# Home Depot Build Challenge 2013 - I'm Losing My Head!



## BlackMastodon (Sep 4, 2013)

Since you guys were so nice as to hold off the contest until I was done school wub, I figured that now I'm obligated to get off my ass and make a guitar!

Ze plan: use the cheap Steinberger knockoff bridge I bought from ebay years ago with some low end Ibanez pickups and make a baritone headless. 

Ze specs: 
- 27" scale 6 string baritone
- 24 fret poplar neck with oak fretboard
- Maple body
- StoneBurger headless bridge
- Ibanez INF pickups from My RG350EX
- Medium frets bought from AllParts, dual action trussrod from StewMac.
- Either a Steinberger broom body shape or some kind of ergo shape a la Strandberg.

So today I went to my local Rona (basically like Home Depot) which was having a store closing sale and grabbed the poplar and oak for the neck. I was hoping to find a decently sized wooden cutting board to use that for the body but they didn't have anything.  Any wood that was usable for the body came in way too big a length and was usually warped. 

When I came home I looked around the garage and saw a big enough piece of pine and figured "good enough." When I asked my dad if he needed it he told me to just find a slab of maple that would be wide enough; luckily there was such a piece. Now, in the spirit of this competition, this maple slab was cut from a huge maple tree that was in our backyard that my dad cut down on his own, because he is manly as f**k and refuses to pay people for things he can do himself. 

Enough talk, PICTURES.

Oak fretboard:







Poplar for the neck:
















Really like the black parts of the grain, makes it look really interesting and is the reason why I bought this piece.

And here is the maple:






Depending on the body style I got for it's either going to be a 1 piece (broom) or 2 piece (ergo).

More updates when I actually do stuff.


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## Just A Box (Sep 4, 2013)

Looks like this competition is gonna be half full of headless guitars! Interested to see how the oak fingerboard comes out. Good luck.


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## skeels (Sep 4, 2013)

skeels likes this


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## icos211 (Sep 4, 2013)

How dry is that maple, do you think?


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## Overtone (Sep 5, 2013)

Janka Wood Hardness Scale

I think you can get away with the oak FB but I worry a bit about having a polar neck.


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## BlackMastodon (Sep 5, 2013)

icos211 said:


> How dry is that maple, do you think?


Hmmm that's a good question. I may need to go pick up a moisture meter or something. The wood has been drying for about a year now, though, so it's accumulated to the humidity around here for a little while.



Overtone said:


> Janka Wood Hardness Scale
> 
> I think you can get away with the oak FB but I worry a bit about having a polar neck.


I'm not too worried about the poplar. It'll have the dual action trussrod to take care of any necessary adjustments and this is a scrap build anyway so I wouldn't be losing out on a whole lot if it goes awry.


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## Necromagnon (Sep 5, 2013)

I too worry about the poplar neck, but we can be really surprised.
ME WANT SEE MOAR!!


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## hk_golgatha (Sep 6, 2013)

Keen to see this one come together. My interest is peaked.


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## AndrewG716 (Sep 7, 2013)

I really want to see that maple come together! And as long as you didin't get the worlds worst poplar boards, your neck will be fine. Probably will require more adjustment, but who cares?


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## callankirk (Sep 8, 2013)

Overtone said:


> I think you can get away with the oak FB but I worry a bit about having a polar neck.



Ditto....ditto...Poplar is kinda temperamental. 

Edit: .... it, it's the Home Depot Build '13! Build the shit outta that Poplar neck dude.


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 23, 2013)

Figured it's time I move my ass on this, no?

Got a body shape laid out. Decided on a more .strandberg*-esque design since I could make it fit and because brooms are boring. Huge props to dudeskin's design in his 8 string fanned build thread that he has up, without his single cut .strandberg* mockup I wouldn't have been able to make mine look half decent, though I did prefer to keep some of the original design stuff in there (.strandskin shape? dudeberg*? )






Got the pieces for the body blank cut out of the original maple and tried my damndest to plane them by hand since the table saw doesn't cut all that straight:






Wish I knew how to use a hand planer...

