Finished adding frets today, dressed the ends of them, and contoured the neck! It feels so good in my hand and seeing the two components together in this state at last is so exciting!!
Last pic shows that you can just catch the reflection of the room in the surface at a steep angle. Feels buttery smooth! Cannot wait to see this thing with the gold hardware on it.
The body I’ve been working on is only about an inch thick. I can countersink the holes for my pots on the back to make them fit without making more of the top surface super thin than necessary, but the pickup switch and output jack are a bit taller. Any ideas on ways to accommodate their thickness being roughly equal to the body without laminating over that awesome back grain or the front? Thanks!
My process:
Feels like glass to the touch, makes my heart warm.
I'm working on my second build, a 7-string multiscale, and it's been a TON of fun so far. Over the weekend I created a template to help me route the neck pocket, pickup pockets, mark the outer contour where I'll shape away the top wood, and (here's where the mistake starts) the intonation line. I marked where each string crosses the intonation line, but, and here it is: marked them with 1/8" circles for drilling thru-holes. Maybe you can see where this is going...
Moments after I finished drilling the thru holes and countersinking them in the back for ferrules, I realized the strings don't pass through the body AT the intonation point, that's just where they'll hit the saddles.
Here's what I SHOULD have done: Used the locations that I drilled through the body as MARKERS for where I want the strings to hit the saddles, then actually laid my bridge on top of the guitar, lined it up using those as a guide, and marked where the thru holes actually exist on the bridge BEHIND the intonation point, then drilled there.
Thankfully this feels very recoverable.
How I plan to fix it: The bridge will cover the 1/8" holes on the top of the body, so no worries there visually. As for the back, I'm going to whip up a set of 5/16" dowels out of the same walnut as the top and glue them in to the ferrule holes I placed incorrectly. The back is ash, but I want to go with the contrasting walnut as a way to highlight the mistake and what I learned from it. I think it'll look cool and structurally I should be fine to just drill a new set of holes further back where the strings actually pass through the bridge/body.
Anyway, hope this helps someone to avoid the same mistake and the bit of extra work it'll take to fix it! Happy luthing!
This maple and walnut concoction will be the neck for my first multi-scale which also happens to be my first 7-string!
Thanks for taking a moment to review this and let me know what I am missing / not thinking about correctly.
Here is my plan and I've included my questions:
How is my plan? Thank you so much for any help or input you can provide! I am feeling up for the job but want to know what I don't know first.
Thank you all SO MUCH for the amazing ideas and encouragement. I cannot wait to build this neck and make the guitar I’ve always been curious about playing at last!
Making this was so much fun!! Very labor intensive but so rewarding in the end :)
First of all, thank you to everyone who weighed in on my earlier post. You all made some good points and I agree that running the body centerline parallel to the grain is ultimately the most stable arrangement, especially with respect to how the body and neck will swell/shrink relative to one another with changes in humidity.
So why did I do it anyway? First and foremost because I like the look and I wanted to. I thought about it this way: if I’m building a guitar instead of buying, I want to try things I wouldn’t necessarily buy. It’s going to be “homemade” anyway (only my second build so I’m not exactly matching factory quality), so I wanted to go for it, do it my way, and embrace the first-hand learning if it turns out to be catastrophically important that the grain and centerline be parallel. Second: the angle is less than even 45°, so still far from totally crossed grains between the neck and the neck pocket. I am not planning to finish with a hard lacquer so I’m not worried about cracking, and to be honest my neck pocket is likely going to be a tad loose and rely on the four bolts to keep things in place in order to allow for a little extra movement.
Anyway, I am stoked to see how this goes and ready to learn from it if it turns out poorly. I appreciate hearing the thoughts and reasoning of anyone that took the time to comment on my earlier post and will post more updates as the build progresses! Thanks for reading!
I’m curious if there is a functional reason not to shift diagonal like in the first photo as well as what you think would look better. Thanks!
It has never been through the dishwasher but was stored upright in its end. It has also not been dropped.