Doc's 2012 Challenged Build

[Doc Rorick]

So, back to the start. Jigsaw cut and rough sanded the blank:



I noticed that there was a knot running through the end that I'd selected for the peghead but since it was more toward the front side of the peghead it looked like I would lose it during thicknessing.

So, re-attached the template, here with downhill routing directional arrows



and it shaped out nicely. The wee benchtop router table worked aces.

Next I fixed the template to the blank and set the tuning peg holes



and then realized that I didn’t need to set the holes as I could just leave the template in place and use the tuning peg holes I drilled on the template as guides for the drill press



and they came out pretty well, with minimal tear-out.

So from here, it's on to the TRC jig: the site of my most recent disappointment. Out comes the jig, lines are drawn, measurements checked, re-checked, double-re-checked, then



the TRC is cut. Properly. Like it was some kind of miracle. Hey, I'm an amateur here, all right?

Next came marking out the dimensions on the peghead for thicknessing



and then taking it down to spec with the belt sander. Here’s a shot of things midway through the grind, where you can see that the knot that ran through the face of the peghead has been turned into dust which I am now carrying around in my hair. After it had been sanded away, I realized that I would have liked to keep it on the peghead for aesthetics... grain is good. Figuring is good. Would that knot have affected the stability of the peghead? It would have looked cool.



Turned out pretty well, just going by hand. I've left a bit of extra thickness on there so that I can sand out any unevenness.

I'm wondering what to use for a skunk stripe with this sapele -- I've got a piece of walnut which might give me nice contrast, but perhaps I'll look for some light-colored oak that will stand out against the sapele.

Also have some news: Doc's Drunken Lutherie has hired its first apprentice. She's not very good with the fine work but she has a real knack for shaping



I wonder if she can help me out with the electronics too?

[DeepSouth]

Glad to see the neck is going well - it's nice looking wood.

The dog is cool - sometimes I think life would be easier being a dog you just get to lie in a comfortable spot and get fed occasionally :-) It doesn't get better than that does it!

[Davecam48]

Pretty serious bandsaw and thicknesser you have there!

[Doc Rorick]

Originally Posted by DeepSouth

...sometimes I think life would be easier being a dog you just get to lie in a comfortable spot and get fed occasionally :-) It doesn't get better than that does it!

It's a dog's life, for sure!

I'm pretty happy with the sapele neck; thanks for the good words. Am still pretty gutted that I fouled up my original piece of flame maple... I think I'm going to go ahead and try to fill and re-channel it. Why not? I'll learn a bit, at least.

Originally Posted by Davecam48

Pretty serious bandsaw and thicknesser you have there!

Dave -- I wish I had those kicking around my workshop! After trying to figure out how to get the neck blank down to 1" thick and still save a 1/4" piece for a future fingerboard, I finally realized the best thing I could do was take it to a pro shop. Amazing what the right tool for the job can do in terms of efficiency. It was fun to drool over the gear at North Bay Plywood, but I'm having a good time making a go of this build with mostly strictly amateur equipment... still, though, those kinds of tools make things a lot easier!

[Doc Rorick]

Marked out some lines on the body earlier in the week and got the string-thru holes drilled. My drill press only has a 5" throat -- not deep enough to accommodate the tele body -- so this became more of a (ahem) hand job.

I rigged up a fence by clamping a couple of pieces of wood to the body so that all I had to do was butt the hand press rig up against them and move it along to each of the measured and marked spots for the string-through holes



Worked fairly well, with the end results being straighter than I'd really hoped for with this rig



Haven't thought through how to drill the back of the body to accommodate the string ferrules yet. Will get to that possibly this weekend.