Didn't turn out half bad, though it was on a slight angle.






Before I could correct this, I needed to plane away the bowing that was happening on the body wood pieces:






Qu'est qe ce?!





Zut alors! We have some quilt, non? 
Just a smidge of the figuring on the front and back but it's surprisingly nice for being in such a small area.






Unfortunately, there's also this:






My Z-poxy came in so I'll give that a go with try to fill these voids/worm holes.

Other piece planed up:






More worm holes. 






Now let's fix up those joining sides:






Much better, who needs a joiner when you have a router with a flush-trim bit and a straight piece of plywood? 

Time for the trussrod channel. Wasn't a fan of this part, as I had to do some sketchy stuff that involved the bearing being to small to fit on the router bit. 






Prepped, for science!






Not particularly clean, but it works and it's snug:






Got the hole drilled in the headstock end:











As stated in my 8 string build thread, will work on getting the fretboard to size and gluing it on soon. Need to pick up some more clamps tomorrow to glue together the body blank, too.

Wish I would've done more before the weather started going to shit, but alas.


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## dudeskin (Oct 24, 2013)

hahha, dudeberg. love it! 

nice one dude, looking forward to seeing the rest of this too!


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## Sithman55 (Oct 24, 2013)

looking awesome


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## BlackMastodon (Oct 29, 2013)

Time to get the neck to the right width. Here's my magical set up for that:






Figured I might as well gut the fret slots started (not full depth yet) before I lose the fretboard layout to double sided tape.






Not terrible for a first attempt but there's definitely room for improvement.






Was a little hasty with the 16th fret.






After that, finished up the neck width:











Rough cut the body shape, too, and sanded away the glue spill-over and tooling marks from the router as well as the epoxy I used to fill in the few voids/worm holes:











After all that, I got the side markers epoxied into the fretboard. I'm just using steel wire from the dollar store.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 10, 2013)

Update time.

Cut the headstock, it's a little uneven but I'll fix it later. Also cut down the metal wire side dots.






Routed the thickness of each section of the neck and marked out the profile.











Roughed out the neck pocket with a forstner bit and drill press and then set it up for final routing.






Squared off the edges of the pocket with a chisel and hammer.






Fits pretty well, there are some gaps where the neck pickup is going to be but those will be covered up so I'm just gonna load the shit out of them with glue. 






She passes the Ormsby test!






Cut the shelf for the nut. Not quite sure what I'll do with the oak that's showing on the headstock. Dunno if I'll follow the pattern or what.











I'm starting to like using chisels a lot more. Just need a set of better ones now.

Started radiusing the fretboard. Note to self: next time use less spray adhesive.  Was a pain in the ass to sand off and some of it stuck in the oak's grain.






Almost there.











Also routed the body to the almost final shape. Did get some tear out from the router in some spots though so I'll have to fix that up. No pics of this stuff, though, since it isn't too exciting. Drilled the wire channel between where the pickups will be before I glue the neck in. Next step will be doing the pickups and control cavity routes, then shaping the neck profile and fretting.


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## Yimmj (Nov 10, 2013)

holy Fuk this is impressive


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## skeels (Nov 10, 2013)

Looking sweet, Mack!

Also, those aren't worm holes- those are burls from bits of twigs from the tree's own growth. 

Also, nice use of a locking trem nut on the headless headstock.


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## ormsby guitars (Nov 11, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


> She passes the Ormsby test!



Wanna job? 

/jb


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## russmuller (Nov 11, 2013)

This is awesome. I'm really liking that oak fingerboard. It looks classy.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 11, 2013)

ormsby guitars said:


> Wanna job?
> 
> /jb


 Maybe after I get a couple dozen more builds under my belt.



russmuller said:


> This is awesome. I'm really liking that oak fingerboard. It looks classy.


