Eve: A Guitar 3 Years in the Making (kind of...)

[scherzo1928]

Lately I've been thinking about having cavity templates laser cut or something, because it's a PITA to get the cover and the cavity to match well enough... It's also entertaining though, and rewarding once you finally get it right.

Btw, did you only take your socks off for the photoshoot?

 

[Pikka Bird]

Couldn't you make perfect covers by making a single oversized template and then cutting the cover recess with one large size ball bearing around the shank followed by cutting the cover using a smaller sized ball bearing? You'd size up the ball bearings so that the bigger one would line up the cut on the inside of the line and the smaller would make the cut outside the line.

edit: Strike that- don't need the ball bearing for the cover cut. If you're using a ½" router bit then you'd make the template ½" oversize and just cut the cover directly via the template. Then you'd use a ball bearing that adds that ½" of distance to the template.

 

[JamesM]

Looking good man. Good luck on covers.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Lately I've been thinking about having cavity templates laser cut or something, because it's a PITA to get the cover and the cavity to match well enough... It's also entertaining though, and rewarding once you finally get it right.

Btw, did you only take your socks off for the photoshoot?

I took them off earlier and just left them on my floor.
But yeah some laser cut templates would be awesome. On the next one I will just leave some buffer room when I cut out the template with the jigsaw. I don't mind the top and bottom sides being slightly off, it's the 1/8"+ on the shorter sides that bugs me since the magnets would be exposed with this cover. If you look close you can probably see the wholes I made for the magnets.

 

[BlackMastodon]

So lately I've just been doing some final sanding on the body and neck and I also did a mockup of the control layout only to find that I didn't have enough room for the battery. Planning fail on my part but better late than never. So now I will be extending the cavity a fair bit to allow for the battery bag to fit in there, which also means that I will be having to redo both cavity covers. Good times ahead.

So today while I was doing some proper sanding on the neck to get rid of some scratches and whatnot (I didn't properly sand the edges on the sides of the headstock at first so I needed to redo those) I decided to experiment and tried taking off as much of the green dye as possible from the back of the headstock to see if I can still make the maple of the neck as natural as possible. Here is the result:

The maple cleans up pretty well but you can still see the green inside the grain, especially in this area:

So should I bring it back to 99% natural with small hints of green in the grain?
Is there a way to get the dye out of there without bleaching the wood?
If I did bleach it, would it look good?
Or should I just stain it green again and forget about it?

If I do sand it back, I will get a spindle sander to clean the edges properly and this way I can keep most of that "natural binding" thing I wanted earlier. But the problem is that the joint where I put the maple in doesn't look to good and the dark of the green kind of helps cover that up. I keep changing my mind on what I want to do. Ideally I would take off a bit of material all around just to get it back to natural with as little green as possible, but if I can't do that then it won't be the end of the world.

So anyone have any advice for my indecisive ass? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, I need to motivate myself to finish this SOB.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Anyone? Bueller?

 

[scherzo1928]

When it comes to finishes I'm completely clueless

 

[BlackMastodon]

I'm just wondering whether or not it will look stupid with the green in the grain. I was also thinking maybe of staining it like a light mahogany colour? It could match the body more and make the green less noticeable.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Made the cavity bigger today:

Also spent a lot of time sanding the sides and edges and getting everything nice and smooth and also put some more green on the top. I think it looks better than ever now though the green is kind of hard to get in a picture.

Still undecided on what I should do with the neck but so far I'm leaning more towards sanding it back as much as possible and hitting it with a cherry-like stain that matches the mahogany a bit.

 

[TimSE]

Looking excellent man! Love that colour!

 

[iRaiseTheDead]

envyenvyenvyenvyenvy

 

[Dan Halen]

thats pretty awesome. good job

 

[jake7doyle]

easily one of the nicest finishes ive ever seen man

 

[Jason Spell]

I dig the body wood showing underneath and around the separate actual carved top. Looks great!

 

[BlackMastodon]

Thanks for the positive comments guys. I think for the neck I'm just gonna sand all the end grain properly and dye it green again; I already made my bed with that so I'll sleep in it, and trying to stain the maple darker doesn't help mask the green too well anyway.

I mixed up my shellac over the weekend and will start working on test pieces with it before I do it on the body so it might take a while.

A question about shellac: do I need to fill in the pores of the wood before I do this or after a few thin layers of the shellac? I've seen a tutorial where the guy used fine ground pumice but I can't find any in my city and it seems like a big hassle so I think I will just use regular wood filler if anything.
But I am curious, do I need to fill in the pores at all? I'm leaning more towards yes because of the mahogany but with enough layers shouldn't the shellac begin to smooth itself out after filling in the small pores?

If anyone could shed some light on this it would be great. Scherzo I know you did a shellac finish on your first guitar and it turned out great; any suggestions or tips?

Thanks again guys.

 

[skeels]

I have serious tool envy.

I'm building with sharp rocks and fire and bonesaws ...

 

[BlackMastodon]

I basically have a router, a drill press, and a jigsaw. And then other miscellaneous stuff my dad has in the garage. I was considering getting a bandsaw but I would rather get a spindle sander and router table. I wouldn't have the patience to do a build if I didn't have a router, though. Using a chisel makes me really uneasy and just irritates me because I can never make the cavities clean.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Updates:

The alcohol in the shellac reacts too much with the alcohol in the dye I used for the top so I won't be using that, instead I will be using Tung oil (glossy top, matte sides and back) but I still may use the shellac as a sealer for the mahogany before I apply grain filler.

Also cut out the shapes of the cavity covers the other day but didn't get to plane them to proper thickness til today. Here they are before thickness:

Made some saw dust this afternoon:

All for these little bastards:

I gotta sand the sides of the trem cover a tad to make it fit properly and the electronics cover is a bit to small in some areas BUT I don't care. I ran out of mahogany to be picky at this point. Soon I will go back to work and make my magnet system work.

 

[scherzo1928]

Ah, I read this too late. Shellac is an amazing sealer, no need to seal before appliying it. Just do a layer, let it dry and sand it back a little bit with 600ish grit (wet) and do a bunch more coats afterwards.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Ah, I read this too late. Shellac is an amazing sealer, no need to seal before appliying it. Just do a layer, let it dry and sand it back a little bit with 600ish grit (wet) and do a bunch more coats afterwards.

No worries about the late response, but thanks for the tip! I'm just glad that I tested it on some scrap and saw that the dye was coming off which I wasn't a fan of. It does work great as a sealer so I will definitely use it to seal the mahogany but I am definitely gonna go with the oil finish instead of the French polish for simplicity's sake.