbucker came with some of the wires pre-joined when you received it? I would've expected your 5-way switch to have all 8 lugs. There even looks like a gap on the switch where one of the lugs appears to be missing in your photos. Any possibility one lug has broken off by accident? This diagram shows how to translate between the switch shown on your Bareknuckle wiring diagram, and the switch you have:

It might be easier if you draw up a diagram of how you have wired it all together and post that here. I can't see enough detail in your photos to determine how everything fits together. Probably worth noting that unless you know that your pickups are equivalent to Bareknuckles, there's no guarantee that the wiring colours have the same meaning between different manufacturers. Just because the Bareknuckle wiring diagram shows black/bare and green/white joined together doesn't mean that the same wiring pairs apply to your pickup. Wiring colours are not standardised.

Floyd Rose make nuts specifically for the truss rod access hole on Strat-style necks. They have a cylindrical groove cast into the underside of the nut to allow a little bit extra clearance underneath so that the nut can be lowered sufficiently without impeding the truss rod. I think they're called 'Bullet Type' or something similar. You could perhaps make your own clearance notch in your nut by filing a channel into the underside of the nut plate with a round file? The higher action caused by the bridge being much taller can only be corrected by either installing a shim within the neck pocket to raise or tilt the neck forward, or doing a full recessed-route of the bridge.

Pretty safe to say he wasn't that type of guy

Either that or it's the roughest method of cutting cocaine known to man.

Haven't done a build thread for a while. Have been building, but not documenting at the moment (how many iterations do you really need to see of my headless guitars?), so here's something a little left of centre, for me at least. Recently my Father in Law passed away and between all the chidren and in-laws we've been helping clean out the old shed to make what little remaining space inside somewhat usable. He wasn't really much of a tools man or a DIY-er, but he somehow managed to acquire some minor gems over the years, possibly inherited from his father or some other family member. In the big cleanout I was given a couple of old-ish (probably 50s or 60s) handplanes - a Stanley No, 110 block plane and a 5 1/2 bench plane. I've since given the 110 a full once-over and brought it back to servicable condition, but I figured the 5 1/2 might make an interesting pictorial. Aside from being a bit unloved it actually isn't as bad as some other examples out there. It's all present and everything adjusts and moves as expected. It just looks a little tired and rusty. The white dust is a bit odd. If I didn't know any better I'd say it was used to plane plaster?? Some odd corrosion marks on one side. Given where it was stored it's possible something caustic has dripped on to it over the years. All looks pretty superficial though, along with the light surface rusting over the rest of it, and should clean up OK later on. Dismantling the plane reveals all the screw threads are all free, which is a good sign. And lots of trapped crud between the frog and the sole. And more rust. Blade is surprisingly square given how blunt it is. I'm willing to bet it has never been sharpened in 30 years, even assuming it's been used. Other side is ground just plain weird though. There is evidence, however that it has been sharpened at least once in its life, with that leading edge looking reasonably freshly re-ground in a straight line: Next task will be cleaning up the majority of the rust, the most fiddly of which is on the frog:

What I'm getting at is that currently you're running the whole thing at 18V including the heaters. To prevent over-stressing the heaters you're dropping the excess through a resistor for each tube from 18V to 12V. That's about 4 watts of power being wasted just to keep the heaters alive. However if you can run the whole thing on a 12V battery pack you can do away with the dropping resistors altogether and squeeze a bit more life out of a battery of equivelent physical size to an 18V one.

Maybe consider rearranging the cathode resistor switch on the bottom of the 12U7 such that one resistor is always present to ground, and the switch adds other resistors/capacitors in parallel with it as it is operated. If the switch you're using is a break-before-make type, as you change from one position to the next you might get a bit of a thump between positions. You can, but you're also wasting heat and battery run time by warming up a couple of resistors. Any scope for reducing the battery voltage down to 12V instead of 18V?

