# Build 4 : Ash HS superstrat, now with CNC!



## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 10, 2017)

So I got a CNC machine - a Shapeoko XL. It is pretty cool. I'm using it on this 4th build.

This build will be an Xmas gift for my brother, who does not actually play guitar, but who is an accomplished woodwind and electronic musician and should be able to figure it out.

Here's the design: Body will be Ash. Neck will be Hickory (yes, hickory). Fretboard: ebony.




And heres a nice back view:




My current plan is to put a Dimarzio PAF Pro in the bridge and an American Standard Fender single coil in the neck, though I might go for a quarter pounder instead. I figure this will be a well rounded set - capable of nice cleans (important to him) as well as metal (also important to him...and me).

Anyway, onto the CNC bits. I've spent hours upon hours modeling this thing out in Fusion 360. This has been a learning experience and I'm a whole lot better now than I was when I started a few weeks back. I did a test neck in pine, learned some things, and am now starting in on the hickory.

Did I mention that this is a beautiful piece of two-tone hickory with a nasty black line down the middle? It is.




Fun fact - this is the cleanest truss rod channel I've ever done.

God I can't wait to see this with a finish on it:




That's all for now. I should probably finish up my nearly-done 3rd build (all I have to do is shape the neck, finish it, and put it together), but ... you know ... new CNC toys to play with.


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## Bobo (Jul 10, 2017)

Thoughts on a hickory neck? Don't think I've seen that before. It's a beautiful piece for sure.


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## electriceye (Jul 10, 2017)

Reading up on hickory, seems it's incredibly strong. One thing I also saw mentioned that it has a tendency to check/crack in widths longer than 2". How dry is this piece? Looks great, btw!


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## KR250 (Jul 11, 2017)

Ok, WAY COOL! I'm on the verge of jumping over the CNC fence, so really interested to hear your experiences on this build. What is easier, what still takes a lot of time, challenges, etc. Watching closely on this one.


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## KnightBrolaire (Jul 11, 2017)

I've heard of people having success with hickory when used as laminates but not as a one piece neck. Helps mitigate the cracking/checking.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

All I know about hickory is that it is supposed to be super strong (particularly to shock - hence it is the traditional material for axe hafts and such).

Also I can use the cutoffs to smoke some brisket later.

Good to know about the cracking/checking. We'll have to see what happens. I got this wood off the shelf at my local home improvement store, so it is probably kiln dried and hopefully stable at this point. I do recall a few of the boards having pretty substantial cracks, but this one (and the other two-tone one I bought) were clear. Nevertheless, I'll keep an eye on it. Worst case scenario, I'll keep this one-piece for myself and do a more traditional maple laminate for my brother's build.

CNC has been fun so far. I'm still learning, of course. Can't tell you how many hours I've spent modeling alone, much less tweaking my CAM settings and such. And then there is the physical aspects - reliably zeroing the machine between setups and tool changes, fixing the workpiece to the table without having it slip (finally switched to screws from double sided rug tape). There is a lot to learn but I'm loving it. I guess that's the software engineer side of me, but the ability to design my shapes and dimensions precisely in advance and then mill them to spec is very appealing to me. Inlays should be fun, too.

Some people say you lose the "soul" of the build when you go the CNC route, but I think Neil Peart put it best: "All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted".


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## Narvic57 (Jul 11, 2017)

Great Start man!

If that's not to indescrete, how much is a CNC machine like yours? Did you also buy the software? (Can pm me if you want  )


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## MikeNeal (Jul 11, 2017)

I really need to learn fusion 360. Looking to make the jump to cnc after this batch of guitars


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

Narvic57 said:


> Great Start man!
> 
> If that's not to indescrete, how much is a CNC machine like yours? Did you also buy the software? (Can pm me if you want  )



Here's the link. It is a kit that includes everything but the laptop to drive it with. All you have to do is assemble it, and most of the hard stuff is done for you.

https://shop.carbide3d.com/products/shapeoko-xl-kit?variant=42721938758

The kit comes with cad and cam software, as well as the control software for the device (carbide motion). I use the control software, but I use autodesk fusion 360 for cad and cam. It is free for hobbyists and startups. License info is on their site. It is an industry standard and there are a ton of resources out there to learn it. Especially on YouTube.



