Stratocaster Build - From Scratch

[Shawn Pixley]

Julie,

Maybe I'm confused here. You can't get the LN Boggs curved spokeshave in the belly cut? I would have thought it would have worked perfectly there. I cut a lot of tight curves with mine. If not, you might try to modify a scraper to finish the work. I have several that I hav emodified to deal with specific areas / profiles.

In either case, it's looking good.. Watching your progress while I am traveling is tough. I have got to get a travel guitar....

[John Coloccia]

LN does make a smaller one

http://www.lie-nielsen.com/spokeshav...ze-spokeshave/

You can also just modify the LN one if you want to and put a tighter radius on it. That's what I'd personally do, actually. Luthiers have a long long long long history of modifying tools to do whatever we need them to do.

[Julie Moriarty]

Shawn, I can understand you asking the question because when I could no longer get the round spokeshave to cut, I went to the rasp. I followed that with the spokeshave and it started cutting again. It just seemed when using just the spokeshave, I'd reach a point where it stopped cutting. But when I followed up on the rasp cut, it cut again, even after the rasp marks were gone. Probably just my technique. Prior to this I had done some practice work on a cabriole leg. The results discouraged me from continuing.

John, for whatever reason, I cringe at the thought of modifying a well-made tool. A voice in my head says, "So you think you can do better than those who have countless hours more experience than you?" Yeah, I hear voices. But maybe making slight alterations... (bites nails) Or maybe I just need to practice some more.

------------------------------

I think someone said the best workmanship can be ruined in seconds by a bad finish... The moment I start getting that dye close to the wood I spent so long working on, fear sets in. After the black dye, I sanded it back. I ended up doing the whole body because I couldn't get it to feather properly and to leave a black border. For some reason, the arm cut lost all the curly highlights while the rest of the area still had black dye on it.

You can see the black dye darker in the curly figure in the arm cut. But after sanding it back, all that was lost, as if the dye didn't penetrate as deeply there as it did on the rest of the body, even though didn't happen on the edge. The belly cut was fine.

I applied NGR red dye over it but none of that highlighted the curly figure. It looked bland and washed out, just a bunch of tiny dots. It's like its ability to absorb dye deeply in the figure has been severely diminished. And I have no idea why.

[Julie Moriarty]

Oh boy! This is fun! NOT!

In an attempt to darken the curly figure in the arm cut, I wiped on some more black dye. Of course doing that just in the washed out part looked awful so I had to wipe the entire body down. After that dried, I sanded everything by hand, trying to be careful not to lose the now black curly figure in the arm cut while also trying to feather to a dark border. The arm cut figure lost all its color immediately. So I resorted to artistry.

I took a small brush and painted the black dye over the deep figure, at least what looked like deep figure. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

a closeup in the inset.

I laid in as much dye as I could by coating it several times over. When I went to sand it, most of it was lost. So before I lost it all, I decided to take it back to the paint room and wipe on some more red dye.

Now it looks like a tobacco burst - NOT what I wanted, and probably not the right tone for the red pickguard. And the wood at the short horn has a mind of its own.

[Julie Moriarty]

I'm thinking I'm going to pick up some black Trans Tint today. After the above pics, I did several more coats of NGR bright red and it moved the color closer to red but also darkened the overall look. I placed the red pearloid pickguard on it and it was BRIGHT RED! All this causes me to remember a saying I often heard, "The best laid schemes of mice and men" It's meaning seems appropriate now. The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.

[Julie Moriarty]

I just finished spraying NGR (Trans Tint) black dye on the perimeter. I think we'll be okay. Whew!

It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

[John Coloccia]

It's like cooking, Julie

Looks great!

[Julie Moriarty]

It's like cooking, Julie

Looks great!

But John, I don't like cooking.

I just finished working on body #1. I used the 9 Micro Mesh grades with the first to take the finish flat. Then I ran through the grades pretty quickly to see where it got me. I didn't want to go through to bare wood so I approached this cautiously. After I finished with the finest grade, I could see scratches when I reflected light off it a certain way. I've never bothered to look closely at the finish on a guitar. So I went back a couple of grades and ran through them again.

Here's what I ended up with:

I set the camera on the edge of the guitar to get the reflection from it.

Should I go back and remove all the tiny scratches (that will just reappear once the guitar starts being used) or is that level of polish acceptable? Let's say for something that a luthier would sell. That's the level I'm striving for, whether I ever sell any guitars or not.

