Walnut 335 Build

[Moldy Oldy]

… I just have to say that blond 2-pickup jazz box is beautiful!

I totally agree about that guitar… simply beautiful. But dang it, it looks like the pickup rings are ebony. I was really hoping to use store-bought plastic rings, but now I’m second guessing. I think I’ll go ahead with the rings I have, knowing that I might need to make ebony replacements at some point in the future.

 

[Freeman Keller]

I totally agree about that guitar… simply beautiful. But dang it, it looks like the pickup rings are ebony. I was really hoping to use store-bought plastic rings, but now I’m second guessing. I think I’ll go ahead with the rings I have, knowing that I might need to make ebony replacements at some point in the future.

Those rings are rosewood, the ones on the two red guitars are ebony. I like to use the same woods all the way thru a guitar for things like headplate, fretboard, binding, rings, maybe knobs and pick guard. LMII used to sell those rings in a variety of woods, I always assume that someone had made the model for their cnc and was amortizing the work by selling the rings

 

[Nicko_Lps]

Does it make sense to laminate it with something else, perhaps gluing it up cross grain like plywood?

Ive had a flamed maple/wenge 5 ply pickguard cracking on me.. Sadly that will only happen where your screws sink in the pickguard and as you tighten, they crack it.

Even 1 ply ebony its really strong and versatile. I have right next to be a headstock veneer, about 4mm thickness or less and its very rigid.

Next time im making a wooden pickguard, im going to route below each screw hole for a round washer to be glued with epoxy. That i assume will allow tightening the screws, not splitting the wood and 0 visibility.

Great guitar building skills, lovely walnut!

 

[Jupiter]

If you make yer own ebony PU rings you can totally cover that router booboo, just sayin

Then it never happened

 

[peteycaster]

Not wishing to derail but I was about to start another thread re. finishing ebony. I have an ebony veneer (with plastic binding) on the headstock of my latest build and was wondering how to finish it. I am using satin wipe on poly for the the body and neck.

Apologies for the hijack but it could be relevant to the build? loving this thread and full of admiration for Moldy.

 

[peteycaster]

Here’s my patch after the glue set. I’m not sure why the glue line is so dark. Hopefully it will improve after I lay down some z-poxy.

Moldy, I had a similar problem with my latest build (glue line showing). I filled the slip up with glue and sawdust then a bit wood filler over the top. I managed to blend it in slightly but the Zpoxy actually accentuated it a bit after application. Hopefully it will come out ok after the clear coat.

 

[Moldy Oldy]

… but I was about to start another thread re. finishing ebony.

I’d definitely be interested in such a thread, never having finished ebony before. I’ll be spraying the guitar with nitro and I was planning to just do the same for the pick guard.

 

[Freeman Keller]

Not wishing to derail but I was about to start another thread re. finishing ebony. I have an ebony veneer (with plastic binding) on the headstock of my latest build and was wondering how to finish it. I am using satin wipe on poly for the the body and neck.

Apologies for the hijack but it could be relevant to the build? loving this thread and full of admiration for Moldy.

I’d definitely be interested in such a thread, never having finished ebony before. I’ll be spraying the guitar with nitro and I was planning to just do the same for the pick guard.

I have used ebony for fretboards (which are not finished) and the pickguards as shown. I can only give my experience. Ebony is not a porous wood so I have not pore filled it. Some ebony (the "Bob Taylor" stuff) has lovely lighter grey or tan streaks running thru it, I have heard of people staining that with India Ink to get it perfectly black, frankly I think its beautiful and so I leave it alone.

I just simply set the little pieces (pickguard, truss rod cover, pickup rings) on a piece of wood and spray them right along with the rest of the guitar. Headstock gets sprayed when I do the top. Probably ten or twelve coats, scuff sanded as usual, then buffed.

I want a tiny bit of the grain to show thru, I'm not trying to make this look like plastic./

Bottom line, its no different from any other hard wood.

 

[Mojotron]

If you make yer own ebony PU rings you can totally cover that router booboo, just sayin

Then it never happened

I can't count the number of times I've done something similar, and after a year or two I don't even think about what I covered up...

I do remember on this one 11 years ago, for instance, I drilled TOM holes and realized that the neck angle was all wrong for that and I needed to make a Tele-style bridge that was super wide to cover them up:

I liked the wide bridge look so much, I have always made them a bit wider like this one since then... Sometimes our fixes are happy accidents

The guitar looks fantastic though - that grain is amazing.