MikeNeal said:


> I really need to learn fusion 360. Looking to make the jump to cnc after this batch of guitars



It is pretty awesome. I was able to pick it up pretty quickly, although of course I still have a TON to learn. But three weeks ago I had never touched a cad or cam program and now I'm milling a guitar neck I modeled from scratch, so it can't be THAT hard. 

YouTube is your friend.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

KR250 said:


> Ok, WAY COOL! I'm on the verge of jumping over the CNC fence, so really interested to hear your experiences on this build. What is easier, what still takes a lot of time, challenges, etc. Watching closely on this one.



The things I'm most excited about are:

Perfect neck joints
Inlays
Fret slots that don't cut all the way through to the edge of the fretboard.
Compound fretboard radii
Accurate, repeatable neck shape


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

Alas, it looks like I had my alignment off on my first setup (the top holes and truss rod channel). The double-sided tape must have slipped during the roughing step. So today we've learned to always screw the workpiece down to the waste board.

Truss rod channel is slightly off center at this end



Tuner holes are also off. The heel end is fine though.



This will still work, but I'm not giving away a gift build that isn't perfect, so I guess this neck is mine now. Good thing wood is cheap. Some wood. This wood.

The profile feels good though. Very V-shaped, which I love. I ran a finishing pass with a ball-nose endmill, which cleaned it up a lot. It will still need a bunch of sanding and scraping, but still. Pretty cool.


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## MikeNeal (Jul 11, 2017)

doesn't look bad for a first attempt. i suppose there will be lots of test necks before the setup is 100% perfect. I see lots of people making there test cuts with hard foam from home depot.

and you've inspired me, starting to learn fusion 360 as we speak.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> doesn't look bad for a first attempt. i suppose there will be lots of test necks before the setup is 100% perfect. I see lots of people making there test cuts with hard foam from home depot.



Yeah, I did a test neck in pine before but clearly I should have done a few more. Hard foam is definitely the go-to, but I really don't want to fill my shop up with foam shavings 



MikeNeal said:


> and you've inspired me, starting to learn fusion 360 as we speak.



Great! It is fun. I found this series of videos to be particularly helpful. There are 3 I think, and he takes you all the way through the process of modeling up a part, and explains EVERYTHING he does. If you're a complete newbie to CAD like I am, this is very helpful.


(edit: grammar are hard)


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## MikeNeal (Jul 11, 2017)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> Yeah, I did a test neck in pine before but clearly I should have done a few more. Hard foam is definitely the go-to, but I really don't want to fill my shop up with foam shavings
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yep. That's the one. I built that part tonight haha. Just gotta figure out how to bring my body designs into fusion now.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> Yep. That's the one. I built that part tonight haha. Just gotta figure out how to bring my body designs into fusion now.



I think you can import SVG files to use as sketches? Not sure. I designed this one in Fusion. This was ... okay. Editing it isn't all that easy.


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## ImBCRichBitch (Jul 11, 2017)

Sweet looking so far. Who is your brother? You said he was a accomplished electronic musician, got me curious if its someone i listen to


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 11, 2017)

ImBCRichBitch said:


> Sweet looking so far. Who is your brother? You said he was a accomplished electronic musician, got me curious if its someone i listen to



Oh, whoops. "accomplished" was probably the wrong word. "Skilled", maybe? He's a woodwind player but he dabbles in weird experimental/electronic/noise stuff for fun on the side. Nothing released that I know of.

I'm being vague because I don't know if he wants me to talk about him or not.


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## ImBCRichBitch (Jul 11, 2017)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> Oh, whoops. "accomplished" was probably the wrong word. "Skilled", maybe? He's a woodwind player but he dabbles in weird experimental/electronic/noise stuff for fun on the side. Nothing released that I know of.
> 
> I'm being vague because I don't know if he wants me to talk about him or not.


Ahh. i thought you meant like Deadmau5 or something


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## MikeNeal (Jul 12, 2017)

ok, so playing around with fusion. how in the hell do you make the tummy cut??

i draw the line on the back of the guitar for the shape of the cut, and it just stays blue and wont turn black. very frustrating


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 13, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> ok, so playing around with fusion. how in the hell do you make the tummy cut??
> 
> i draw the line on the back of the guitar for the shape of the cut, and it just stays blue and wont turn black. very frustrating



Ahh so this was tricky. What I did was went into modeling mode and made a cylinder (separate from the guitar body) then I moved it in position and used the "split body" operation on the guitar body with the cylinder as the tool. Then I deleted the piece I just cut off. 

