ESP LTD SC-607B Refinishing Project

[EpicFlail]

Taper profile is done. I'm currently covered in bright orange dust. It mixed with the sweat on my arms and turned a dark red. I look kind of bloody. Totally m3t4l. Not trying to brag, but that glue line is almost invisible. When I tapered it, instead of making the edges 90 degrees, I gave it an upside down trapezoid profile. Meaning the actual fretting surface is slightly wider than where it meets the plane of the neck. I'll fix it later. In this case, I didn't want to accidentally make it too narrow so I overcompensated to get it squared later. It's around 3/8" thick, so I'm going to radius and reduce the thickness next time I work on it. I've been thinking that it might be nice to round the fretboard edges out. Kind of like a Strat a friend of mine had.

Still no word on uploading pictures. After work tonight, I'll try to get that taken care of. For what it's worth, my Instagram username is brizzleygare. I have a few progress shots on there. If you feel like it, you can check those out. It should suffice until I figure out how to upload onto SSO.

 

[EpicFlail]

Finally, after much delay: PICTURES!

Yesterday I finished up the fretboard edges?

Parting fancy Instagram shot.

That was it for yesterday. Today I started sanding the radius.

I started the day off with a refreshing West Coast IPA. When it's hot as hell and your A/C only kind of works, a cold beer is a godsend.

14" radius block loaded with 80-grit.

My makeshift workstation.

About 20 minutes in. I have a handy radius gauge in the corner.

I posted this on Instagram. 15 minutes later, my roommate, who is in Colorado right now, sent me an angry text informing me that sanding a guitar is not an indoor activity.

I called it quits early, sweat dripping off of me, and took a nap.

That's all I've done right now. It's too hot. Lol. Tomorrow I'll try to finish the radius and slim it down some.

Also, photobucket and iPads are a match made in hell. This whole update has taken about an hour.

I had more I wanted to say, but it's a pain in the ass to even try to post pictures on this thing. Boo-hiss. I'll add more later.

 

[loktide]

 

[peagull]

Yay for Picture update!!!

That is a lot of sanding you've got to reduce that fretboard down, you're gonna be ripped by the end of it mate!

 

[Danukenator]

This is looking awesome. I love the binding you did for the headstock. I also hope you're wearing a mask this time around. The dust can be nasty.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Yeah you definitely have your work cut out for you, that fretboard looks thick as hell! Looking great so far man.

 

[EpicFlail]

I woke up early to do some more sanding.

This was my point of view for almost two hours.

And this is the workstation after about an hour.

I started where I left off with 80-grit, and once I got the basic shape I wanted, I moved to 150, 220, 320, and 400-grit. It's nearly as smooth as glass now. Obviously I'm exaggerating, but it's still damn smooth. Every 10-20 passes, I would stop to check the radius with the gauge. The radius block is only slightly wider than the widest part of the fretboard. This made things very difficult. The last few frets had a much tighter radius than the nut area. And somewhere in there, I sanded the treble side almost 2 mm more than the bass side. Once I noticed what I was doing, I sanded more on the bass side. Then I sanded down the center and made damn sure not to deviate from the center line. I also drew diagonal lines in pencil to see what material I was removing. This helped IMMENSELY. I only decided to do this after I took too much off the treble side. No pictures of that. When I do something as intensive and intricate as this, I zone out..

Despite dripping sweat all over the place and on the verge of collapsing from the heat, this was the most enjoyable moment of my day--maybe even my week. I turned an ugly, rough piece of orange wood into a buttery smooth, silky, shiny, gorgeous playing surface. I turned a piece of lumber into something usable. All by hand. I know pride is a sin, but I can't help but feel proud of my work. I've always been good with my hands, but this made me very, VERY happy to see (and feel). I created this. I MADE this.

After nearly two hours of constant sanding, I got called in to work. I work in a fairly busy restaurant; so being covered in padauk dust, I considered myself to be a walking biohazard. I quickly cleaned up the living room and walked to the bathroom to shower. I looked in the mirror and this is what I saw.