Then, since I was in a drillin' mood, I pulled out that press and took care of the pickup and control cavity pre-routing prep



and got out the router. The wiring cavity that runs from the neck pup to the controls is narrower than any of the bearing-guided router bits I have, so I threw another piece of wood down on the body and used it as a guiding jig for a non-bearing-equipped bit. This worked pretty well, or so I thought:



That little beauty wasn't apparent until I removed the template. Not sure when/how it happened as the routing was smooth and steady (and I was taking off wee wisps of wood, unlike my first routing efforts earlier with body shaping), but at least it'll be underneath the pickguard and only I (and now you) will know my dirty little secret.

[SixShooter]

Originally Posted by Doc Rorick

and got out the router. The wiring cavity that runs from the neck pup to the controls is narrower than any of the bearing-guided router bits I have, so I threw another piece of wood down on the body and used it as a guiding jig for a non-bearing-equipped bit. This worked pretty well, or so I thought:



That little beauty wasn't apparent until I removed the template. Not sure when/how it happened as the routing was smooth and steady (and I was taking off wee wisps of wood, unlike my first routing efforts earlier with body shaping), but at least it'll be underneath the pickguard and only I (and now you) will know my dirty little secret.

Did you rout to this depth all at once? You should really make shallow passes and go successively deeper. And a bearing guided bit is really the way to go. Slowing down and cutting fewer corners will get you better results. I understand the idea of saving a few bucks here and there but if you really want to make a good go of this, you'll need to spend a few bucks on tools.

Good job on the string through holes!

[macaroonie]

Your first neck is entirely salvageable. Get some of the maple back from the dog and make a litle insert a couple of inches long complete with rounded end to match the route . Make it a finger tight press fit if you can and Titebond it in. Clamp and leave to set. Plane off any excess on the top , recut the slot and you are good to go. Remember that most of it will be removed anyway when you drill the access hole so it is not a crucial structural error.

Good luck

[Doc Rorick]

Originally Posted by SixShooter

Did you rout to this depth all at once? You should really make shallow passes and go successively deeper. And a bearing guided bit is really the way to go. Slowing down and cutting fewer corners will get you better results. I understand the idea of saving a few bucks here and there but if you really want to make a good go of this, you'll need to spend a few bucks on tools.

Good job on the string through holes!

Six -- I left myself very little wood to rout on that cavity; I forstner drilled the bulk of the area out then used a chisel to get rid of nearly all of the rest of the wood. The routing was done to depth in three passes, so I tried quite conscientiously to avoid asking too much of the bit... I'm certainly more inclined to blame myself than an imperfection in the wood (after all, it is Ikea's finest pine countertop) but just can't figure out how the heck I managed that.

I completely agree that a bearing guided bit is the way to go for jobs like this. One thing that has been driven home for me quite well already on this build is that the right tool for the job makes all the difference in the world (particularly for a stark amateur such as myself). In my makeshift workshop there will inevitably be a few shortcuts, but some things just can't be worked around. Point taken.

Originally Posted by macaroonie

Your first neck is entirely salvageable.

Excellent -- thank you for that! I'll get to work on salvaging the maple neck as soon as I wrap up this build. I'm relieved to hear that I can have another shot at it... I was feeling rather about having made a mess of it. Much appreciated.

[Doc Rorick]

So, then, with the string-thru holes drilled, it was time to cut the neck pocket.

Had a little bit of an adventure. Some unpleasant words were uttered, more lessons learned... and in the end everybody's ok. Check it out:

Set myself up with a piece of MDF for the neck pocket template, centered on the body and oriented with the outside string-thru holes.



Made the template directly from the neck itself, so felt quite confident that I'd end up with a nice snug fit. What I didn't anticipate was that the wee hex nut on the bearing collar had come loose, and during routing it rode up the template and started cutting into the template itself.



End result? a pocket you could fit your neck into sideways. Well, all right, it wasn't that bad, but it sure felt that way at the time. So, I cast around the TDPRi archives and read a bit about what to do with a loose and sloppy pocket while my shame and frustration subsided. In the end, I decided that this was an opportunity for (@*$%^&@!) growth, and got down to the business of fixing it. First, I routed an area larger than the neck pocket out of the body



then I cut another piece off of my workbench to fit the bigger pocket, sanded it down to fit nice and snug



and glued it in. Man, it felt satisfying to apply those clamps to the site of my error.