I can take a screen shot tomorrow with the cylinder in the picture if that helps.


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## MikeNeal (Jul 13, 2017)

That would be awesome. Thanks


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 13, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> That would be awesome. Thanks



Alright, so you start with your guitar body:




In the sculpting space, create a cylinder to be your tool to cut the belly carve. Position it so that it intersects your guitar where you want to cut like so:




Then do a "split body" operation. Select the guitar body as the body to split, and the cylinder as the tool. When it is done, hide the cylinder (you don't need it anymore). Should leave you with two bodies that look like this:




Now just hide the one that is the tummy carve, and you're good to go:




I did my other body shaping similarly - cylinders or surfaces that I shaped, and then used to carve away at the main body blank.

Hope that helps.


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## MikeNeal (Jul 13, 2017)

That helps. Thanks man


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## Omzig (Jul 13, 2017)

Super thread  

Im just putting the final touches to my Eshapeoko shopping list so this is of great interest to me,I do all my plans/mock ups in 2d vectors in PS but i don't think I'll have much of an issue moving to 3d as i spent count less hours building 3d quake and unreal deathmatch maps and models many years ago  im sure it will take a while to find a cad program that "clicks" but that's part of the funright. 

Highline Guitars has a few cool CNC type video's on YT that are a good watch and one of the things that got me thinking of going diy CNC.

That piece of Hickory looks great (id have been tempted to slab fretboard it & rear route/skunk the TR) to bad about the tape movement,ive seen a few videos were ppl use a dowel in the job waste/wasteboard set up that looks pretty solid for keeping things in place.

going to be a few weeks before i get around to ordering and building my own setup so I'll be following with interest keep up the great work


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 13, 2017)

Omzig said:


> Super thread
> 
> Im just putting the final touches to my Eshapeoko shopping list so this is of great interest to me,I do all my plans/mock ups in 2d vectors in PS but i don't think I'll have much of an issue moving to 3d as i spent count less hours building 3d quake and unreal deathmatch maps and models many years ago  im sure it will take a while to find a cad program that "clicks" but that's part of the funright.
> 
> ...



Thanks. Yeah I use holes and rods to square it up but I remove them before milling. I think my strategy from now on will just be to screw it down. I've got a secondary waste board on there so there's no worries with wearing out my main board. 

The fortunate thing about the slippage is that it isn't so far out of alignment that it won't work just fine for my own copy of this guitar (which will happen), but on principle I'm going to make sure the one I give to my bro is perfect.


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## MikeNeal (Jul 13, 2017)

instead of cylinders you can use the spline tool to design some cool stuff, then split face. with the spline as the tool. basically doing the same thing, but with free hand designs.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 13, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> instead of cylinders you can use the spline tool to design some cool stuff, then split face. with the spline as the tool. basically doing the same thing, but with free hand designs.


After you split the face, how do you make the cut to the edge of the body?


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## MikeNeal (Jul 13, 2017)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> After you split the face, how do you make the cut to the edge of the body?



not exactly sure how to word it, but i followed this video

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/supp...ils/de0b4d89-ab2a-481b-b935-83918058c185.html


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 14, 2017)

I milled a test fretboard out of pine tonight. First time I've used 1/8 inch bits (1.5 mm and 0.6mm end mills in this case) and the 1/4 to 1/8 collet I have worked great. 

This came out amazing. Definitely getting the hang of the cam side of things now.






Next I'll mill one out of maple (on a piece of stock I've actually planed to thickness) as a test before I cut the ebony. And I'll throw it on my Hickory neck for my own test copy of my brother's guitar (I guess I'm building two guitars now )


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 19, 2017)

Last night I ran some modified fretboard jobs on some actual hardwood. 

Here's my stock, all planed down and ready to go. A nice piece of flamed maple I grabbed at the home improvement store on my way home from work. 




I actually did the inlay this time. I widened the pocket by .005" and that made all the difference. Was able to hammer it in with a block of wood with no problems. 




Then the milling begins! This is way easier than sanding with a radius block - especially since this is a compound radius. 
(we'll forget about the hours and hours I spent in front of a computer screen to get to this point) 



And now the slotting. This part is particularly exciting. I'm using a 0.6mm end mill to do a bunch of tiny passes. And they don't go all the way to the edge of the fretboard, so Ill have nice clean edges. 




