Tales from my workbench

[slingblader]

Here is a small progress update.

After roughing out the pieces for the body blanks, I jointed the glue edges. 

Clamped them up.

Out of the clamps after drying overnight.

Roughly flattened with a plane, then through the drum sander.

Ready for further processing.

More soon.

[cmatthes]

Regarding the binding:

1. The Winfield Stuff - that's the legit "Rickenbacker" checkerboard, from the same source.  Winfield has been sold out of their supply for close to 3 years, and has no way of getting more at this time...but they leave the ad up regardless.  I got enough to bind a Tele top a few years back and still haven't done it.

2. The Rothko & Frost stuff - It's super cheap for the "wonky" stuff, and I think I got 7-8 lengths of it for under $25.  About 1/4 to 1/3...and in one case, 1/2 of the loop was stretched or distorted, but the rest was fine.  It would just mean getting more pieces and making more joins, but with a checkerboard, that wouldn't be too obvious.  Use that as the inner checkerboard, and bind with white or black ABS.

3. Steve Dikkers - The man is a legend, and does fantastic work.  I had him do a Tele for me a dozen or so years ago, and the binding came out great.  He's vastly improved his finishing methods over the last decade plus.  The finish on mine is really nice - a Midnight Green metalflake, and I had him do two things he hadn't offered before: white/check/white binding and a fistful of holoflake in the sparkle mix.   I'm not sure where he sources his checkerboard material, but it's not the same as the Rickenbacker/Winfield stuff, and is more similar to the R&F product.

4. Bryan England's Custom Inlay - I'm not sure how good this stuff is...or isn't.   Most of my dealings with Custom Inlay have been stellar, but this binding, in addition to being the most expensive by far, is a bit of a stretch at the price.

 

 

My Dikkers "Envycaster":

[slingblader]

21 hours ago, cmatthes said:

Regarding the binding:

1. The Winfield Stuff - that's the legit "Rickenbacker" checkerboard, from the same source.  Winfield has been sold out of their supply for close to 3 years, and has no way of getting more at this time...but they leave the ad up regardless.  I got enough to bind a Tele top a few years back and still haven't done it.

2. The Rothko & Frost stuff - It's super cheap for the "wonky" stuff, and I think I got 7-8 lengths of it for under $25.  About 1/4 to 1/3...and in one case, 1/2 of the loop was stretched or distorted, but the rest was fine.  It would just mean getting more pieces and making more joins, but with a checkerboard, that wouldn't be too obvious.  Use that as the inner checkerboard, and bind with white or black ABS.

3. Steve Dikkers - The man is a legend, and does fantastic work.  I had him do a Tele for me a dozen or so years ago, and the binding came out great.  He's vastly improved his finishing methods over the last decade plus.  The finish on mine is really nice - a Midnight Green metalflake, and I had him do two things he hadn't offered before: white/check/white binding and a fistful of holoflake in the sparkle mix.   I'm not sure where he sources his checkerboard material, but it's not the same as the Rickenbacker/Winfield stuff, and is more similar to the R&F product.

4. Bryan England's Custom Inlay - I'm not sure how good this stuff is...or isn't.   Most of my dealings with Custom Inlay have been stellar, but this binding, in addition to being the most expensive by far, is a bit of a stretch at the price.

 

 

My Dikkers "Envycaster":

Man, I dig that guitar!! 

I totally agree with your points. I discovered the same thing when I was researching these builds. I ended up buying 10 pieces of the wonky binding from R&F about 6 weeks ago, but apparently the price has gone up since you bought it.  It's now over $8 a piece... yikes. I do also have thin black binding to sammich it on both sides as well. 

Like you mentioned, I'm hoping to cut it up and piece together enough to use for both front and back bindings. Hopefully I bought enough... I haven't gotten up the courage to go see if I actually have enough good material. LOL. 

If it doesn't work out, I'll just use black binding for the gold one, it won't be the end of the world. 

[slingblader]

I made a little more progress on things.

I got another piece of maple for the neck. (I only had figured maple which was enough for two necks) The third neck will be plain maple, but that's fine, I'll keep that one for myself.

Here are all the wood components, templates, etc. ready for shaping.

 

I rough cut the body shapes on the band saw. Clearly I should have changed the blade before I started this.

 

I sanded the body shape as close to the line as I could, then I attached my body template and went to the inverted pin router to cut the cavities. My template is made in layers so that they can pull double-duty. You can see here that I found some inclusions in this alder, some of which will need to be scraped out and filled. Sometimes alder is just like that, but it's OK as these will be solid color anyway.

