Home Depot Build Challenge 2013 - I'm Losing My Head!

[BlackMastodon]

Getting ready to do some fretting. Need to get that done by the end of the week. Made a little clampy thing to hold a file at about a 30 degree angle.

Might have to glue in a nut for each bolt to catch better.

Also, the promised better shots of the back:

 

[BlackMastodon]

Welp, it's more or less done since the dead line is tonight. Funny day it's been though.

Can't put pickups in because I need to cut the tabs since they are too long, don't have time to wire it up either, aaaaaand I only have 2 pickup height screws anyway.

Funnier part, though, is that the gauge of strings I put on (barritone, 14-68) is so goddamned heavy that I can't tune the bastard. At least I know that the tuners actually hold.

It works, though, mile high action and all. I'm going to put this on hold for a little while and work out the quirks over time. Had I actually started working on this back in September I might've been able to get over these issues but holy shit was this a lot of fun and I think once it's 100% complete it's gonna be a lot of fun to dick around with. Not sure if this disqualifies me from the contest but either way, I'm surprised with myself.

Here she is as she stands:

Good luck to everyone else in the context. And thanks for watching. She'll live soon enough.

 

[RV350ALSCYTHE]

That looks so awesome!

 

[JoshuaVonFlash]

It's a masterpiece

 

[muffinbutton]

I really love this shape. Also what bridge is that?

 

[skeels]

Shielding and all! Awesome!

 

[BlackMastodon]

I really love this shape. Also what bridge is that?

A $50 Steinberger knock off from ebay. Thanks a lot guys! Still got some work to do on this before it's fully playable. Thinking if there is a way to add a slot to the back of the tuners for an allen key to make it possibls to tune since I would want tl keep this in dropped A or B. Any ideas?

 

[Fretless]

I want one so bad. This just beautiful! Normally I don't dig headless guitars, but this one's just great!

 

[Deadnightshade]

Really should've worked on this more during September and October. Colder than a witch's tit outside today but I got the final sanding done on it (at least all that I'm willing to do, there are some areas where I'm just saying f**k it). Also got the pilot holes drilled and began oiling. Pics!!!

Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?

 

[Kapee]

Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?

Yeah, there's definately a face in the top

 

[Cloudy]

Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?

Nope thats the first thing I saw

 

[Allealex]

Man this turned out really cool! Congrats man you're one skilled dude

 

[BlackMastodon]

Oh god I never noticed the face before, it watches me sleep now.

Man this turned out really cool! Congrats man you're one skilled dude

Thanks man! I still got a lot of things to learn but that's why I do this.

Now if only there was an easier way to do fret dressing and polishing.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Rise, rise from your grave my sweet, headless child!

This poor gal has been staring at me in my guitar rack for the last year and a half, unfinished and unloved.

So let's change that!

Last summer I spent some time working on the bridge and hardware for this.

Let's start with the bridge. When I first strung her up, I noticed how incredibly hard it was to bring it to pitch with the headless tuners (admittedly, the strings were thick as f**k). So I wanted to add some Allen key support for them.

Break out the drill press and let loose on the tuner pins:

Next to them are the machine screws. I cut all the threading off since I would only really need those end bits, but a convenient bit is that If these don't work out, the threading matches that of the tuners that came on the bridge, so I have about 44 extra screws that could work with the string blocks.

The machine screws will sit in the tuner like so:

But how will they stay there? I don't think super glue or epoxy would do the job, and machine screw would probably just spin freely once the glue/epoxy broke.

I had to use my genius engineering skillz here

I drilled out a channel perpendicular to the machine screw so that I could add a metal pin that would securely hold the machine screw in place inside. You can kind of see that the knurling (or whatever the hell it's called) on the tuner itself got a little stripped and brass is showing beneath it. Not a huge deal, that's what the Allen keys will be for.

And by pin I mean nail.

Epoxy ready:

Tuners all drilled and ready:

She's looking a little more functional now:

Now the pickups were a little trickier, but again: engineering skillz. I bent the tabs of one of the pickups so that they were flat and inline with the baseplate and then put the other one on top of it, lining them up as best I could and then drilling into the bottom pickup's tabs to get the right alignment:

Worked perfectly:

...aside from the slight booboo on the right tab here:

Can't win 'em all.

I then flipped the pickups around and bent the tabs on the other one so that I could copy the location and have them both set. I still need to cut the excess of the tabs off but that shouldn't be a problem.

I also got sick of looking at the awkward (and uneven) "headstock" so I decided to sand it flat with the rest of the neck.

The Ridgid spindle/belt sander made short work of it:

Mooch better:

 

[BlackMastodon]

I scratched the surface near the top bout of the body a bit when re-radiusing the fretboard to 16 degrees and considered just saying f**k it and leaving it alone. I figured the whole guitar would just have a rustic look to it since it was more of a proto/proof of concept type build anyway, and this contest has been long over.

BUT NAY, I said!

She will be treated with the utmost respect and it gave me a great opportunity to play around with some different colour finishes. Plus I love the dying process with guitars, probably my favourite part of any build.

So I sanded the entire top down and brought it up to 220 grit then added some black dye:

Aaaaaand then sanded back down:

God I dislike sanding by hand.

So far so good, think I got a lot of the unsightly scratches out of the top and it's back up to 220 again.

Added the same greyish/blue/stormy sky colour that it had on before, this time with a few more layers making it darker. I like:

This upper 'horn' is looking much better this time around with the figuring:

But ya know, I still think she's missing something. And I never did try a burst finish before.... Hmmmmmmmm....

Oh. Oh my.

That's niiiiiice.

Hit it with some 0000 steel wool to blend the burst in and give the middle area a fade:

Oh lawd have mercy! I think I'm in love (don't judge me...)

Give her some mineral spirits to see how it'll look down the road:

Can I just say godDAMN:

I am excite.

 

[burl]

that top is gorgeous!

 

[littleredguitars2]

great! i love me some blue

 

[immortalx]

This is a hundred times better than the original stain job man
Also nice work on the hardware mod too!

 

[jarnozz]

I totally forgot about this one and how I loved the body shape! I might just "steal" this design! Muahahah

 

[pettymusic]

I just now found this!!!


Looks great, man! I really like what you did for cutting your initial neck taper on that router table. I screwed my taper up on my build so, I gotta hone in on this area next time. You gave me some ideas so, thanks!