I had forgotten what it looks like under the printed fretboard layout and I agree, I'm liking how it looks thus far.

Quick question to others, though: the oak seems to be pretty porous so will I need to do grain filling and a finish on this fretboard?


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 11, 2013)

Neck shaping begins:







When I bought that spoke shave, the owner of the wood shop said I was probably the first person in 15 years to buy a spoke shave. I liked using it, too. Much better luck than with planers.

Rough shape:






Blurry pic after some sanding:






It started raining a bit so I couldn't do too much with the sanding, but it's almost there.





















Also, the sign of a sharp chisel:






Lesson learned.


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## Deadnightshade (Nov 11, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


> Lesson learned.



Sharp chisels force period on your fingers?


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## RV350ALSCYTHE (Nov 11, 2013)

Is the face of your spokeshave bare smooth metal?

I bought a cheapy that was/still is painted on every surface except the blade. It left blue smears with every pass. I set it aside and went back to the Rasp


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## pondman (Nov 11, 2013)

Blimey this has moved on


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 11, 2013)

RV350ALSCYTHE said:


> Is the face of your spokeshave bare smooth metal?
> 
> I bought a cheapy that was/still is painted on every surface except the blade. It left blue smears with every pass. I set it aside and went back to the Rasp


It is painted and yes, it does leave blue smears every now and again. Nothing a bit of sanding won't take care of, though.



pondman said:


> Blimey this has moved on


I need to move faster if I want to finish this by the end of the month.  Stupid rain is holding me back on my day off.

Edit: the rain has turned to snow. Fuuuuu-


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 13, 2013)

Screw the cold, I have a guitar to build!

Did some final shaping to the neck profile, quite satisfied with it, might do some final touches before final sanding but for now this is fine.
















Hogged out some meat with a forstner for the control cavity:






This is what the control layout will be: 1 Vol, 1 Tone, 3-Way toggle pickup selector, and strat style input jack.






Normally I forgo the tone pot but I figured I have it so I might as well use it.

Cleaned up the control cavity.






The router bit I used for this is actually chipped and it still cuts 100x better than the StewMac one.

And she's glued up:


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 17, 2013)

Are you ready for quite possibly the sloppiest pickup routes ever? 






Luckily I planned to use chrome pickup brackets anyway and they cover it up well enough, so I'm not bothered by it.

Also did some grain filling on the oak board, no pics, though because it isn't exciting.

Today, before it started pissing rain I managed to do some carving for the comfy parts.

Weapon of choice:






Still going to work on this stomach contour a bit, but I like it. The design doesn't really need a stomach contour as it's the body is already fairly thin and the shape makes it pretty comfortable already, but it doesn't hurt to have a small one.






And forearm carve. Still needs a bit of work of course.






Here's how she's looking. Sanded the fretboard to 150 so far and cleaned out the fret slots.






Looks comfy, and also feels quite comfy.






Getting close, folks.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 20, 2013)

Spent 5 hours in the cold today cleaning up the sides and getting them mostly smooth, made the headstock a bit more presentable, too. Also recessed where the bridge will be, otherwise the action would've been so high that the guitar would say shit like "that's a trip, brah" and "yo chill man." *shudder*

Anyway, on to the exciting part. 











We have colour! I used that shadow grey/blue that isn't far off from denim that I mixed a little while ago. Was considering doing a black burst but I'm honestly so goddamn sick of sanding and I want to finish this up and oil it ASAP. Plus I think it looks just fine, though in those pics it looks a little funky because the dye is still relatively fresh.

Here's how it looked right when I applied the dye:






Here she is dried a few hours later:











Tomorrow's plan: nothing. I have to work in the morning, then go to the gym, then go to my last class (hopefully ever if all goes well ), and then go to bed for work Friday morning.

Friday's plan: sand the sides and clean it up some more, do fine sanding, drill pilot holes, begin oiling. Then after I get a few coats of oil on the fretboard I can fret it and it should be good from there.