 

Cavities have all been routed to depth.

 

I removed the "cavity" layer from my template and move over to the router table to route the perimeter to shape with a spiral compression bit.

 

Done.

More soon.

[Travis]

51 minutes ago, slingblader said:

I made a little more progress on things.

I got another piece of maple for the neck. (I only had figured maple which was enough for two necks) The third neck will be plain maple, but that's fine, I'll keep that one for myself.

Here are all the wood components, templates, etc. ready for shaping.

 

I rough cut the body shapes on the band saw. Clearly I should have changed the blade before I started this.

 

I sanded the body shape as close to the line as I could, then I attached my body template and went to the inverted pin router to cut the cavities. My template is made in layers so that they can pull double-duty. You can see here that I found some inclusions in this alder, some of which will need to be scraped out and filled. Sometimes alder is just like that, but it's OK as these will be solid color anyway.

 

Cavities have all been routed to depth.

 

I removed the "cavity" layer from my template and move over to the router table to route the perimeter to shape with a spiral compression bit.

 

Done.

More soon.

Those look fantastic. You ever build bodies to sell by themselves?  Or only for the complete guitars you make?

[gorch]

That are going to be some nice Teles. Love it.

[slingblader]

On 8/14/2021 at 1:46 PM, Travis said:

Those look fantastic. You ever build bodies to sell by themselves?  Or only for the complete guitars you make?

So far, I haven't sold a thing. I've given one guitar to a friend and I've kept the rest for myself.

Of course, now I'm making one for my brother and dad, but that's a family thing. LOL

So, PM me;  I'm not sure that discussing monetary transactions on the open forum is acceptable behavior and I don't want to get the boot.

[slingblader]

Next, I decided to get started on the necks. These will be two piece, maple cap necks. I'm using StewMac double action rods with the slotted nut. Yeah, not historically accurate, I know. I just want a nice functional truss rod that doesn't require too much complicated work for me. 

The first thing that I did was to make a little jig so that I could drill the hole for the TR nut in the heel of the neck. Then I cut off the neck blank nearly flush at the heel line.

I aligned and clamped the jig in place, then drilled the nut hole to the appropriate depth with a brad point bit.

Nut hole, complete.

The truss rod nut needs some clearance in order for it to slide into position, so I used a 1/2" forstner bit to drill a hole on the top of the heel right on the center line. This hole is as deep as the TR slot/nut hole.

Then I took the blanks to the router table and routed the slot for the truss rod. Good fit. 

After cutting out the necks at the band saw, I attached the neck template. I sanded as close to the template as possible. 

Then back to the router table to flush trim the necks.

And the pile of parts is getting more shapely.


Thanks for following along, more soon.

Edited August 16, 2021 by slingblader

[specialk]

42 minutes ago, slingblader said:

Thanks for following along, more soon.

Love it!

Following along is easy, it's you that has the hard part. Thanks for sharing!

[slingblader]

37 minutes ago, specialk said:

Love it!

Following along is easy, it's you that has the hard part. Thanks for sharing!

Ha! I have the FUN part!

[slingblader]

Next, I started to prep the fretboards. I had enough of the figured maple for 2 of them, and the third will be some plain straight maple. 

Cutting fret slots on the table saw.

Cutting fret slots on the table saw using a sled and slotting blade.

Setting up the router table to radius the boards. These radius bits make pretty quick work of this. 

Partially there.

Radius complete, just needs a little cleanup with a leveling beam.

 

More soon.

[a.bandini]

It's a pleasure to see how this is done.  It is also impressive.  Well done. 

 

[slingblader]

1 hour ago, a.bandini said:

It's a pleasure to see how this is done.  It is also impressive.  Well done. 

 

Well, thanks. Keep in mind that I'm just learning this stuff, so probably most of it isn't the way that it should be done.

[slingblader]

This isn't for the current build, but it just arrived today. Curly claro walnut. Yummy.

 

[specialk]

Holy Smokin' Jeebus!!

[slingblader]

Time to attach the fretboards to the necks. 

I made sure that I had good center lines marked as well as nut location on all the necks. I carefully aligned the fretboards and clamped them in place.  

I drilled a 1/16" hole at the first and last fret location, then removed the clamps. I use 1/16" side dot marker rods as pins for alignment (not pictured). At this point, I also roughly taper the fretboards on the band saw.

I preheat the necks and fretboards with a heat gun, then apply hot hide glue. The necks go into a vacuum bag for a couple of hours. 

