Tidying up...

Both guitars are now quite close to being ready to paint. A couple of random jobs remained. 

I had to move the heel back on the second guitar. The new position was traced, and the heel shifted back using files and rasps as before (and straightened up a bit - it was a little wonky to begin with...):



On both guitars I then milled out the holes for the tuning machines' bushings. This is the Stew Mac drill bit for this job:



Which yields the following:



The bushing will be pushed in later using a vice / press once the finish is on.

 

I did some final shaping of the necks and started sanding both the necks and bodies down to 240 grit in preparation for grain filling. Pictures don't really look very interesting, but here's a section of one of the bodies at 240 grit after a lot of elbow grease:



The bodies are both ash and will need their grain filling - I want a very smooth, flat finish in the paint. The maple necks will not. In the past I've used thixotropic grain filler, which is akin to painting with than sanding mud - somewhat unpleasant... This time I thought I'd use two part epoxy (Z poxy finishing resin, I originally saw this recommended by Jon Sullivan of Sully's guitars):



This looks like this when mixed:



And then this once spread over the guitar:



This actually looks like a pretty nice start for a finish on it's own for a bare wood body - it's got a bit of a vintage tint to it.

The body shown needs overnight to dry fully, then probably a second coat. Then I'll likely bring the other body up to the same point before posting again. 

Telecaster Two build - neck on

More repetition here, I started to catch the second guitar up. 

First off, the fretboard blank I'd bought only had a single cut for the nut - I've ordered a few from my supplier, sometimes they have two cuts and sometimes the channel is already excavated. This had to be enlarged into a channel for the nut to sit in. I splashed out on a very nice Pax fret cutting saw (with a depth gauge from Guitars and Wood):

This is a really nice, high quality tool - much nicer than most of the other stuff I use :) I marked the line I wanted to cut out by placing the nut in place and tracing down the side of it with a scalpel. I then scored this several times to make a deeper line to cut along:

Then I attempted to attack the problem with the fret saw:

I very quickly abandoned this approach! I just was not convinced that I could cut the second edge of the channel accurately or straightly (?!) enough with the saw. This is definitely a tool and job that needs practice and experience, and the place to get this is not on a completed neck... 

In the end, I scored the line deeper with the scalpel, and chiselled the slot out with a very sharp chisel:

I drilled the jack hole as before and then proceeded to mounting the neck. First the holes are drilled in the body at 4.5mm (big enough for the neck screws to just pass through - this allows them to really pull the neck and the body together once it's put on for keeps). Then I cracked out the frickin laser beam and lined it all up:

A bit of tape on the first fret with the centre marked allows you to run the laser down the body's centre line and gently adjust the neck until it hits the mark:

Very little adjustment was needed here, the neck was pretty straight sat in the neck pocket. Then I carefully clamped it, checking the alignment again once clamped to ensure that the neck hadn't moved:

I then drilled 4mm holes into the neck through the holes on the body - the neck bolts will bite into these ones. I marked the required depth on the drill bit with tape - you last thing you want to do here is to drill all the way through the neck and fretboard!

The neck is bolted on:

You can see in the picture above that I carved the heel shape for the neck in completely the wrong place. I'll have to move that little radius down the neck an inch or so towards the heel. I think this came about because my template marked the position of the heel transition for a different shaped carve - one that blended much more gently that mine. It should be a relatively simple job to shift it back. 

And we can see what the guitar will look like:

I'm not ashamed or embarrassed to say at this point that I had a quick pose with the guitar in front of a mirror.... Looked pretty good....

Telecaster build - Hardware installation and starting finish sanding

One job I'd forgotten to do was to drill the hole for the jack. I'm using an electrosocket jack rather than a vintage style. I did a test fit on some scrap:



Then attacked the body with a pilot hole:



And forstner bit:



Until it fitted:



I checked the depth with a cable plugged into the socket, as that has more length than the socket itself. I also drilled a hole through into the main control cavity.