Gave it a day, then came back and hit it with the planer and sander



until the plug was flush with the rest of the body.

Then it was on to re-drilling out the majority of the neck pocket




to get it ready for a new router template. This time I cranked the set-screw on the bearing bracket down TIGHT and re-checked and re-re-checked it, then got after it with the router



This pic is actually not the finished product, as after removing the template I realized that I hadn't taken the plugged part of the neck all the way down to the proper depth. There was about a mil and a half of plug wood and glue sitting on top of the body surface, so I went back at it with the router and brought it back down to proper thickness. The neck seats nice and snug, and I guess even though it ended up taking me the whole weekend to do what should have been a couple of hours' worth of work I'm glad that I ended up with a tight neck pocket.

Now, where's that beer???

[Doc Rorick]

Made more progress this week, as work allowed:



Put my 24" bit to work on drilling the truss rod access holes via Motorcitytele's method. Worked great for the peghead,



but had a little bit of trouble with the heel end:



Yeah, that's not going to work. Everything looked good when I lined it up, but the pitch was juuuuuuuuuuust a bit outside. Must have gotten a little steep with my angle on the hand-drilling. So, doweled it and re-drilled it -- the dowel snapped right as I'd gotten it all the way in and the pic here shows the rough end of the thing before I filled in the rough bits and sanded it down smooth:



Skunk stripe installed,



and clamped nice and tight



Turned out all right -- there were a couple of spots where my thickness on the strip wasn't perfect, so I filled in the little gaps with some glue mixed with sapele dust I'd saved when sanding the peghead.

Then it was time to catch a plane



and the thing is starting to look like a neck... I've got to get the frets in and then shape it, but I couldn't resist putting it together with the body just to see what the mahogany and pine would look like together. S'aright!

[bubba01]

Looking awesome! Good job.

[Joe Sailor]

Hey Doc, I just bought the same drill bit set from Harbor freight, hoping I can drill somewhat straight through the pickup holes, control plate and jack hole, I was hoping that method worked but I found I can miss drill a hole through a 3/4 inch wood.

[eitanuch]

Originally Posted by Doc Rorick

Went back and re-read some of Olav's 2011 tele build for inspiration. It definitely inspired a bit of interest in lunch, so I started with one of these:



Small World in downtown Napa does a damn good falafel, but I wonder if I can get Olav to send me his homemade version recipe?

Right, what about this build... well, I pulled the trigger on a piece of sapele to replace the flame maple neck I botched. Figured I'd have the guys at North Bay Plywood rip and plane it down to size for me:



This is somewhat faster and a little more accurate than my jig saw



in two passes it's perfectly thicknessed -- crazy what the right tools for the job will do for you. I almost regretted having to get back to the ill-equipped carport that comprises the workshop at Doc's Drunken Lutherie... almost.



So I ended up with a 1" thick neck blank and a 1/4" thick piece that I'll save for the fingerboard of a future build (hope springs eternal). Next it's on to the business of not repeating the same mistake I made with the maple neck, nor of making any new mistakes. Oh, yeah, and actually making this blank into a neck. What, me worry?

A falafel lunch is a crucial step for a proper build.

This one looks really tasty.

Made me hungry and want to go out for some falafel into a pita :)

NICE BUILD !

[Doc Rorick]

Originally Posted by bubba01

Looking awesome! Good job.

Thanks Bubba -- Looks like I'm going to give re-filling and re-channeling the flame maple you sent me a try; I think I'll be able to rescue the whole thing and not just save it for a fingerboard. I'm going to redeem myself, I swears it!

Originally Posted by eitanuch

A falafel lunch is a crucial step for a proper build.

This one looks really tasty.

Made me hungry and want to go out for some falafel into a pita :)

NICE BUILD !