Finished that, cut the tabs, did some sanding, et voila! A fretboard! Gonna glue it up to my neck tonight. 




I might also try to get my third guitar into the finishing stage tonight. I've been kind of ignoring it since I got my new tools.


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## electriceye (Jul 19, 2017)

That is amazing! Great job!! Having spent HOURS sanding a new roasted BE maple board last week, I would kill for this.


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## Sir Ibanez (Jul 19, 2017)

Awesome job! I like it!


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## Walshy (Jul 19, 2017)

Thanks for sharing. Very inspired by the CNC route myself now I've got the build bug. I'd best learn Fusion 360 first - seems like a user friendly CAD program.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 19, 2017)

Walshy said:


> Thanks for sharing. Very inspired by the CNC route myself now I've got the build bug. I'd best learn Fusion 360 first - seems like a user friendly CAD program.



It is definitely worth learning. There are many many resources out there to help you learn it. Like I said before I'd never touched a cad program in my life before a month ago, and now here we are.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 20, 2017)

Glued up the neck!

This time I remembered to put the truss rod and t nuts in before gluing.



Overall it looks pretty good






However, just as I was warned, I've got a crack!




Guess I made my t nut holes a bit too small, and the compression cracked the Hickory. I'm still gonna use this neck on my test guitar, but I'll have to tweak the model a bit before I do the real thing.

The glue joint also isn't the greatest. I think I'm going to model up and mill some cradles put of pine and/or foam so I can clamp with even pressure across the two curved pieces.


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## Pikka Bird (Jul 23, 2017)

Did you countersink the holes a little before you clamped? T-nuts have a rather noticeable ramp transition from the flat part to the main threaded cylinder. Measure the diameter of the cylindrical bit and drill for that. Then do a generous bevel on the hole with a countersink bit, and perhaps even drill pilot holes for the teeth (which you can actually also cut way shorter without any issue).


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 23, 2017)

Pikka Bird said:


> Did you countersink the holes a little before you clamped? T-nuts have a rather noticeable ramp transition from the flat part to the main threaded cylinder. Measure the diameter of the cylindrical bit and drill for that. Then do a generous bevel on the hole with a countersink bit, and perhaps even drill pilot holes for the teeth (which you can actually also cut way shorter without any issue).



Ohhh. Yeah that would help a lot. I thought about pilot holes for the teeth but not about the bevel. I'll have to do that. Probably on a test block first. Thanks!


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## rami80 (Jul 24, 2017)

I think it was already cracked if you look at the first picture in that post you can see a crack next to the insert. Putting pressure on it may have spread it.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Jul 24, 2017)

rami80 said:


> I think it was already cracked if you look at the first picture in that post you can see a crack next to the insert. Putting pressure on it may have spread it.


 
Yeah it cracked when I hammered it in. I just decided to glue it anyway since this is a test neck.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 7, 2017)

After some chatting with my brother, I changed up the body bevels a bit. Now it'll be carved/beveled on top and bottom, sort of like an ibanez S. 





Looks pretty sexy to me. Can't wait to play it. 

I used the technique MikeNeal shared above for modeling the bevels. That worked great! Thanks for that. 

Hopefully I'll get to milling some more this week. Yard work is really getting in the way of my guitar building time. I don't know how you folks with both a house AND a family ever get anything built.


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## KR250 (Aug 7, 2017)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> I don't know how you folks with both a house AND a family ever get anything built.


Haha! This rings especially true for me. 

I dig the new design, although personally I would add another bevel on the lower horn top cutaway and blend it in with the outer bevel. I think that would add a lot of comfort for playing up high. Maybe match it on the upper horn as well. The bottom access point looks really good.


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## supertruper1988 (Aug 11, 2017)

If you have the ability to loft surfaces, draw a line on the back and a line on the side, then some straight guide lines between the two and loft from one line to the other using the guides to keep it flat.


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## electriceye (Aug 12, 2017)

KR250 said:


> Haha! This rings especially true for me.



So true. Why do you think my GibsonV replica isn't done and I started in December?


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## MikeNeal (Aug 13, 2017)

LiveOVErdrive said:


> After some chatting with my brother, I changed up the body bevels a bit. Now it'll be carved/beveled on top and bottom, sort of like an ibanez S.
> 
> View attachment 55471
> View attachment 55472
> ...



that looks awesome dude. great job


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## Pikka Bird (Aug 15, 2017)

KR250 said:


> Haha! This rings especially true for me.
> 
> I dig the new design, although personally I would add another bevel on the lower horn top cutaway and blend it in with the outer bevel. I think that would add a lot of comfort for playing up high. Maybe match it on the upper horn as well. The bottom access point looks really good.