Next I chiselled out the nut slot:



And test fitted the nut. It's a Graph tech nut for those interested:



I wanted to put a couple of strings on the neck to make sure there was enough clearance at the end of the fretboard such that the strings didn't touch anything when the were wound onto the pegs. This required a bridge. My templates had the position of the bridge marked, but I checked it regardless. Both the guitars I'm making will have a standard scale length of 648mm - practically this is the distance from the nut to the bridge. I'm using a Wilkinson compensated, top loading bridge which has a lot of adjustment available, so this distance doesn't actually need to be measured as accurately as might otherwise be the case. However, it doesn't hurt to be right! 

I measured the position and made sure the bridge was central on the body:

 

And attached it, you can see in this picture that I've also fitted the tuners for the two E strings:



At this point I appear to have accidentally deleted all the pictures I took... the guitar did, briefly, have (two) strings on it - it looked straight. The body is also now sanded down to 240 grit, which is as far as I will take it before grain filling. 

This build just needs the neck sanded down to a similar level, then will be grain filled and lacquered. The end is definitely in sight, but what remains is pretty slow going...

Telecaster Two build - Frets in!

There are two significant jobs left on the ebony neck: sanding the transition between the headstock and the fretboard and the fretting. 

First, the headstock transition. As before I used my robosander jig and gradually created the radius across the end of the fretboard (there's a scraper across the headstock to make sure it doesn't get scratched):

To this:

Then I picked up my fret wire. When held against a radius template, you can see that the radius of the wire as it was delivered to me is slightly flatter than that of the fretboard:

This was an issue I encountered with the previous fretjob I did, but I had no way to correct it beyond manually tweaking each fret with pliers. This time, I bought a fret wire radiusing machine:

After the fretwire is run through a couple of times, the radius of the fretwire matches the fretboard (in fact, it's slightly tighter, as this helps force it down when hammering into the fretslots):

I cleaned out the fretslots, using the horrible fret cleaning saw, I dislike this tool as it's incredibly sharp and a slip would horribly gouge the fretboard. However, it cleans out the slots very thoroughly:

Then the frets started to go in:

I may have mentioned this in the last fret job, but I put a little glue into each fret slot before hammering in the fret wire. The glue is just Titebond, the same as is used in all the wood joints on the project. This is to fill any gaps beneath the fret wire rather than to hold in the wire:

It also allows you to see when all the gaps beneath the fret are full and the wire is fully seated, as the glue squeezes out;

22 Frets later:

And with the fret ends nipped off:

And:

I had originally planned to dye the fretboard with India ink to make it a solid black. In the end, I decided to let the wood be. Against a pair of necks with rosewood fretboards (prior to today's fretting), you can see the difference in colour:

The bottom neck shown there is a strat neck I'm building and which is currently having its lacquer polished. 

Here's the neck positioned in its body:

The neck is now done, bar finish sanding. It'll be aligned and mounted on the body next. I'll probably then dry fit the nut, bridge and tuners and string them both up before starting on the finish sanding. 

Telecaster Two build - more neck sanding...

The last of the neck sanding! This is a nice job, but it can take a while... 

I used some aluminium angle with sandpaper glued on as a straight edge to finalised the sanding between the 1st and 12th fret, running it along the length of the neck. Getting very close here:




And now pretty much finished:



The advantage of shaping the neck in this way (by joining the 1st and 12th frets with a straight edge) is that it is guaranteed to be straight along its length.

I did some final shaping around the headstock transition:



And similarly around the heel. Here's the whole neck:



I need to take a close look at the neck in the daylight with some thinners on - this will show up any unevenness and allow me to confirm that the lines are smooth enough. There's probably a tiny bit of weight to lose around the headstock transition, but this stage of the build is now complete. 

Next up - frets! 

Telecaster Two build - heel and headstock transition

Small update. Much more neck shaping... I also rough shaped the headstock transition, marking out the intersection of the centre line, nut and diagonals from the head:



Then filing to these lines, being careful not to cross them:



This shape will be finessed when I start to use the finer grits.

Similarly at the heel:



Which was (very) roughly shaped to:



There's still a little shaping required, but the neck is approaching the profiles carved at the 1st and 12th frets.