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  1. #1

    New Build - PRS Custom 22

    After a few punishing weeks at work, I'm back to building. I have today off and the whole weekend to play.
    I've been wanting to expand my builds and I have moved from Teles to the Wolfgang and now to a PRS.

    Specs:

    3 piece mahogany back
    2 piece flame maple top with faux binding
    25.5" scale
    Mahogany neck with rosewood fretboard
    Pearl dot inlays and flame maple headstock veneer
    Locking roller TOM bridge
    String thru body with ferrules
    Scatter wound custom humbuckers
    Volume, tone, 3 way switch...might add phase switching.

    And so it begins.

    I've had this piece of 20 year old mahogany sitting in the studio for months now. It's just over 2.50" thick. I also have a small piece that I'll use for a test neck.



    I resawed the mahogany for the body and neck...taking a 1" thick piece for the neck with a body thickness of a touch over 1.50" before planing.



    I cut the body pieces just to the right length for each part of the body...the plank wasn't long enough to cut 3 equal lengths...plus, I wanted a piece left over for the neck heel.



    Here are the neck materials...I think I can get 4 necks out of this board if I'm careful.



    The body blank is glued up, centered and traced out. Ready for profiling.

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  2. #2
    The templates I have don't indicate that there is any milling before the top goes on. Just to be certain I can get the neck PU to the control cavity, I laid out the various routes to make sure I could drill it from the neck pocket/neck PU routes.



    On to the top. PRS builds 10 tops, this is probably a 4. Not the best flame I've used and it isn't bookmatched but I think it'll be pretty with a nice carve and the right finish on it.



    Out of the clamps and traced out...ready for profiling. At almost .750" thick, it will allow a deep carve. Nearly .500" tranisition from bridge to binding.

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  3. #3
    I took this shot of the practice neck. I didn't take photos along the way because I was thinking too much about what I was doing. Now that I've been thru it once, it's far less mysterious. I'll take pics as I build the actual neck for this one.



    I started on the neck today. I was a bit optimistic about the number of necks I could get from this blank...I got 2.



    I laid them out for the scarf joints. I'm not sure what angle PRS uses on their headstocks but I found this approach online and went with it. Measure in 4", draw a line, measure in 3.5" further and mark a line. Then conect them with a diagonal line.



    I freehanded them on the bandsaw.



    After clamping them to the beck top, I used a block plane to flatten out the joint. The few doark spots are where the plane has removed material.



    Here it is all flattened out and ready to glue up.

    [/QUOTE]
    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  4. #4
    With the 2 pieces in place, I checked the joint on the back side of the neck. Looks good to me.



    I've seen several ways of clamping a scraf joint. I went with this one. I clamped the neck to the bench on edge, and clamped a piece of scrap so it's face was parallel with the end of the headstock...this allowed me to keep the longer portion of the neck at the edge of the beck.



    There is a part of the joint that will be completely covered during gluing that could glue a caul to the neck so I taped some wax paper to a couple of cauls so I wouldn't have to deal with holding it in place while clamping.



    With the neck clamped down and the scrap holding the headstock, I just clamped the 2 pieces together. After a couple of clamps were in place, I removed the neck to get the additional clamps in place.



    Done!

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  5. #5
    With the neck clamped to the bench and the headstock hanging over the edge, I used the block plane to thin out the headstock...keeping an eye on the glue line and the nut line to guide the planing.



    Unless you're just really good with a plane, and I'm not, every p[ass on the headstock face takes the nut line closer to the heel of the neck. So I set up a couple of stops to brace the neck while I planed the top. This brought the nut line back to the headstock and also thinned out the nut end of the neck making carving a bit easier later.



    I took the headstock down to 5/8". Probably needs to be a bit thinner considering it will have a veneer on it.



    After thinning it a bit more, I put it back in the stops to do final positioning on the nut line. Note the nut line and glue line are straight and perpendicular to the edge...meaning that the neck and headstock are flat top to bottom and left to right.



    With all that done, I laid out the truss rod.

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  6. #6
    Jigged up and ready to cut the truss rod channel. The veneer will cover the extra channel beyond the truss rod nut.





    I glued up a 4" x 4.5" block to beef up the heel and to give me something to carve into later.



    While the heel was curing I moved on to the fretboard. Most PRS models have a 25" scale. I opted to use a 25.5" scale. I lined up the fret scale template on the notch that sets the leading edge of a Fender nut. I flushed up the end of the fretboard and taped it down.



    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  7. #7
    22 slots, ready to go.



    Now this is where things got a bit dicey. My neck template did not include the tenon that is used to glue in the neck. A major oversight by the template maker, in my opinion.

    Fortunately, he made the neck pocket template in a way that it lines up with 2 points on the body...the edge of the neck PU route and the PU side of the trem route. And it pins into the trem mounting holes.

    I placed the neck template into the neck pocket template and pulle it to the nut side until it snugged up in the template...which was with it's end right at the nut side of the neck PU route. The difference between there and the end of the neck pocket is the length of the tenon...1.5625".



    I placed a light source under the templates and and slid them until the light just peeked out. I marked the open portion of the pocket templete to define the tenon on the neck heel.



    I neede to open up the access for the truss rod nut. I used the boring feature on the Shopsmith to do this. I drilled a center pass and then angled the neck to either side and widened it as it gets closer to the nut.



    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  8. #8
    [I rough cut the heel to narrow it down.



    Then I attached a blck to the band saw table to support the neck while I trimmed it down to the headstock.





    After changing to a 1/4" blade, I rough cut the headstock...



    ...then set up the neck template to profile the edges of the neck. You can see the tenon that was not included in the neck template. It's one thing to not include it, but to sell a product as "complete" and just leave it up to the user to figure it out is just irresponsible.

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  9. #9
    Part of profiling the neck is getting rid of material above the tenon. I took it to .75". I'll take it to final thickness after I route the PU cavities. Note that the portion of the tenon below this is still thicker than it needs to be. I'll take care of this with a block plane.





    After clamping the neck on it's side so there's no pressure on the headstock, I planed the sides of the tenon to the proper width.



    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  10. #10
    [QUOTE=Guitarnut;2469001]Getting back to the body. I attached the routing template and profiled the mahogany back.



    Before gluing up the top, I need to clean up the glue joint. A little trick I like to use is to attach the top to the back of the body using double stick tape. This allows me to pass it thru the planer fully supported.

    Before the planer...



    And after.



    I also flip it over and take a very slight pass on the glue side of the mahogany back. This gives me 2 clean surfaces for gluing. Compare this shot to the one above before profiling.



    Ready to glue up the top.



    Clampzilla!

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

  11. #11
    Out of the clamps and ready to be profiled. I usually use a flush trim bit to do this but given the thickness of this top, I made a pass from the back with a longer pattern bit to reduce the cut the flush trim bit would have to take on the final pass.



    Profiling completed and ready for the neck pocket.



    A quick check before routing.



    The neck pocket template is useable but could be better. The neck pocket on a PRS guitar is surrounded by more surface than some guitars so the stubby template does the job.



    A progress shot...

    "Thought that is no longer limited brings experience that is no longer limited" Marianne Williamson.

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