# We now join this program already in progress: Seven String Iceman



## jwade (Dec 3, 2014)

Specs first, rambling later:

27" scale
Wenge neck (4 piece)
Swamp ash body (2 piece)
Lightly flamed maple top (2 piece)
Block inlays (maple, Ivoroid or MOP)
Fingerboard: undecided still.
Finish: hoping to stain it a dark greyish-blue.
Hardware: Tuneomatic, gold. Knobs, gold w/grey MOP buttons. Gold/black Gotoh tuners, 4 + 3.
Pickups: undecided. Haven't heard back from Seymour Duncan about gold covered Black Winters, so it looks like I might go with gold covered Dimarzios. I'm thinking Super Distortion for the bridge.

This has been a long time coming. I got some of the wood for this build back in June before I left school. It sat here for so long, mocking me. Daring me to try something.

So I did. I asked an acquaintance about possibly using his shop at some point, and he offered me a deal: come in and do some work on his builds, use the shop for free/pick out some wood.

I went in and did a little bit of work on his stuff, did some cleaning, and then spent roughly 6 hours on this build (thickness sanding, cutting & gluing neck blanks, gluing the top to the body, book-matching/gluing the headstock plate). This was spaced out over the course of...a month and a half. It has been increasingly getting harder to either get in touch with him, or to find time that works for me to go over and work, so it seems the deal didn't really work out. Ah well, I've got other plans in motion.

I didn't take any pictures near the beginning because my phone was acting up, so here's a picture to show where I'm at right now:







My phone's camera doesn't really do a good job of capturing the flame. It's not heavily flamed, but there's a decent amount, especially up the center.

I've pretty much abandoned the idea of continuing this build at the shop I mentioned, as it's just increasingly difficult to get in touch with the guy, and I am a semi-impatient MF over here. So, I found a Maker Space to check out, and the woodshop there has been set up by someone that knows a bunch of my friends & makes guitars himself, so I'm going to start going this weekend. Really excited about it. 

Immediate first steps, glue on ears for the headstock, screw down the template I made, rout off the sides, rout a truss rod slot, and get my pickup/control cavities routed. I have my various jigs from my 7 string SG build to use for those, so that won't take too much time.

Still have to sort out the fingerboard situation, I've been waiting on somebody that wants to trade a slab of macassar ebony for a nice piece of ziricote I have left over from the SG build, but they're taking their sweet time getting it ripped down to useable pieces for me to check out. If that doesn't pan out in the next week, I'm going to go buy a couple pieces of gabon ebony & a dremel and try my hand at inlays. I think it might look really nice to have flamed maple block inlays, but as I've never attempted inlaying before, I don't know how well this may go. 

One way to find out!

*Shout out to Turenkodenis for sending me a set of plans, I didn't actually use anything on them aside from the overall body outline, but nonetheless, very much appreciate your assistance*


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## pondman (Dec 3, 2014)

Oh yeah


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## skeels (Dec 3, 2014)

skeels likes this, man


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## ev_o (Dec 3, 2014)

Can't wait to see how this turns out


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## BlackMastodon (Dec 3, 2014)

This pleases me.


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## jwade (Jan 25, 2015)

So, it took awhile longer than anticipated to get down to the Maker Space to get a membership, but now that it's all taken care of, I decided it was time to get some work done.

Went in around noon, hung out for a bit and then got down to some routing.





One tiny tearout on the tip of the horn, but a little light sanding and it was gone right away.

Little approves (ps: some of you may recall me mentioning that I had a sick pet. She had a massive 1 cm bladder stone, we had her on antibiotics for a month and have special food for her now and it's all better):





So far, I've spent around 7 and a half hours on this. I'll be heading back in on Monday hopefully to get it down to 1 3/8" and then rout the pickup cavities.


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## CD1221 (Jan 25, 2015)

Good to see a healthy kitteh.

Excellent looking build, i bloody love the way you have jointed the neck, splendid V grain.


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## skeels (Jan 25, 2015)

Looking good man!


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## Alex Kenivel (Jan 25, 2015)

So far so sexy


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## DoctorDuane (Jan 26, 2015)

When I saw the title of the thread, I thought, "Hey, I have a buddy working on one of those!" Turns out it's you. :b


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## DancingCloseToU (Jan 26, 2015)

This thing is looking super awesome.



DoctorDuane said:


> When I saw the title of the thread, I thought, "Hey, I have a buddy working on one of those!" Turns out it's you. :b



^This is awesome too. Welcome to SOO DrDuane!


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## DredFul (Jan 26, 2015)

Love me some iceman


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## Edika (Jan 26, 2015)

And subbed! Looking really clean so far and I can't wait to see more progress!