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## Neilzord (Nov 21, 2013)

Nice progress. Look forward to seeing the fruits of Friday's labour!


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## Artifacts in Motion (Nov 21, 2013)

I love that dye! Really nice color.


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## sage (Nov 21, 2013)

Looks great. That cutaway is ridonkulous.


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## dudeskin (Nov 21, 2013)

Noice!! Keep it going dude!


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 21, 2013)

sage said:


> Looks great. That cutaway is ridonkulous.


ALL the fret access! And then some more.


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## The Hiryuu (Nov 22, 2013)

Whew. That's looking great so far. I have to stop looking at this board or I'm going to get inspired to try to build something myself. And that will suck all kinds of hours out of my life, considering I'm a complete woodworking noob.


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## JoshuaVonFlash (Nov 22, 2013)

Tell this'll be for one day.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 22, 2013)

The Hiryuu said:


> Whew. That's looking great so far. I have to stop looking at this board or I'm going to get inspired to try to build something myself. And that will suck all kinds of hours out of my life, considering I'm a complete woodworking noob.


Do iiiiiit. Just take your time, learn from your mistakes and have plan B's for everything, and keep all your fingers and eyes safe.


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## The Hiryuu (Nov 23, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


> Do iiiiiit. Just take your time, learn from your mistakes and have plan B's for everything, and keep all your fingers and eyes safe.





Yeah, I kind of doubt I have nearly enough actual tools to pull things off, nevermind the funds to so much as get wood.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 25, 2013)

Really should've worked on this more during September and October.  Colder than a witch's tit outside today but I got the final sanding done on it (at least all that I'm willing to do, there are some areas where I'm just saying f**k it). Also got the pilot holes drilled and began oiling. Pics!!!


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## XxJoshxX (Nov 25, 2013)

The oak looks amazing


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 25, 2013)

Thanks Josh! You got a nice looking piece for your fretboard, too. 

Also, got some shots of the backside oiled up (giggity):






Sorry for the blurriness.  I'll get some better ones after a few more coats.






Reaaaaally liking the look of this poplar neck.


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 26, 2013)

Getting ready to do some fretting. Need to get that done by the end of the week.  Made a little clampy thing to hold a file at about a 30 degree angle.







Might have to glue in a nut for each bolt to catch better.











Also, the promised better shots of the back:


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## BlackMastodon (Nov 30, 2013)

Welp, it's more or less done since the dead line is tonight. Funny day it's been though. 

Can't put pickups in because I need to cut the tabs since they are too long, don't have time to wire it up either, aaaaaand I only have 2 pickup height screws anyway.

Funnier part, though, is that the gauge of strings I put on (barritone, 14-68) is so goddamned heavy that I can't tune the bastard. At least I know that the tuners actually hold. 

It works, though, mile high action and all. I'm going to put this on hold for a little while and work out the quirks over time. Had I actually started working on this back in September I might've been able to get over these issues but holy shit was this a lot of fun and I think once it's 100% complete it's gonna be a lot of fun to dick around with. Not sure if this disqualifies me from the contest but either way, I'm surprised with myself. 

Here she is as she stands:











Good luck to everyone else in the context. And thanks for watching.  She'll live soon enough.


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## RV350ALSCYTHE (Nov 30, 2013)

That looks so awesome!


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## JoshuaVonFlash (Nov 30, 2013)

It's a masterpiece


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## muffinbutton (Nov 30, 2013)

I really love this shape. Also what bridge is that?


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## skeels (Dec 1, 2013)

Shielding and all! Awesome!


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## BlackMastodon (Dec 1, 2013)

muffinbutton said:


> I really love this shape. Also what bridge is that?


A $50 Steinberger knock off from ebay.  Thanks a lot guys! Still got some work to do on this before it's fully playable. Thinking if there is a way to add a slot to the back of the tuners for an allen key to make it possibls to tune since I would want tl keep this in dropped A or B. Any ideas?