After drying overnight, I chase the fret slots to ensure that they're full depth after being radiused. 

I use a Robosander to bring the boards down as close as possible to the neck itself. 

The fretboards are then flush trimmed at the router table (not pictured). A little cleanup will be needed, but these look pretty good.

More soon, buckaroos.

Edited August 20, 2021 by slingblader
Typo

[slingblader]

Not much to report this weekend, but I made a little bit of progress. 

Drilled the holes for the tuners.

I marked out the material to be removed from the headstock face along with the transition. 

Made the cut on the face of the headstock on the bandsaw.

Made the perpendicular cut on the bandsaw to remove the waste.

Used the spindle sander to shape the transition.

Sanded the face and cleaned up.

More soon.

 

[slingblader]

Wow, it's been over a month since I've updated this thread. I haven't made as much progress I had hoped... Work has been insane, busy around the house, etc. And to be perfectly honest, I sorta knocked the wind out of my own sails with a boneheaded mistake. Read on, dear friends, for the details.

I took a few minutes to drill out some wire passages in the bodies.

Next, I quickly laid out the fretboard dot positions, went to the drill press and got the depth stop set for my 1/4" forstner bit. Then started drilling away. I started into the second neck, and that's when I saw it.

Of course it had to be on one of the figured maple boards that I had so carefully saved especially for these matching necks. Oh, and of course I had center punched all 3 necks in the wrong position. (I had laid them all next to each other and marked them at the same time.)

Yeah, boneheaded move. Something I never imagined I would do, but all it took was a few minutes of not paying enough attention. I spent a few days moping and trying to figure out a way to piece in some offcuts, but I knew the joints would show no matter well the patches would fit. I was able to steam out (for the most part) the bad punch marks, but that one board would have to go.

I used my heating iron that I used to use to cover RC airplanes and an antique frosting knife to remove the board.

Grabbed one of the freshly cut maple boards that I had made a few weeks back.

Slotted it.

Put a radius on it.

Aligned and glued it. 

Let us never speak of it again.

[Travis]

7 minutes ago, slingblader said:

Wow, it's been over a month since I've updated this thread. I haven't made as much progress I had hoped... Work has been insane, busy around the house, etc. And to be perfectly honest, I sorta knocked the wind out of my own sails with a boneheaded mistake. Read on, dear friends, for the details.

I took a few minutes to drill out some wire passages in the bodies.

Next, I quickly laid out the fretboard dot positions, went to the drill press and got the depth stop set for my 1/4" forstner bit. Then started drilling away. I started into the second neck, and that's when I saw it.

Of course it had to be on one of the figured maple boards that I had so carefully saved especially for these matching necks. Oh, and of course I had center punched all 3 necks in the wrong position. (I had laid them all next to each other and marked them at the same time.)

Yeah, boneheaded move. Something I never imagined I would do, but all it took was a few minutes of not paying enough attention. I spent a few days moping and trying to figure out a way to piece in some offcuts, but I knew the joints would show no matter well the patches would fit. I was able to steam out (for the most part) the bad punch marks, but that one board would have to go.

I used my heating iron that I used to use to cover RC airplanes and an antique frosting knife to remove the board.

Grabbed one of the freshly cut maple boards that I had made a few weeks back.

Slotted it.

Put a radius on it.

Aligned and glued it. 

Let us never speak of it again.

I’ve done dumb things and not had the skill or ability to make them right. You’re one up on me there. Keep the updates coming! Enjoy seeing the process. 

[slingblader]

12 minutes ago, Travis said:

I’ve done dumb things and not had the skill or ability to make them right. You’re one up on me there. Keep the updates coming! Enjoy seeing the process. 

Thanks, man, I will. I was down in the dumps for quite a while over that ordeal. In the end not much hurt but my pride.

[stobro]

Who's to say what's right and wrong? Check out the inlays on the old Kay archtop:

 

[hamerhead]

Personally, I'd have left it. That would always be the guitar you hand to the guy who has to 'jam with the band, man'.

[slingblader]

10 minutes ago, hamerhead said:

Personally, I'd have left it. That would always be the guitar you hand to the guy who has to 'jam with the band, man'.

Yeah, but that neck was going into a guitar is for my dad. I couldn't do that. 

[hamerhead]

6 minutes ago, slingblader said:

Yeah, but that neck was going into a guitar is for my dad. I couldn't do that. 

You probably survived yeeeears of Dad jokes. What's a little payback?

[RobB]

1 hour ago, stobro said:

Who's to say what's right and wrong?

Apparently not the QC foreman at the Kay factory.