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## jwade (Jan 26, 2015)

DoctorDuane said:


> When I saw the title of the thread, I thought, "Hey, I have a buddy working on one of those!" Turns out it's you. :b



Hey man! You'll have to post some pictures of those gorgeous basses you built.


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## DistinguishedPapyrus (Jan 26, 2015)

jwade said:


> Little approves (ps: some of you may recall me mentioning that I had a sick pet. She had a massive 1 cm bladder stone, we had her on antibiotics for a month and have special food for her now and it's all better)



Poor cat... Do yourself a favor and NEVER buy pet foods from a brand called Everpet. I had a cat die a couple years ago from a massive kidney stone infection. It was too many stones and he went septic. The stones came from excessive ammounts of heavy metals and magnesium and such found in that brand of pet food...


But back on topic, thats an awesome looking build.


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## jwade (Feb 5, 2015)

I spent half an hour today making use of a thickness planer and a drill press with a Safe-T-planer attachment to level the back of the neck down to 0.85(1) - 0.9(12), and got a realllllllly nice ebony fingerboard down to about 3/8ths. There's some debate as to what the fingerboard actually is. The person I purchased it from claimed it was Mun ebony, but after planing it down a bit, it looks a lot like Macassar. Irrelevant I suppose, as it's quite beautiful regardless of which it is. Stripey and awesome.

At this point, I'm at about 4.5 hours total. I'm headed in to the shop on Friday or Saturday to get the pickup/control cavities and neck pocket routed while the fingerboard/headstock cap are being glued down. Then, I'm going to stain the body a black/charcoal, and do some sort of oil finish for the top/headstock. Someone recommended walnut oil. I've got no experience with walnut oil, anybody able to chime in on the pros/cons of a walnut oil finish on a flamed maple top?

Also, thanks for the tip, DP. Sorry to hear about your cat, dude.


DistinguishedPapyrus said:


> Poor cat... Do yourself a favor and NEVER buy pet foods from a brand called Everpet. I had a cat die a couple years ago from a massive kidney stone infection. It was too many stones and he went septic. The stones came from excessive ammounts of heavy metals and magnesium and such found in that brand of pet food...


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## Renkenstein (Feb 5, 2015)

It pleases me you've pushed through and continued building. I hate hearing when someone throws in the towel, because this is a precious gift. The fact that you're pressing on with an Iceman...well that's just the icing on the cake. I'm watching!


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## jwade (Feb 10, 2016)

I sort of forgot to post anything about this build last year. Pickup routs and control cavity routed, about to carve the belly contour and a cutaway on the horn, maybe a forearm bevel too. 











I worked on the neck a good while, had it bound with some really nice curly maple (I posted a picture in the 'what's on your workbench?' thread), got a bit brave (stupid) and decided to rout the headstock shape. It went well until I went just a hair too far and the router bit caught and went for a little run and took a good chunk of the treble side binding and a bit of fingerboard.

Long story marginally shorter, the only option was to remove the binding and rout the sides of the neck/fingerboard just a hair more to even out the effup. In doing so, the width at the nut dropped to 46.5 mm. My preference tends towards it being wider than that, and there's no way I'm going to like a 7 string with a 46.5 mm nut, so I have unfortunately had to give up on using the neck for this build. 

As luck would have it, I had another body blank sitting here that I hadn't decided on a specific neck/string configuration for, so the neck will instead be going towards a 27" 6 string, swamp ash body, kind of a Parker/Vik looking shape. More on that in another thread at some point soon.

So, time to move forward with a new neck! Still going to be a 27" scale, but this one will probably be a 3 piece neck, curly maple/wenge/curly maple. Birdseye maple fingerboard, bound with white ABS. Headstock plate is going to be curly maple. I bought a large slab of curly maple for $40 from someone awhile back, flatsawn. I'm hoping to cut it down and get 3 pseudo-quartersawn neck blanks worth out of it.































Noticed a pattern, doodled a monster face 

No plan in place yet for inlays, I kind of like the idea of offset rectangle MOP, not sure yet. Maybe the monster face....

Suggestions?

To quickly address a mistake I noticed up there^, I earlier posted:



jwade said:


> At this point, I'm at about 4.5 hours total.



I realize that should've said 8.5 hours. My total time spent on this is tough to calculate due to the whole situation with the first neck, so I'm not going to continue keeping track of time spent, and just get this MF finished already.

Anyway, I'll get these various build threads updated/finished soon (including the 7 string SG, which is nearly finished after a long absurd bunch of failed attempts at spraying it white. Long story).