Doesn't sound unreasonable to me. My only comment would be that you establish the centerline on the neck blank first and then line up your template to match that centerline, rather than the other way around as you describe it. Same goes for the fret board. If you base all your alignment of the various components of the neck from common centrelines there's less chance of errors creeping in. The last thing you want to do is line things up by assuming things *look* equal on each side, only to discover that you've accidentally glued on the fret board such that the fret slots you cut are no longer perpendicular to the centerline of the neck.

Can you post a picture of the affected areas? There'll no doubt be some ideas for you from other members if we can see what you're dealing with.

So, you're getting the fret wire bender then? I thought you wanted to avoid the cost of it?

They need to be bent before insertion, otherwise the ends will have a tendency to pop up out of the slots. Hammering and glue by themselves will not hold a straight fret in a curved form for long. If anything, the common approach is to slightly over-bend them so that the middle of the arch sits higher than the fretboard, so that when they're hammered/pressed in the fret tangs are forced sideways along the length of the fret into the wood giving them better grip. So buy your fret wire pre-cut and pre-bent. Stewmac sells packs of them in a few different radii for less than a tenth of the cost of the bender.

The thing about the Stewmac mitre box is that it also requires the matching fret slotting templates, which will set you back another $50 each. As @ADFinlayson shows, it is possible to freehand the fret slots, but you'd have to be comfortable in yourself that you could pull it off successfully. Another alternative is to print out a full size layout of a fretboard using FretFind2d or @Polymaker's Sigen program, attach the print directly to the fretboard using spray adhesive and saw along the printed fret lines. If you felt you needed some extra accuracy insurance you could create a temporary saw guide by clamping a block of wood along each printed fret and carefully run the blade up against the vertical face of the block while sawing.

My fret end trimmers are a pair of Crescent end nippers with the face ground flush to the cutting edge. I've seen cabinet scrapers made from old handsaw blades.

The Stewmac Tele kit seems like a pretty reasonable deal, plus the added safety net of buying from a reputable seller makes it seem like a bit of a no brainer. They even seem to be running a special at the moment where you can add on a finishing kit to the base project that still come in under $270US. Guitarfetish seems to get good reports for their parts given the price. Don't know about their kits, but for less than half the cost of the Stewmac one you could also explore a thing or six along the way about fret end dressing, nut height or hardware subsitution, which might be a fun sidetrack.

Good idea for a thread! Here's a few of mine. Fret end beveling file made from an old fine cut file with the last quarter and handle cut off with the grinder. The angled handle contraption that keeps the file at a fixed angle of 30 degrees off vertical is made up of several pieces of timber and a few offcuts from a 60 degree profile strip commonly used to add decorative tapers to windowframes. Pretty sure I bought the file from the local recycling depot for about a dollar. Stewmac version will set me back about $80: End view perhaps illustrates best how all the various timber pieces are glued together to make up the handle: Neck cradle from a bit of scrap wood and a couple of quarter-round profile strips from an old window ledge. For padding I'll just fold up an old T-shirt and lay it in the valley of the cradle to prevent the back of the neck getting dented up while I'm hammering/pressing in frets: Fretwire bending crank. The smaller rollers are the wheels that domestic sliding doors roll on, usually sold as spares for a couple of bucks at the hardware store. The bigger wheel was the waste from using a holesaw to cut a 50mm hole in perspex. The notch in the perimeter of the big wheel for the fretwire tang to ride in as it's fed through the jig was made by chucking the wheel up into the drill press and carfully slotting it with a hacksaw. The rest of it is just scrap pespex, nuts and bolts and aluminium offcuts. Total cost maybe $30 including the holesaw to make the central wheel. The Stewmac equivalent, while a lot neater and serious looking, costs over $200: Fret tang nipper from a $20 nibbling tool from the hardware store. A bit rough around the edges, but works as expected. The slot ground across the top plate allows the fret wire to sit in the jaws so that the blade can undercut the tang off the ends. Stewmac equivalent costs about $75. No good for stainless steel frets, but neither is the Stewmac one either:

I suppose my list may look pretty big and intimidating, but a lot of it is probably obvious stuff (tape, glue, rulers, clamps etc). Even some of the 'boutique' items can be done cheaply - a fret end dressing file could be a square needle file with two cutting edges ground smooth, a leveling beam could be an aluminium spirit level. Even some things like the mitre box can be made by yourself, as @PRSpoggers has done elsewhere in another thread. Whichever way you split it, making a neck from scratch is a pretty high bar to set yourself, even more so with limited workshop and/or hands-on experience. The tools help, but the experience matters just as much.