Thanks for the good words!

I absolutely agree -- a falafel lunch is a crucial step for a proper build. I think that's where I've been going wrong lately. Not enough falafel lunches = too many mistakes.

Originally Posted by Joe Sailor

Hey Doc, I just bought the same drill bit set from Harbor freight, hoping I can drill somewhat straight through the pickup holes, control plate and jack hole, I was hoping that method worked but I found I can miss drill a hole through a 3/4 inch wood.

Ha! Good to know I'm not the only one out there who seems to make "minor errors" in my builds... it can be pretty humbling to look through some of the other builds here and see the beautiful guitars these guys are making.

The 24" bits will work a charm for drilling your wire access holes, just make sure that you don't drill them with too steep an angle or you might end up with your wiring having access to the back side of your guitar instead of the control cavity:



As you can see, I discovered this fact myself. Deciding that I didn't want to wire the bridge pup to knobs on the back of the guitar, I went ahead and doweled the mis-drill and sanded it down



and re-drilled properly. So when you go to drill the wiring access holes, don't do what I did, but if you do, then do what I did after that. Or something.

[Doc Rorick]

More progress made last Sunday; didn't manage to get the pics up before I left for a week's worth of work travel so had to wait until I got home. Here's last week's latest:



Put the first coat of Danish oil on the body. It's "neutral", but definitely gave the pine a bit of golden tint. It's cool, and I think it'll look good with the contrasting sapele neck, but what can one use to finish pale woods without adding any color/tone?

So, got the first coat on, and stuck it inside in the closet in my office (as "dust-free" environment as I could find). While it was drying, I set about the neck.



First, marked the fret slot lines for cutting, then



sawed them with my newly-arrived Stew-Mac fret saw with depth stop. Worked like a charm, though I think I need to come up with a better guide solution than using my square. It wasn't the most stable of guides, and I may have inadvertently provided myself with some built-in blue notes... yikes. We'll see. Once the slots were cut, time to get sanding



I was expecting a REAAAALLLY long go at getting the radius sanded down on the fretboard, but it didn't seem to take that long... kinda fun to keep switching directions and sanding hands to get a nice even 12" radius.

Following a quick re-saw to bring the slots back down to the proper depth, it was...

STOP! HAMMER TIME!



This was one of the most enjoyable parts of the build so far. I don't know why it stood out so much; maybe something about seeing the metal in the wood after it had been just a guitar neck "form" for so long brought it home that it's getting close to being finished. Whatever the reason, I dug it!



All hammered in,



then clipped and filed on the edges. I had to file the edges down so I wouldn't catch an eyelid on the rough bits.

Next, I checked Olav's build thread for how to mark off the neck for rasping (divide the back into quarters and the sides into halves; remove all material between side half and back outside quarter). Then it was off to the rodeo



where I had a hell of a time trying to rig a way for me to clamp the neck down and still get at all the angles I need to in order to shape the neck properly. Ended up riding the workmate like a swayback mule that didn't want me there at all. As a result, I was having a hard time



getting the material off in an even fashion, as you can see by the wee wobble halfway down the neck in this shot. I had to leave it at this point and go pack my suitcase, and have spent the past week trying to think up with a way to clamp the neck that gives me unimpeded access for rasping using the limited resources at Doc's Drunken Lutherie. Still waiting for the light bulb to come on, but when I get done mowing the lawn today it's time for another go.

[Doc Rorick]

So, after checking out a vid Olav linked to with instructions for making a crazy awesome neck-shaping jig, I knew that I didn't have the patience to build one before I finish this guitar, but it did give me a clear picture of what was missing in my current shaping set-up: relief from the work surface. So, I stuck a 2x4 underneath the neck and clamped it down; it almost gave me all of the access I needed to keep shapin' on without the rodeo fun I was having riding my workmate bench. But first, I figured I'd get my last coat of Danish oil onto the body:



I drilled some holes into the pine 2x4 that I'd practiced my routing and TRC cutting on (yeah, Olav, that's the one that I mistakenly cut out as a righty, so it's a reverse headstock tele preview) and used it as a handle, clamped it into place and applied the Danish oil, then hit it with 320 grit sandpaper per my guitar construction book's directions. As soon as the finish started to dry, though, I could see that my sanding had F*ed the finish up, so I shook my tiny fist at the sky and worked on the neck while I waited for the Danish oil to dry so I could correct it.