Always with the thumbs up.

When I went to work, all I could feel (besides the blisters and callouses on my hands) were my burning knees from kneeling and my back from being hunched over all morning. It hurt like hell, but all night I was reminded that when you really want something, it demands hard work. It requires time, patience, devotion, a little blood, a lot of sweat, some tears when you think you fuck it up, and even more hard work.

Enough of the introspective thoughts. Onto progress. I got the thickest part of the fretboard down to just over 7mm. On my imperial ruler, it measured ~9/32". Just over 1/4". I find that quite adequate. Thicker than normal, but not too fat. I used the nut and the bottom of the nut slot (which I still need to file out for a shelf) as a guide. I eyeballed it to see where the bottom of the lowest string slot sat in relation to where I thought the fret would be (if that makes any sense--hey, I'm tired!). Before I fret it, I'll definitely check and re-check it, but for now, I think it's fine.

Here is a close-up of a portion 400-grit sanded. It feels UHH-MAZING.

And the full board. 400-grit sanded, but not dusted off.

I may still decide to thin it out more. Now that I look at it closely, I see that the treble side is slightly shorter than the bass side. It's not a huge difference, but I may have to even it up. Maybe a millimeter, but it's not perfect. I'll sleep on it and decide later. Any thoughts? Would that small of a discrepancy have any negative consequence? I could always lower the treble side of the bridge by that much, but I wouldn't want to cause any unneeded stress on the bridge post area.

That's all for tonight. I may work on it tomorrow. I may not. I'm physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. Between the physical stress of this project, the mental stress of my actual job, and the emotional stress of life in general, I'm on the verge of shutting down. Wish me luck, guys. I'll need it!

 

[CrushingAnvil]

A millimeter? I can't think of a reason why it would matter too much, but if you think you can fix it, just do it

 

[loktide]

good job

 

[Edika]

Amazing work so far man! It looks beautiful and smooth as glass!

Since you are exhausted I would suggest that you take a couple of days of the project and then get back to it fresh to see if the fretboard so far satisfies you. If you decide now, start fretwork and after a while you feel you should have done some more work on it, then it will be harder to go back at it.

EDIT: To me it seems a little bit thick. You should check how it feels in terms of thickness when you put your hand on it. If you are satisfied then don't mind what I or anyone else says.

 

[EpicFlail]

Im conflicted whether or not to thin it down more. Comparing this to my Ibanez Prestige, it's incredibly thick. At the same time, I don't want the same feel. I want this to be a purely chuggernaut and acoustic. I like a bit more mass for acoustics. This isn't for shredding. I'm going for a ballsy punch you in the face djent sound. I also want something for easy chording and pretty sounds. It is a lot thicker than normal, but I don't see that as a detriment. I'm going strictly by what I've played before. When I lent this guitar to a friend to record some stuff (well before I decided to refinish it), I only had my acoustic. I also played with my old roommate's Strat at that time. It had a different neck profile. It was very thick compared to the ESP. I liked it. I'm thinking that the thin profile of this one in conjunction with the thick fretboard would give me a comparable feel to the Strat. Not entirely, but something different. Something....thicker.

I'll think about it, but for now I want to keep it as is. Unless someone can change my mind over the next few days. I'll accept all criticism and critique, but right now I can't see a reason to go shredder thin.

If anything, once I finish it, it will give me a reason to take it apart and change it. I think that's what I like most about this: the freedom to change anything I want whenever I want.

 

[CrushingAnvil]

I'm going for a ballsy punch you in the face djent sound.

 

[peagull]

It's an interesting idea about increasing the thickness of the neck using the fretboard. I have no idea whether it would or not, I imagine you'd be better off asking for advice in a thread on here, but my thought would be that it may negatively interact with the truss rod/bowing when you set up your guitar, if you undertand what I mean. I do like the idea though.