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## Fretless (Dec 1, 2013)

I want one so bad. This just beautiful! Normally I don't dig headless guitars, but this one's just great!


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## Deadnightshade (Dec 1, 2013)

BlackMastodon said:


>





BlackMastodon said:


> Really should've worked on this more during September and October.  Colder than a witch's tit outside today but I got the final sanding done on it (at least all that I'm willing to do, there are some areas where I'm just saying f**k it). Also got the pilot holes drilled and began oiling. Pics!!!



Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?


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## Kapee (Dec 1, 2013)

Deadnightshade said:


> Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?


Yeah, there's definately a face in the top


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## Cloudy (Dec 1, 2013)

Deadnightshade said:


> Am I the only one seing a woman's face in the first picture and a dude in shock with a hat like Kyle's from south park in the second?



Nope thats the first thing I saw


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## Allealex (Dec 1, 2013)

Man this turned out really cool! Congrats man you're one skilled dude


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## BlackMastodon (Dec 1, 2013)

Oh god I never noticed the face before, it watches me sleep now. 



Allealex said:


> Man this turned out really cool! Congrats man you're one skilled dude


Thanks man! I still got a lot of things to learn but that's why I do this.

Now if only there was an easier way to do fret dressing and polishing.


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## BlackMastodon (Apr 25, 2015)

Rise, rise from your grave my sweet, headless child!

This poor gal has been staring at me in my guitar rack for the last year and a half, unfinished and unloved.

So let's change that!

Last summer I spent some time working on the bridge and hardware for this.

Let's start with the bridge. When I first strung her up, I noticed how incredibly hard it was to bring it to pitch with the headless tuners (admittedly, the strings were thick as f**k). So I wanted to add some Allen key support for them.

Break out the drill press and let loose on the tuner pins:






Next to them are the machine screws. I cut all the threading off since I would only really need those end bits, but a convenient bit is that If these don't work out, the threading matches that of the tuners that came on the bridge, so I have about 44 extra screws that could work with the string blocks. 






The machine screws will sit in the tuner like so:






But how will they stay there? I don't think super glue or epoxy would do the job, and machine screw would probably just spin freely once the glue/epoxy broke.

I had to use my genius engineering skillz here 






I drilled out a channel perpendicular to the machine screw so that I could add a metal pin that would securely hold the machine screw in place inside. You can kind of see that the knurling (or whatever the hell it's called) on the tuner itself got a little stripped and brass is showing beneath it. Not a huge deal, that's what the Allen keys will be for.






And by pin I mean nail. 






Epoxy ready:






Tuners all drilled and ready:






She's looking a little more functional now:






Now the pickups were a little trickier, but again: engineering skillz.  I bent the tabs of one of the pickups so that they were flat and inline with the baseplate and then put the other one on top of it, lining them up as best I could and then drilling into the bottom pickup's tabs to get the right alignment:











Worked perfectly:






...aside from the slight booboo on the right tab here:






Can't win 'em all. 

I then flipped the pickups around and bent the tabs on the other one so that I could copy the location and have them both set. I still need to cut the excess of the tabs off but that shouldn't be a problem.

I also got sick of looking at the awkward (and uneven) "headstock" so I decided to sand it flat with the rest of the neck.

The Ridgid spindle/belt sander made short work of it:











Mooch better:


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## BlackMastodon (Apr 25, 2015)

I scratched the surface near the top bout of the body a bit when re-radiusing the fretboard to 16 degrees and considered just saying f**k it and leaving it alone. I figured the whole guitar would just have a rustic look to it since it was more of a proto/proof of concept type build anyway, and this contest has been long over. 

BUT NAY, I said!

She will be treated with the utmost respect and it gave me a great opportunity to play around with some different colour finishes. Plus I love the dying process with guitars, probably my favourite part of any build.

So I sanded the entire top down and brought it up to 220 grit then added some black dye:






Aaaaaand then sanded back down:






God I dislike sanding by hand. 