[John Coloccia]

What scratches? That's better than most factory finishes. You actually got it FLAT. Look at an off the shelf guitar. It's very smooth and shiny, but light undulates off the finish. What you have is the culmination of very careful prep work, because if your prep work was sloppy, when you smoothed out the finish it would be very, very shinny, but every tiny little bump would telegraph through the finish and show up as a wavy lines. Maybe it's a bad picture and the thing is full of visible scratches, but it looks pretty expertly finished to me.

Point out the scratches you're talking about. Sometimes, when you get to this point, it's best to do a drop fill, wait for it to dry, and re-level the area rather than try to take the rest of the finish down to match. The latter can be dangerous if you're not sure how much finish you have left to play with. The beauty of nitro is that the solvents are so hot, you can effectively do things like drop fills absolutely invisibly and equivalently to the original finish.

[Julie Moriarty]

John, I was sitting there, with the body in my lap, polishing it furiously with piano polish (that's all we had). My SO and son both said it was perfect. I don't believe them. Our son even said I set him up making him do the polishing with pumice and rottenstone instead of Micro Mesh (I didn't know about MM then). He knows I'm learning a lot but he likes to rib me. I think that was his way of saying, "Good job." I still don't believe it. They are just being nice.

But when you look at the picture above, is that the standard? My SO has a piano and I look at that piano and think that's the finish I need to obtain. Is that the same standard for guitars? Or am I being too anal? You can tell me that. You won't be the first.

[Shawn Pixley]

I think it looks fine. But only you can say. Make yourself happy...

[John Coloccia]

I think it looks fine. But only you can say. Make yourself happy...

Exactly. Looks good to me.

[Julie Moriarty]

Of course my biggest fear is sanding through the finish. If I knew that wouldn't happen, I'd go back and eliminate the scratches. But since this will never be sold and my son is itching to get his hands on the finished product, this guitar is ready for assembly and setup.

BTW, I just got my first inquiry from an interested buyer. Problem is, he said he was poor. And they said lutherie is not the road to riches.

I wanted to mention this to you guys - I've been working on some CAD drawings for what will be the final "RAD AXE" drawing. It started with taking the trem I have and coming up with a drawing I could use to drill the post holes. That drawing does not exist anywhere, and I've gone to the end of the Internet to find it.

Anyway, I found it pretty cool that I could redraw a new headstock and come up with plans that show every cut, dimension, etc. that would be needed to make a neck. If you have any drawings you need, let me know and I can make full scale PDFs for them. It would have to be something I already have a drawing of or have the actual part in hand, so I could measure it and draw it in CAD. I have a number of CAD drawings already and plenty of PDFs I can work off. Or you could send me what you want altered or dimensioned and I could get back to you what you need.

It's the least I can do for all the help you've provided me.

FWIW, this is a reduced size picture of the neck drawing:

[John Coloccia]

What CAD system are you running? I use Rhino for my work.

BTW, I just got my first inquiry from an interested buyer. Problem is, he said he was poor. And they said lutherie is not the road to riches.

You heard about the luthier who won the lotto? A news crew stopped by his shop and asked him what he planned on doing...would he retire? He replied, "Oh, I suppose I'll just keep building guitars until the money runs out."

[george wilson]

Julie,a good rule in sculpture is to really go for it or don't do it at all. Or something like that!! What I mean is,your "S" curve is very nearly a fluid curve,but has that tiny break in the curve. Either make the break more prominent or totally eliminate it. Fender did it with their headstock's lower curve. On the Telecaster,they totally eliminated that break in the line and made a flowing curve.

Don't draw curves where the break in the line is so slight that it just looks like a mistake sawing it out.

Perhaps you meant to make the curve more flowing,but your computer wouldn't let you do it? I NEVER would use any type of CAD or other program to design things with.Feel that it hurts my creativity. I want to be able to make the most subtle adjustments in my designs. I just use the old computer in my head.

I'm thinking your program won't let you do it. It doesn't let you do tapers either,I see.

Your design looks o.k.,but it is still quite Fender- esque.

Here are a few pictures of an early 19th. C. Viennese style guitar that I can barely recall making. Martin studied with Stauffer(sp?) a Viennese builder who used a similar style peg head. He used this style on some of his early "New York" Martin guitars. I can't recall if the Viennese style used the scroll or not (pretty sure it did not),but it was of a somewhat similar shape. Fender might have gotten his inspiration from this style peg head. Perhaps it is from about 1835. My memory isn't that good on it,though.

This style of neck heel is called the "ice cream cone" style. It is common on early guitars.