What I'd do is get a few bits of plastic/wood or whatever, that are the same thickness as your frets. Stick a few strings to them, put that on the fretboard, so it simulates it being strung up, then see how it feels in your hands.

All in all, it looks nice. Excited to see it finished!

 

[Kapee]

lol instagram

 

[7stringDemon]

Looks awesome dude! And feel proud as fuck of that thing! There's no such thing as sin

 

[EpicFlail]

After quite a bit of time off of this project, I figured my one day off should be put to good use. I set up shop in my garage. The previous tenant left a small entertainment stand so I used that as a bench. It was quite nice. It has doors on the front, a little area under the main area, and a big surface area. All my tools fit nicely underneath it.

I started by sanding down the fretboard a bit more. Not much, but just enough to stir up some serious sawdust. Same thing as before. 80, 150, 220, 320, and 400-grits. I still haven't cut the nut shelf. I need to get a good file for that.

After I got the fretboard as smooth as I wanted, I started cleaning out the slots. Now, this is where I'm kicking myself for not getting the fret-slot cleaner from StewMac months and months ago. The padauk had formed this almost solid gunk in the slots. I spent probably half an hour with a razor blade trying to scrape it all out. It was still light outside when I finished cleaning the slots, sooooo....

I set to fretting. First, I cut all the fretwire to approximate lengths. I found a cool way to hold on to the wire while I was cutting the rest..Double sided tape directly on the workbench. And nobody's the wiser.

Here are the frets lightly pressed in. Not yet hammered.

Another filtered Instaguitar pic.

And here they are all hammered in. Outside and inside lighting.

Here is the only casualty of the night. Hammer meets finger.

I have to say that this was one of the loudest things I've done yet. I used a 1-lb fret hammer. It still sounded like gunshots. Especially ringing out in the garage. Neighbors be piiiissseeeddddd. Funny enough, two of the women that live in my little 4-apartment flat came out and were super intrigued that I was building a guitar. They were asking all sorts of questions about it. Hopefully they won't get mad when I crank the amp way up....

My next day off isn't for a while, so if I do anything, I'll be working an hour here and there. If I find the time, I'd like to get the frets flush with the fingerboard and leveled by the next update.

 

[flexkill]

Great thread, great job!

 

[EpicFlail]

As soon as I got off work, I went to Home Depot for a file, a roll of blue painter's tape, and a five gallon bucket. The file was for filing down the fret ends flush with the fretboard. The tape was for the fretboard so I didn't scratch it. The bucket doubles as a place to hold things and as a seat. I used it as a seat tonight.

It was overcast all day, which meant it got dark super fast, so I only worked for an hour and a half or so. I did get stuff done though!

First I taped the first few frets and then started filing. I have quite a few of those metal things with a slit down the middle that you put over the frets when you crown them (I'm totally drawing a blank on what they're called), so I bent one at a 90 degree angle so I could get as close as possible to the edge of the fretboard without damaging it. It worked surprisingly well. I slipped a few times and the file hit that instead of the fretboard. Sounds like success if you ask me.

All in all, I got nine frets filed down to manageable size. They still stick out a millimeter or two. After I get them all like this, I'll go over them all at once to get them completely flush.

As you can see, the fretboard is still pretty thick. I sat down and "played" it before I installed the frets. It felt comfortable. Different, but good.

The light in my garage is terrible or else I'd still be out there. Dammit, I need more days off.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Man that padauk dust got every where eh?

 

[EpicFlail]

Man that padauk dust got every where eh?

My clothes are permanently stained. My cat also now has an orange belly. And I keep finding orange fingerprints all around the house. I hate to admit it, but maybe my roommate was right. Sanding in the house is not an indoor activity? Oh well, I have a nice garage workshop now. She wins....for now....at least until I start my wenge/purpleheart RG1527 baritone conversion neck build. Or the full build I've got planned. Or another refinish I have planned. Or a friend's refinish I want to do. She gon' be piiiissssseeeeddddd. Next angry text I get I'm uploading on here.