With the neck propped up on a 2x4 my access to most of the neck was much easier (apologies for the blurry image; I didn't see that it was a bad photo until I'd already uploaded it but it's fine for showing the 2x4 riser)



and I couldn't help but wonder why I didn't think of this earlier. Got it down to a thickness that felt good (about .850 in. at fret 1, and .9something at the transition to the heel) with a gang o rasps



and then set about the transition areas with finer files



and then sandpaper, starting with 80 grit and moving on to 150 and finally 220



man, that thing actually feels like a guitar neck now! I'm pretty happy with the way it fits in my hand. It should allow me to crank out some face-melting solos! Or at least play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Then, even though the clouds were rolling in and I was losing light at Doc's Drunken Lutherie, I thought I'd better whack in some side dots. Proper thanks are due Olav again for pointing me toward jkingma's side-dot guide, which I studied at length and then decided that if I had a piece of metal on hand to fashion one out of I would be happy as a clam but since I didn't (and believe me, I combed every junk drawer in the house looking for something that would work) I thought what the hell, your shakes aren't that bad today Doc, why not freehand 'em? So I did my best marking them off, drilled in a lil bit,



and glued in some 1/8" dowel bits (that clamp on the peghead is for the nut, which I just glued in). The dowels are white wood (Fir? Birch? Banana?), and should contrast nicely with the sapele.



Tomorrow I'll clip off the extra and sand 'em down, then get that coat of grain filler on.

By this time, I figured the Danish oil had dried enough to buff out the sanding F*ups with some 0000 steel wool and give it another light coat. Here's the final coat in the last sun of the day



it's got quite a nice satiny sheen to it and some of the figuring in the pine is coming out nicely. I'm chiding myself a little bit for not going a little further with my pre-finish sanding now that I can see some of the nice grain in the wood coming out, but my original idea for this build was for the body to look like something of a rat-job. In any case, it's nicer than I'd expected/intended, and that's all right with me!

[Doc Rorick]

Creeping closer toward completion... the finishing is TOUGH! Not only tough in terms of getting it done right, but tough to wait for each application to dry. I want to fire this thing up, but gotta be patient. The body just got it's final application (I hope!) of Danish oil this afternoon; if it dries well and looks good I'll wax it and call it gin, then get the electronics into it.

The neck is ongoing. After drilling and gluing in some poplar dowels for side dot markers I sanded them down



I like the look, but despite the contrast they don't really pop -- we'll call them stealth markers.

I masked the fretboard



and mixed up a little grain filler and water, and worked it into the neck. I tried to get it in as best I could with a coarse cloth and did a fairly good job, I *think*



It'll dry overnight, and then it's time to start with the wipe-on varnish. MAN I can't wait to get this thing put together! I've been really enjoying watching the videos of the completed 2012 Challenge builds and it's fired me up but good to get this baby to the finish line. The number of mind-blowing guitars built by forum members here is awesome! I'm already looking forward to joining the fun next year, but in the meantime I'm almost there with this chunk o' pine and mahogany. Almost there.

[Nick JD]

Looks great! I like the pale stripe.

[ModerneGuy]

I missed this in the challenge - I thought I'd check in on everyone's. Anyway that's a superb looking neck, and great work on some of those fixes. Cheers.

[Olav]

Y'r makin' me all weak in the knees Doc;



Ya handsome devil!

Can't wait to hear this thing. Proud of you for sticking with it even with the setbacks you had. You da mayng, buddy!