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

[BlackMastodon]

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!

Thanks, man! Glad to give some people ideas with my mad science.

If you check out my other thread for the WG587 mod, the way I cut the neck taper in that one is a lot more accurate and it turned out better. This one was fine, but that aluminum angle stock that I used as a straight edge is too flimsy. For the other neck I used angle iron and it's much more stiff.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Much smaller update this time around (no pics unfortunately).

Just sanded down the back of the body to get a couple scratches out, will do some more fine sanding on it soon to get it ready for oiling.

I'm currently building up layers of tung oil for the fretboard before I get to fretting. I still need to bend and cut the fretwire and do the ballend frets, so that should be interesting. I also need to order a 3-48 tap so I can actually get the pickup height screws through the tabs.

I also realized that I uploaded a lot of those shots of the body in the previous post in the wrong order. I think everyone can figure out which is which, though.

 

[FruitCakeRonin]

2015, the year of the 2 year old builds.

Thats a really nice color. Going blue myself with my build, so I can dig it.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Looks like I'll be updating this build every year or so by the looks of it.

Since I recently made some fret nippers, I decided to just man up and start the frets.

So, let's get nipping:

Turned out alright:

After this one I started cutting off smaller bits at a time and it worked much better. Way more clean.

Unfortunately the fretwire wasn't bent enough and the radius was too big for the fretboard, so I had to try to bend them again before hammering them in.

Lesson learned: Always bend the fretwire before cutting it to size, and always bend it to be a smaller radius than the fretboard.

Anyway, some progress:

I hate everything about fretting.

Got them all in at last:

Next I need to make my fret beveling file and trim the ends, then level them all.

 

[BlackMastodon]

The fret beveling block I made did the job alright, bet there's lots of room for improvement. Glad I used this build as a Guinea pig, though. Should at least play relatively smooth once they're leveled and crowned.

Then I started sanding some scrap oak to get some dust and packed it into the one side of the fret slots as best I could and put a few dabs of CA glue over each. I'll wait for this side to dry before doing it to the other side as well.

Hopefully it isn't as dark when it dries up.

 

[J_Mac]

Sah-weeet!