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## Edika (Feb 10, 2016)

I'm all for the monster face inlay but you have to think if you'll get bored of it in a couple of years and change your mind before going that route.


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## neun Arme (Feb 10, 2016)

Monster face inlay, for sure!


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## Dcm81 (Feb 10, 2016)

Monster Face does look cool but you'd have to do a lot more design work and probably do it with some shading to make it look good. Also, is it near the 12th fret as anywhere too far off might look out of place.
If you want to get this MF done then go with the offset rectangles; classy and quick!


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## pondman (Feb 10, 2016)

Excellent work


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## VBCheeseGrater (Feb 10, 2016)




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## Kashmir (Feb 10, 2016)

jwade said:


>



You're going to be playing Death on that guitar, right?


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## jwade (Feb 10, 2016)

Ha definitely.

Sadly, the face is over the 8/9/10 frets, so if I were to do a shrouded figure, I'd have to extend it a few more frets and that's significantly past my inlaying experience level.


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## jwade (Feb 21, 2016)

Alright, slight change of plans. I had a nice East Indian rosewood neck blank sitting in the closet, decided it would look pretty nice with the birdseye maple fb, so here's where we're at:











I still haven't made a jig to do scarfs a bit more accurately, but as luck would have it, I just eyeballed the cut on the bandsaw and then ran the cut over the belt sander for a second and here's the result. Fairly close to 12 degrees. Anyway, slight progress is better than none, yeah?


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## Spicypickles (Feb 22, 2016)

Oh yes. That neck makes me moist.


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## CaptainD00M (Feb 22, 2016)

Jwade this is looking awesome man, really looking forward to the finished product. Dat fretboard  

I also had no idea you made a 7 String SG, loving that thread to. Hoping to start my own later this year


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## jwade (Feb 25, 2016)

Did a bit of carving on monday. Roughed-in the belly/lower horn scoops and the forearm bevel. Little bit of fine-tuning left but it's close. The lower horn scoop seems pretty excellent, should be able to play all the way up to the 24th easily.


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## cult (Feb 25, 2016)

This looks so nice.
A 7 string iceman is one of my weak spots, probably too metal for me these days but oh well...

Following this with excitement!


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## jwade (Feb 25, 2016)

I've already got it in my head to make a second one, I love the way it's turning out!


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## metale (Feb 27, 2016)

Looking great! Subscribed.


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## CaptainD00M (Feb 27, 2016)

I like the really organic shape of the tummy cut.


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## jwade (Feb 28, 2016)

Yeah man, the grain in swamp ash looks so gorgeous when you start carving into it. Can't wait to see it with oil or something happening.


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## jovima69 (Feb 28, 2016)

This is sweet! Cant wait to see the finished product.


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## jwade (Feb 28, 2016)

I should probably explain the exceptionally low-budget photo session there. Taking pictures indoors wasn't working, so I decided some natural light was in order, problem was that it had just rained, so I had to bring something out to set the body on, and the recycling basket happened to be right by the door, so...

Ha. My lady said 'jeez, not the prettiest way to show off your work'.


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## jwade (Mar 25, 2016)

I got a bit more done. Spent some time outside letting the cats roam around, took advantage of weirdly nice weather to get some scarf-faces tidied up and ready for gluing:






Got the scarf glued successfully, nice clean joint (for some reason I haven't taken any closeup shots yet). Made use of a router table nearby and got the truss rod slot touted. Ended up needing maybe 1/32nd routed still, but the router table isn't overly new/precise/well-maintained, so I elected to not try one last pass and risk going too deep. 

Instead, I found a piece of striped New Guinea ebony that a friend gave me cut off from the end of his fingerboard, and it was exactly narrow enough to work as a very thin sanding block. Knocked the final 32nd out in no time flat. 





Glued the fb to the neck:






Still not sure what to do for inlays. I drew out a weird eye, a wolf, a hooded figure, an all-seeing eye/triangle thing, but nothing's really feeling very 'Iceman' yet. 

Suggestions?


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## Kashmir (Mar 25, 2016)

How about a disappearing pyramid inlay? Never seen one of those on an iceman and it fits with the general theme you seem to be going for.


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## jwade (Mar 25, 2016)

Actually, I thought about that awhile ago! I had been thinking it might be nice to do the Iceman as a sort of PWH themed build. 

Hmm.


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## jwade (Mar 31, 2016)

Rough-cut the neck down and routed the sides flush to the fb/binding. The headstock is still just roughly cut/sanded, I need to go back and make a bit more use of the spindle sander. 

Didn't take any pictures yet, but I was given a nice piece of maple that will be contributing a bookmatched headstock plate. 