So far so good, think I got a lot of the unsightly scratches out of the top and it's back up to 220 again.

Added the same greyish/blue/stormy sky colour that it had on before, this time with a few more layers making it darker. I like:






This upper 'horn' is looking much better this time around with the figuring:






But ya know, I still think she's missing something. And I never did try a burst finish before.... Hmmmmmmmm....






Oh. Oh my.






That's niiiiiice.

Hit it with some 0000 steel wool to blend the burst in and give the middle area a fade:







Oh lawd have mercy! I think I'm in love (don't judge me...)


























Give her some mineral spirits to see how it'll look down the road:






Can I just say godDAMN:
















I am excite.


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## burl (Apr 25, 2015)

that top is gorgeous!


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## littleredguitars2 (Apr 25, 2015)

great! i love me some blue


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## immortalx (Apr 26, 2015)

This is a hundred times better than the original stain job man 
Also nice work on the hardware mod too!


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## jarnozz (Apr 26, 2015)

I totally forgot about this one and how I loved the body shape! I might just "steal" this design! Muahahah


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## pettymusic (Apr 28, 2015)

I just now found this!!!


Looks great, man! I really like what you did for cutting your initial neck taper on that router table. I screwed my taper up on my build so, I gotta hone in on this area next time. You gave me some ideas so, thanks!


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## BlackMastodon (May 2, 2015)

pettymusic said:


> I just now found this!!!
> 
> 
> Looks great, man! I really like what you did for cutting your initial neck taper on that router table. I screwed my taper up on my build so, I gotta hone in on this area next time. You gave me some ideas so, thanks!


Thanks, man! Glad to give some people ideas with my mad science.

If you check out my other thread for the WG587 mod, the way I cut the neck taper in that one is a lot more accurate and it turned out better. This one was fine, but that aluminum angle stock that I used as a straight edge is too flimsy. For the other neck I used angle iron and it's much more stiff.


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## BlackMastodon (May 4, 2015)

Much smaller update this time around (no pics unfortunately).

Just sanded down the back of the body to get a couple scratches out, will do some more fine sanding on it soon to get it ready for oiling.

I'm currently building up layers of tung oil for the fretboard before I get to fretting. I still need to bend and cut the fretwire and do the ballend frets, so that should be interesting. I also need to order a 3-48 tap so I can actually get the pickup height screws through the tabs.

I also realized that I uploaded a lot of those shots of the body in the previous post in the wrong order.  I think everyone can figure out which is which, though.


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## FruitCakeRonin (May 4, 2015)

2015, the year of the 2 year old builds.

Thats a really nice color. Going blue myself with my build, so I can dig it.


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## BlackMastodon (Apr 20, 2016)

Looks like I'll be updating this build every year or so by the looks of it. 

Since I recently made some fret nippers, I decided to just man up and start the frets.

So, let's get nipping:







Turned out alright:











After this one I started cutting off smaller bits at a time and it worked much better. Way more clean.

Unfortunately the fretwire wasn't bent enough and the radius was too big for the fretboard, so I had to try to bend them again before hammering them in.

Lesson learned: *Always bend the fretwire before cutting it to size, and always bend it to be a smaller radius than the fretboard.

*Anyway, some progress:






I hate everything about fretting. 

Got them all in at last:






Next I need to make my fret beveling file and trim the ends, then level them all.


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## BlackMastodon (Apr 23, 2016)

The fret beveling block I made did the job alright, bet there's lots of room for improvement. Glad I used this build as a Guinea pig, though. Should at least play relatively smooth once they're leveled and crowned.





















Then I started sanding some scrap oak to get some dust and packed it into the one side of the fret slots as best I could and put a few dabs of CA glue over each. I'll wait for this side to dry before doing it to the other side as well.











Hopefully it isn't as dark when it dries up.


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## J_Mac (Apr 24, 2016)

Sah-weeet!


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