 

[peteycaster]

I have used ebony for fretboards (which are not finished) and the pickguards as shown. I can only give my experience. Ebony is not a porous wood so I have not pore filled it. Some ebony (the "Bob Taylor" stuff) has lovely lighter grey or tan streaks running thru it, I have heard of people staining that with India Ink to get it perfectly black, frankly I think its beautiful and so I leave it alone.

I just simply set the little pieces (pickguard, truss rod cover, pickup rings) on a piece of wood and spray them right along with the rest of the guitar. Headstock gets sprayed when I do the top. Probably ten or twelve coats, scuff sanded as usual, then buffed.

I want a tiny bit of the grain to show thru, I'm not trying to make this look like plastic./

Bottom line, its no different from any other hard wood.

Thanks yet again Freeman for your advice. Other suggestions have been to wipe with acetone first (same as rosewood) but as I mentioned I have used plastic binding so would be a bit wary. I'll just make sure it's dust free and try the wipe on poly.

 

[Moldy Oldy]

Other suggestions have been to wipe with acetone first (same as rosewood) but as I mentioned I have used plastic binding so would be a bit wary.

Wipe with naphtha. It does fine de-greasing and won’t melt plastic binding.

 

[pypa]

Moldy how are you planning to finish this?

 

[peteycaster]

Wipe with naphtha. It does fine de-greasing and won’t melt plastic binding.

Thanks Moldy. Exactly what I did. First clear coat on and due for second.

 

[Moldy Oldy]

Moldy how are you planning to finish this?

1. Wipe on a couple seal coats of shellac (done).
2. Grain fill the walnut with Z-poxy
3. Maybe a couple coats of vinyl sealer. We’ll see.
4. 9 or 10 coats of nitro.
5. Let it dry forever.
6. Level and polish.

 

[Moldy Oldy]

I haven’t done much since the last update. Yesterday I applied the first coat of Z-poxy thinned about 30% with 200 proof ethyl alcohol. It needs a quick sanding down before I can apply the second coat. Maybe tomorrow. It usually takes me around 5 coats and a ton of sanding before I’m completely happy.

I needed to wait most of the day until the epoxy cured before working on the pickguard because I didn’t want to stir up a bunch of black dust while it was still wet. After the epoxy had set, I resawed my piece of ebony. (My shop is a complete disaster area right now.)

Then shot the mating edges. They were already close so I only needed to use a long sanding block.

Then glued them with original Titebond before calling it a night.

After I got home from work tonight I removed the clamps and ran it through the drum sander. I took it down to about 1/8”.

After a little hand sanding with the orbital sander (I guess that’s not really hand sanding) to 220 grit, this is what I have. I won’t be dying it because definitely want to keep the brown streaks. Anyway, now I need to make a pickguard template.

 

[Jupiter]

I WANTED to like Z-poxy but every time I have used it I had horrible fish-eyes...

 

[Bob J]

5 coats of zpoxy sounds like a lot, but I just realized that I’m on my 4th…

 

[Moldy Oldy]

Yeah, I try to do fewer but it always seems like there are a handful of pinholes that just keep hanging on. We’ll see how I do this time.

 

[Moldy Oldy]

Started shaping the pickguard yesterday. I glued my drawing to a piece of 1/4 MDF with spray on-glue.

Cut it to rough shape on the bandsaw.

Sanded and filed on the pickup cutouts until they fit properly.

After sanding the shape to the line, the 1/4” MDF becomes my master. So next is to make a working template from 3/4”.

Traced it onto the ebony and cut it out on the bandsaw. It’s really surprising how well the pencil marks show up.

I’m going to bind the pickguard with the same 5-piece binding as the body, so the pickguard will to too big after I add about 3/16” worth of binding. To compensate for this I ran my StewMac binding bit around the edge, just deep enough to remove the ebony without removing any of the template. I was afraid of splitting out the ebony so I did it in 3 stages, using my 0.060” bearing first, then 0.120”, and finished up with the 0.0150” bearing. Also, I waited to cut out for the pickups until after that was done in order to leave a little more meat while I was using the bearing bit.

Not shown is bending the binding. After they were bent, I wiped on a coat of shellac to seal them and let them dry. Now I can glue the binding to the ebony. I think I can get a better fit if I do it in small stages. At the tightest part of the curve I couldn’t hold it with tape and also be able to see that I had it nice and tight, so I used string to hold it instead.

That’s where I quit today, since it’s 92 degrees in the shop. If it cools down later I might have a chance to finish gluing it.

 

[maxvintage]

Great thread, great work. I’ve had the same router “ incident” and done the same kind of repair. Dislike routers!