Should be getting some basic profile shaping done in the next few days, headstock plate should be glued up and ready to attach soon as well.

Getting pretty excited here. Working on East Indian rosewood is a real treat, really looking forward to playing it someday soon.


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## Hollowway (Mar 31, 2016)

What am I, Rip Van Winkle? How have I missed this thread until now? I GREATLY approve of this build! Next up: Fireman 8 string, amirite? (It's my dream build!)


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## jwade (Mar 31, 2016)

Not sure if you remember the fancy bubinga top I posted ages ago, here it is:







Anyway, that top is also in the next picture, which I believe will be of interest to you:






That'll be build #8. Build #7 will a 7 string RD.


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## jwade (Dec 5, 2016)

So it turns out, my landlord's ex-husband left all sorts of tools when they split up, and she hadn't gone through the pile of his stuff in the corner. I offered to help clear out the garage so we'd have more space, and found an almost new plunge router.

Which let me get back to my various builds. This afternoon ended up being pretty productive.














Alright! Still not sure what to do for inlays. I'm thinking offset fret mark rectangles, .125" wide, .5" long. Something like that. I've got a bit of practicing to do with the Dremel I bought before I dive in.

But hey, progress!


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## A-Branger (Dec 6, 2016)

leave the fretboard blank


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## jwade (Dec 6, 2016)

Also a pretty acceptable option visually. Get some clear lacquer and polish those birdseyes to a ridiculously 3D level.


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## turenkodenis (Dec 6, 2016)

So nice!


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## neun Arme (Dec 7, 2016)

I want to this this finished!!!!


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## pondman (Dec 7, 2016)

Now that looks handsome !


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## jwade (Dec 7, 2016)

Just realized I still need to add the headstock plate to this and the 8 string! Also, I bought some dye from Lee Valley, need to start doing some test dyes to try for that transparent white with a bit of black dye to bring the flame out


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## charlessalvacion (May 8, 2017)

Please update us on your build! Thanks


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## jwade (May 9, 2017)

You got it!

Current state of the build: holes have been drilled, neck attached, faceplate glued on, body is fully carved, strap pins installed, truss rod cover is being worked on tomorrow, and new bridge hardware is being ordered in the next few days. 

I had originally planned to go with a tuneomatic bridge, but decided not to do an angled pocket and have decided to snag a nice basic fixed bridge for it, basically the same as my RG7621 has. 

The tuners I purchased for this guitar are currently installed on my 8 string TAM/M80M build, so I'm going to order some new tuners to suit the slight change in the overall aesthetics I've made recently.


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## MrYakob (May 9, 2017)

Beautiful! Is that neck bolted on or glued in?


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## jwade (May 9, 2017)

It's a bolt-on.


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## MoonJelly (May 9, 2017)

That's straight sexy.


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## Kyle01 (May 9, 2017)

Oh damn. I don't know how I haven't seen this thread yet. That is cool as hell man, can't wait to see the finished product.


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## neun Arme (May 10, 2017)

Yes, we want some more!


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## skisgaar (May 10, 2017)

Sweet Jesus, that maple combo. I know you plan on staining it, but it looks fantastic natural too!

Also, really fantastic woodwork. It looks excellent my dude.


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## jwade (May 12, 2017)

Thanks, all! I have my frets all cut to size, just need to find a reliable way to get the tang ends snipped off. I've decided on doing small black dot inlays, offset. I'd thought about using white or clay dots, but I think the fb is fairly 'busy' on it's own and white/clay/mop dots would probably just sort of blend in.






I also did a bit more shaping on the body. When I installed the strap pins, it became pretty clear that the upper horn was going to be easy to have dig in to the stomach/ribs/chest, so I rounded it over on the back a bit, and blended the belly carve up farther.


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## jwade (Oct 27, 2017)

Work has slowed down, so I have time to work on these projects again finally. I borrowed some radius blocks from a friend, put a 16" radius on the fb. Tomorrow, I'll clean up the slots a bit and install the frets. Then the plan is to get some tung oil and do the fb.









Not sure what to do about the rosewood. I know I can leave it fully unfinished, but I've seen a few examples of tung oil on EIR and it looks pretty excellent. Any experience/opinions on tung oil with rosewood?


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## Lemons (Oct 27, 2017)

Tung-oil is a great choice, it feels great and it'll real bring out some depth of colour in the wood. As far as finishing process the method I prefer is: 
-Apply the first coat with a rag and keep the neck completely wet for about 10 minutes
-Every coat after that should be applied fairly lightly and sanded in with progressively higher grits of sandpaper
-Wait about a day between applying each successive coat, and after the final coat give it a few days to harden before you mount any hardware/buff the neck out with a clean rag

It's really up to you how "finished" you want the neck to feel, so the number of coats you need to do varies.


