Official Luthiers Forum!

So this evening I decided to go down to the shop and assemble the neck to the body on this OM that I've been working on since November of 2011. I put a finish on it a couple of years ago, and stripped it off. Then last year, I thought it was finally going to be done around May, but the finish again was not to my liking. Then a couple of months ago I got my cans of Royal Lac and started spraying, and last week I was finally able to buff out the finish. If you have been following the thread on spraying Royal Lac started by Tim McKnight, then you know I had some pretty decent success with the project, sans a piece of cat hair and a speck of dust in the finish on the back...

Well, as I said I decided this evening to assemble the neck and check the neck set to see how much work it needed, and then pull the frisket film off the top at the bridge location and prep for gluing on the bridge.

Would you believe it? The neck required absolutely no work to get it on exactly as perfectly as I had it before. Which is to say it's not 100% perfect, but as close as I have come to date. For me, the process of getting the neck set at the neck body joint has always been the biggest challenge. In this case, It would seem that in spite of refinishing, I managed to keep the integrity of the joint.
Woo-HOO!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Yup, agreed, that is the most vexing moment, and when it is all good, that is a Woo-Hoo! moment alright!

Nice one!!

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Even more luck than I thought, considering I stripped off finish, sanded every surface of the body, pore filled, and never checked the neck angle after all that before spraying the finish. It had every opportunity to go bad on me, and yet somehow didn't. Maybe it should have been a "Phew!" instead of a "Woo-hoo!".

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

That can be infuriating. I have a Martin in repair forum that the neck fit looks factory and the center line is off at bridge .090. I am soooo not looking forward to changing it

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Wud, that sounds like a pain to deal with, but you can handle it. I've had it happen before, in fact it happened on my Dad's guitar that I built for him. I just replaced the top on it after I did a lousy job of pulling the bridge off. It was my second guitar, and it had a bad neck angle and was terribly over-braced, so I decided that I would just deal with all of the issues and make it nice for him. Not that he plays, mind you. In fact, today I finally got the bindings on it, and hopefully I will be pore filling in the next few days and can start to spray finish in the next week or two. Mine was not the first guitar that had more than one finish on it. I once did a quilted maple SJ for a friend, and it got four finishes before I got it right...

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Sounds familiar. I've got one on the wall with finish #3 on it and I'm still not happy but decided to move on. I've also got a size 0 in the spray booth right now with top #3 and getting finish #4. If it ain't right I can't stand to let it go.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Nice to know I'm not the only OCD person here...

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've always noticed that a truly perfect neck joint is one of those things that very few amateurs get right and even a fair amount of respected pro luthiers struggle with as well. For whatever reason, neck fit has always been very easy for me and I credit that with the process I stumbled upon rather than technique -- because there were loads of things I struggled with early on as a builder.

Here's my thought on neck fitting:

1) The upper bout "ramp" must be perfect. The upper bout area beneath the fretboard must be perfectly flat and it must create the perfect neck angle -- there are several ways to achieve this but I use a sanding board with a properly sized shim at the bridge location and sand the upper bout until it is level.

2) Here's the big one -- the sides must be perfectly flat/level across the width of the sides. This must be maintained during the finish process. A hard sanding block is absolutely necessary to achieve this and it needs to be within 0.001".

3) Undercut the cheeks of the neck heel so that is easier to sand. I use a combination of 3m stickit paper and regular sandpaper backed with tape (to avoid scratching the finish). Go slow and methodically and achieving an absolutely flawless neck joint is very doable with relatively little skill. Trust me -- if I can do it, then anybody can.

Wud,

Centerline by .090 is tonally irrelevant. Just sayin'...

Nice lookin' joint there, Mr. Kitty.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."