I see your point, and I am sure that would _also_ look very good, but I think it'd detract from he uniqueness of the design. Little scoops like that have been on almost all carved top superstrats, and I like it a lot, but I also loved the old, un-scooped RGA carve. If it's a bevel rather than a curve then I think I'm gonna love it just as much.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 15, 2017)

Top inner horn scoops would probably make it a little more playable but I think since the fretboard already sits proud on the top of the body the access will be fine without them. And yeah I visually like this design a lot so I don't want to change it  

I've been on hold a bit while I finish up my third build. I need to glue up a test body blank for this body and haven't gotten around to it yet. I DID get the control cavity designed though, and I'm pretty proud of it. I'll share pictures a little later.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 16, 2017)

Did a test body on a slightly narrow piece of pine tonight!




This went well. Couple toolpath tweaks to make before the final piece but nothing too bad (that hole for the volume knob was NOT supposed to be drilled).



This kind of thing is way easier with cnc. I should do myself a new strat pickguard one of these days.

Hopefully gonna do the real body this weekend! Possibly a test one in Alder to turn into a real guitar before I do the ash one. This pine one is not only too narrow but also too thin.

When I get this whole process done once, I think it might be fun to do a video series on YouTube of a whole build from start to finish (including the modeling process).


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## Walshy (Aug 17, 2017)

I would really appreciate a video series, especially if you included some basics on the modelling!

Must be very satisfying to design it, program your CNC and soon after have a body that just needs sanding. If only there was a CNC sander to go through the multiple grits!


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 19, 2017)

Milled the top of my Alder body blank. 




This is the body of my "test" guitar I'm building for myself before I build my brother's with the nice wood. This Alder is actually quite pretty, but I'm going to paint it. Probably a sparkle purple or blue. 

Gonna do the back tomorrow.


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## MikeNeal (Aug 19, 2017)

looks great, what endmills did you use for each operation, and how long did it take?


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 19, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> looks great, what endmills did you use for each operation, and how long did it take?


Did the outline contour, roughing pass, volume hole, and neck and pickup pockets with a quarter inch flat endmill, did the finishing pass with a quarter inch ball nose. The switch slot and bridge holes I did with a 1.5mm end mill. And the pilot holes for the neck bolts I did with a 1/8th inch end mill. 

Took a couple hours total.


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## MikeNeal (Aug 19, 2017)

not bad. making me get the itch to get my machine..


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## Mr_Mar10 (Aug 20, 2017)

+1 contemplating battering recently paid off credit card on one   

You lot are a bad influence


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 20, 2017)

Mr_Mar10 said:


> +1 contemplating battering recently paid off credit card on one
> 
> You lot are a bad influence


I mean, you know, don't put yourself into financial jeopardy over one. But they're pretty dern cool


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## Mr_Mar10 (Aug 20, 2017)

Funny thing is ... my old man (rip  ) had a homemade Pc controlled Cnc machine & lathes but I wasn't interested in it then & we sold it all to help mum

Typical.  I'm getting the bug for accuracy & consistency so I'm pretty sure I'll be investing eventually!! My Mrs has in her possession a guitar duplicator from a retired luthier which I'm looking forward to messing with when I've borrowed a suitable feeler & router for it 

Staying tuned as usual


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 20, 2017)

Did the back! 







The electronics cavity is gonna be pretty neat. Milling the cover out of wood. It will follow the contour of the body. Should be sexy. 

The body feels good. The heel is actually bigger than I think it needs to be. Might have to modify it for my brother's.


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## KR250 (Aug 21, 2017)

I'm looking at that bevel and just thinking about the time saved from using a rasp  Looks cool. I'm trying to force my CC back into the wallet instead of a CNC machine. 

How long does the CNC cutting take per side?


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 21, 2017)

KR250 said:


> I'm looking at that bevel and just thinking about the time saved from using a rasp  Looks cool. I'm trying to force my CC back into the wallet instead of a CNC machine.
> 
> How long does the CNC cutting take per side?



A couple hours per side. I think I can go faster still (it isn't working all that hard yet) but in gradually ramping that up.