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## Lemonbaby (Oct 27, 2017)

I'd recommend to absolutely stay away from Tung-Oil. It stinks and it dries awfully slowly - and we're talking weeks here! There's so many better products out there, I use two/three layers of hardwax-oil and sometimes one or two finishing layers of TruOil (thinned 1:1 for even application).


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## MoonJelly (Oct 31, 2017)

I've only used tung oil once and I had a good result, but it did take a solid 3.5 weeks for it to really cure. So I have to agree with Lemonbaby, TruOil in particular is way easier on the eyes and much easier to wait on!


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## jwade (Nov 1, 2017)

I'll have to see if anybody around here sells it, maybe Windsor Plywood?


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## LiveOVErdrive (Nov 1, 2017)

I'd suggest just wipe on polyurethane. Real easy to use and more durable than Tru oil. Looks just as good or better. If you can't get wipe on, just buy regular and thin it with mineral spirits. It's the same thing. 

Then wipe it on with pieces of an old t shirt. Don't use paper towels. They seem like they'd work but they won't. They leave it streaky and gross.

I used to do my necks with min wax satin poly, thinned with mineral spirits, and they come out pretty nice.

Of course now I just spray water based gloss poly and rub it to the sheen I want because I hate working with oil based finishes but oh well.


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## jwade (Jan 9, 2021)

Man, life sure gets away from you quickly. I haven’t done anything related to guitar-building in a few years. Geez. 

I think the last real progress I made was getting the tuner holes drilled. Unfortunately, I miscalculated annnnnnnd here we are:







I’m looking around online trying to find something without the big rectangular shoulders. Maybe something with a middle bottom screw. 

Decided it’s not healthy to have these unfinished projects sitting here. Gotta figure out how to get all of this stuff finished.


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## geeman8 (Jan 29, 2021)

Dang man! I just got a set of open gear locking Hipshots. I'm pretty sure they are narrower than those Gotohs and they have the mounting screw centered on the bottom.


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## jwade (Feb 2, 2021)

geeman8 said:


> Dang man! I just got a set of open gear locking Hipshots. I'm pretty sure they are narrower than those Gotohs and they have the mounting screw centered on the bottom.



Dude I think you just saved me a lot of frustration:
https://imgur.com/i53mHd5


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## geeman8 (Feb 2, 2021)

jwade said:


> Dude I think you just saved me a lot of frustration:
> https://imgur.com/i53mHd5



Sweet! That's still AWFULLY close though haha! I'm absolutely loving this build too man!


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## jwade (Feb 15, 2021)

geeman8 said:


> Sweet! That's still AWFULLY close though haha! I'm absolutely loving this build too man!


I saved the PDF from hipshot a page that has schematics of the tuners at their true scale and printed a bunch out. Looks like it’ll work really well to get the 7 inline set!






(I can’t figure out how to get pictures to actually show up sorry)


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## jwade (Aug 31, 2022)

Haven't done much with this one in a long while, but it's been drilled for the bridge finally, should be staining it in a couple weeks once this heatwave lets up a bit.


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## JimF (Sep 1, 2022)

I recently discovered a 4 year old incomplete build myself, so I'm behind you! Lets get these builds finished!


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## BlackMastodon (Sep 1, 2022)

*looks at 7 year old partially finished neck sitting in my basement*
Amateurs... 



On a related note, my workbench is currently on my workbench. I moved into this house a little over a year ago and the garage was full for storage, but after building some overhead storage in the rafters earlier this year and clearing the floor space, I've slowly been chipping away and getting a proper workspace and redoing the workbench that was left here by the previous owner. 

Will post pics when I have something good to show for it. Surprise surprise but the garage floor is once again taken up by a vintage dresser that my partner and I are slowly fixing up to sell.


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## JimF (Sep 1, 2022)

BlackMastodon said:


> *looks at 7 year old partially finished neck sitting in my basement*
> Amateurs...


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## BlackMastodon (Sep 1, 2022)

Also, my bad I didn't make an to hijack the thread with most of my post there. Thought it was the What's on your Workbench thread. 

More iceman, less me.


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## jwade (Sep 3, 2022)

Oh I did order the tuners and pickups as well! It's going to be black Hipshot open gear with pearl buttons, and Dimarzio Dactivators, black metal cover with gold poles.


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## jwade (Sep 21, 2022)




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## wheresthefbomb (Sep 21, 2022)

This is a rad build. Black metal+gold poles is class, much better than solid gold imo.


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