Nice work. Have you got some photos of your jig to share?

It's a bit like the conflicting arguments about first starting out playing guitar. Some people will recommend you start playing on a nylon-strung classical in order for you to develop strength in your fretting hand before migrating to steel-strung acoustic or electric. Others will insist you go straight to electric as they feel that starting out on a more difficult instrument is more likely to be disenchanting and lead to you bailing out early.

At the age of 15 with limited workshop experience as the OP has mentioned previously, I never would have attempted to free hand fret slots using only a chart, markings I laid down myself and my eye. The level of precision and repeatability required would have been beyond my abilities at that time and would have been a disillusioning experience to put me off guitar building. I'm not sure I'd trust myself to execute it cleanly even now! I was also thinking of what tools and equipment would be required to help guarantee the OPs success at his first scratch-built neck, hence the suggestion of the mitre box and slotting template, among other things. They were certainly things that helped me do my first neck.

Here's my suggestions: Pre-slotted, pre-radiused fretboard (plus additional requirements if you're also going to be fretting it yourself - read below) Your neck blank Router with cutting bits sized appropriately to match your truss rod (typically 1/4" diameter for the rod section, and 3/8" diameter or so for the truss rod access point to insert the allen wrench, but measure your trussrod to see what you need), plus a template-following router bit if you're going to shape the neck edges to match your template (1/2" diameter with ball bearing is typical) Some way of creating the truss rod channel in a straight line. This can be a simple as a spare bit of straight scrap wood for the router to run up against or a fence attachment for the router Some method of rough-cutting the outline of the neck shape prior to trimming with the neck outline template (bandsaw, jigsaw, handsaw etc) Your neck shape template Truss rod Clamps, the more the merrier. Seriously, if you think you have enough you probably don't. Saw rasp for neck shaping Sandpaper of various grits from about 120G up to 600G or so Drills (for tuner holes, position markers, side dots etc) Side dot raw material, position marker raw materials (can buy pre-cut) PVA glue, superglue, spray-on adhesive, some kind of finish (varnish etc) A pack of pre-cut, pre-radiused fret wire of your choice Heavy duty flush-cutting wire cutters for snipping fretwire and trimming fret ends Soft faced hammer for hammering in frets (brass or nylon faces) Some kind of method for cradling/clamping/holding/supporting the neck while you hammer the frets in Fine cut flat file without handle for flush filing and bevelling the fret ends once installed Permanent marker for marking the fret tops to highlight where your levelling needs to be performed Some kind of flat sanding beam to level the fret tops once installed Wet and dry paper from 400G up to about 2000G Masking tape Fret crowning file Fret end dressing file (or something similar to get you the same effect) Steel ruler (600mm for the long stuff, 150mm for the smaller stuff) Pacer pencil or something similar that you can keep sharp and mark fine lines with A clean, flat, stable work area. I would consider this the absolute minimum for making a neck and does assume you're using a pre-slotted fret board. If you're also going to be starting a fretboard from scratch you'll also need to add: Radius block to apply appropriate radius profile (and sandpaper of course) Fret slotting hand saw with depth stop Fret slotting mitre box and template Double-sided sticky tape This is very much a personal preference thing though. You may find that other people will recommend you a different list if asked the same question. If it were me I'd not bother with the neck contour template as you learn more about what feels right by manually shaping the neck contour by hand. Personally I have bought a lot of the above items and gradually over the years dropped using them in favour for other methods and tools as my technique evolved (since switching to the CNC I never use the fret slotting mitre box and templates, for example). It is an expensive hobby, and can easily lead to purchases that you thought would be perfect at the time that later on become redundant to you. I don't think it is practical to lay down a one-size-fits-all list that is completely infallible and suitable for everyone's needs and abilities.

Something like this?