Honestly though for me the cnc is more about the precision than the speed. Though the speed is nice too!


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 21, 2017)

Test fitting. I think I'm in love.





Now I'm debating skipping the paint and just doing a satin clear coat on the body.

On the other hand... Imagine this thing in blue with a matching headstock!


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## getowned7474 (Aug 23, 2017)

The body shape and carves looks great.


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## Grand Rabbit (Aug 23, 2017)

agreed, this turned out awesome. Blue would be nice, but at the very least do a stain! The grain on that headstock just looks too good to cover up  If it were mine I would probably do tung oil


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## LiveOVErdrive (Aug 28, 2017)

Here's a little teaser as I move forward with finishing. Color is basically done. Shooting clear hopefully tomorrow. 




Gonna have a chrome bridge and white pickups (a jb and a strat single coil I have lying around). Should look very very 90s fusion cool.


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## KR250 (Aug 28, 2017)

Ok, damnit.... I'm going CNC by the end of the year! The bevels look great under the color.


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## LiveOVErdrive (Sep 4, 2017)

Here it is buffed out. Finish isn't perfect, but I'm definitely getting closer to a good gloss.




I did sand through on some of the sharp angles, so I may or may not redo the paint. If I do, I'll add some iridescent medium to the color coat so that the bevels pop a little more.


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## Mr_Mar10 (Sep 4, 2017)

Looking tight bud, I did the same on my recent one, few touch ups n manual wire wool & it'll look almost untraceable 

Looking as good as factory made!


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## LiveOVErdrive (Sep 21, 2017)

Thanks!

No progress here really. I've been putting off buying a nibbler so I can actually install the frets.

But here's a mock-up


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## Mr_Mar10 (Sep 21, 2017)

Tidy bro, tidy


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## LiveOVErdrive (Oct 4, 2017)

Good news is I finished my frets. Bad news is they didn't come out great. Worse news is the neck is actually very warped so it probably won't play anyway. Better news is at least j got some practice fretting and learned a few lessons on this neck.




So I need to build a new one. That's good, really. There were some problems with this one that I'd like to fix.

1. Straight radius instead of compound. All things being equal, yes, a compound radius is better, but with a straight radius I can press the frets in neatly and uniformly and end up with less height variation that requires more leveling and general bad fret Ness.
2. Thinner neck taper. I start at 20mm at the nut like a wizard, but I taper to a full inch at the heel. That's no good. Way too fat in the high frets. Gonna thin that profile up a bit.
3. Level the frets with a radius block. If I do a straight radius, I can make a big radius block on my cnc machine that runs the full length of the neck. Then I can level my frets uniformly across the whole neck at once and get a perfect board, in theory.
4. Mask off the board while I'm doing fretwork. I got lazy this time. Which was a mistake.
5. DONT FINISH ANY MORE GUITARS UNTIL I CAN ROUTINELY GET A PERFECT FINISH ON A TEST PIECE. This has been driving me crazy. I keep getting excited and jumping into finishing early and ending up with sub par finishes. No more! Time to spend some quality time with some scraps and finishes and sandpaper before I even start this new neck (and maybe body).
6. Cut the fret slots all the way through to the edge. I thought I'd do the fancy bound fretboard style thing where you nibble the tang off the frets at the edge so you don't see the tang at the edge, but I wasn't able to find a good way to nibble the tang off. Clippers bent the fret, a nibbler couldn't get all the way up to the fret. I dunno. For now in just gonna do normal frets until I can build myself a solidly playable guitar. Gotta walk before you can dance.


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## MikeNeal (Oct 4, 2017)

For nipping the frets. A dremel with a grinding bit will take care of that. Could also use the fret tang nipper from stewmac


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## KR250 (Oct 4, 2017)

I've used the Stewmac fret nipper thingy and a file which has worked great on SS frets, just time consuming. I recently just bought a fret tang grinding tool from LMI, haven't used it yet, but hoping it will save many hours of sore fingers.

http://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/fretting/fret-tang-filer


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## Pikka Bird (Oct 6, 2017)

MikeNeal said:


> For nipping the frets. A dremel with a grinding bit will take care of that. Could also use the fret tang nipper from stewmac


I've used an el cheapo diamond cutting wheel from China (10 pcs for a few bucks, and free shipping) and cut the tang directly. Super easy, as long as you don't get overzealous. And those cutting wheels last a damn long time too.


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