GoatHerd

Man, what an Odissey! I would have suggested to make the transfer on a separate piece of wood, and then inlay it in... But you fought on to the end, and managed to preserve the body, despite all the attempts. I would not have had yr pacience. Incidently, when I did the GGBO2022, one of the competitors, a tattoo artist called Vicent Blard did some really cool artwork, painted directly on the body, and then locked in with varnish:

On 1/24/2023 at 4:32 AM, Rodman said:

Well.... ..... .... of course i am actually building my 3rd one , and from the time i began my 2nd one i knew for the rest of my life i will always be building one, and i absolutely do not care how long it takes. The past 2 guitars took about a year each, that is great, if it goes faster at the next builds - is that better or worse? Guitar shop..... no - not that i wouldn´t sell them, but to be honest what would the price be? It´s 200hours+ on a build, if i use powertools on a lot of the steps and if i can vastly avoid to do things twice (that is actually the time consuming thing) i can cut it to 100 - 130 maybe..... so adding the material which will be 500€ i think i would not be comfortable to let go under 4000€ - those are not for sale, no - i am giving them away... I have 2 kids, and i am the godfather of 3 kids - so what i am going to do is build a very special custom one for each of them, as any good godfather/daddy does i am monthly saving a lil money for them, and i am going to build an extra cavity on the back next to the electrics (and potentially battery) as a secret compartment, put that money there and gift them the guitar when they leave school for good or turn 18... and maybe one year later i would call to ask if they ever opened that cover ;)....

so it´s another 5 guitars at least i will be needing over the next years, guitar 2 has already found it´s owner, 3 is dedicated, and i am planning to build a 7-string for myself one day and a bass, and if i find an empty slot i am tempted to ask other builders, esp @ GoatHerd   if he (they) would be interrested in an exchange build, which could be soo cool to follow the other one go... (which i hereby did without planning to do that now)

I love my life.
Grab some timber, build a guitar!

O collab would be amazing. Maybe something we can raffle off to the Custom Forge community & raise funds. Having said that there may be some complicated logistics, as I live in Rio de Janeiro. 

Looks like a standard tune-o-matic set up. Should be very easy to find. Try eBay or Ali Express.

I absolutely love your carved top in build #2. I took part in the GGBO2022 last year, and that top/shape is easily as good as anything on there. The string stops not being in a straight line is also a really great idea.

And then I did this micro-tele, complete with the correct electronics. I used scraps of wood from previous builds, and enhanced some of the joins with wood veneer.

The Micro-Les Paul has 2 mini-humbuckers with coil-split. It has a cracking sound, and fits in a normal travel bag.

I recently did a micro-telecaster and a micro-les paul. Basically a full-sized headless neck, with the smallest possible body, to make a travel guitar.

Fantastic body shape. Love the neck join & carving of the top. The body shape is amazing. The next step is for you to try your hand at spray-on paints. I've had some amazing results, recently, especially with candy-style paint jobs.

Here are a few of my recent projects:

12-stringer electro-acoustic build:

I think it's worth making a backup of the game. Also always playing off-line. Eventually anyone who plays from Steam might wind up having to run a cracked version of Rocksmith 2014 (if there's one for PC). Not my first choice, but Ubisoft will have bought it on themselves. They also announced that they were going to start to pull DLCs with expired licenses. Has anyone had a DLC dissappear from their game? I know the Allman Brothers "Jessica" is no longer available for purchase...

Finally dropped in to see the finished product. Amazing! Body shape stands out, as does the lovely wood and the gold hardware. Well done!

Looking great!!!

I have now finished and published the last missing track for Quadrophenia. These are the tracks I have done and made available since September/2021:

Quadrophenia

Cut My Hair

I'm One

The Dirty Jobs

Is It In My Head?

I've Had Enough (with JamesPrestonUK's kind help)

Drowned

Bell Boy

Dr. Jimmy

The Rock.

A true labor of love. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Very nice job with fret dressing. Those ends are really smooth and round. The drilling of the headstock is a real pain. Tear-out is really difficult to evoid, no matter how much care you take. Everything is looking really nice!

To remove superglued frets, you just need to use superglue remover. It will dissolve cyanoacrylate enough for you to pull out the frets w/out too much damage to the fretboard. But if you're using stainless frets you probably will never have to do it, as they're virtually indistructable.

Very nice. It all worked out in the end. I admire your patience to back track and do it right. I've always used super glue to stabilize the frets, and have always been tempted by wood glue. Did you give it enough time to cure? Titebond gets really hard when dry. I've heard of people using epoxi resin too...  The important thing is that that fretboard is looking really great. Love the grain on the wood. Well done!!!

I'm slowly gearing up to embark on my 8 stringer bass... After seeing your amazing body shape, I might have to be brave and go for a custom free-form body as well.

The inlays look really good. The hand-drawn aspect works really well. 100% custom. The more custom-builders move away from the "factory-built" aesthetic, the better.

Good one! I've never done a proper set neck, but I'll have to go there some time... Should give you great sustain. 

I agree with your point on the body, though as I wanted to do the exact shape for a Les Paul, I ended up taking this route. After I saw Ben Crowe freehanding  a Les Paul body top, which got me thinking too... 

Absolutely love your body shape - and I'm quite traditional, body shape-wise. Looks really, really good. The neck joint looks very interesting. Presumably you're going with threaded inserts... If so, check your screw length before final assembly. Too long screws will leave a gap between neck & head.

Love your bold inlays. Looks custom and fun, and with a little care should look nice too. One tip, if you want nice straight lines and edges for your inlays, it's to pre-cut the shape first with a sharp blade. Don't need to go deep... And then you use the dremel and mini-router. But what you've done looks very neat, so good job!

Looking really good! Can't wait to see the next steps!

So, as promised, here's my routing table and sled. A flat surface, with 2 sides that are exactly flat & the same height. The sled itself is just a couple of aluminium rails, that are rigid enough to do the job. Currently I just tape the little hand router I use into the sled, and that's it! Just as an example, I used it to do the archtop on the Les Paul. It's really simple, but works really well. I use it to adjust the thickness of pieces of wood, like fretboards as well. It's quite tedious work, and requires many passes, but it can be very precise, specially if used with care.

For the binding channel, I use an attachment on my router, similar to these photos. It looks/feels kind of wonky, but works very well. Then I can use a normal router bit. Of course I set it up and practice on some wood scraps first. Then I pray forgiveness for my sins and go for it! 

For the archtop on the Les Paul it was kind of different, because the arch didn't provide a flat surface for the router to stand on. I ended up making myself a routing table (very, very simple), that I used for that, but also for precisely thicknessing fretboards and such. If you want to send you some pics, let me now!

For the neck, I'll let you into a secret. I use a stripper disc attachment on a grinder. I've made templates out of cardboard out of the profiles of my son's favourite guitars. I slim the neck down at the 1st, 7th and 12th fret, still leaving a bit of meat on and then I use the grinder with the stripper to rough shape it. The disc allows for fast work, but isn't overly aggressive, to the point that you could go too fast. After that I use some very heavy grit metal sandpaper (50 or 60) glued to a nice, large, flat piece of wood, to bring the thickness down. Then I do what you did. I use a pencil to color over the whole and eliminate any dips. And the i fine sand it. I'm never scared of the neck being to thin because I use Marfim for light colored necks and Louro-preto for dark ones. They are very dense woods, and can easily hold the string tension. Marfim is 945 kg/m³ and Louro Preto is 845 kg/m³ as opposed to hard maple, that is 705 kg/m³, or mahogony that is 590 kg/m³...

Again, thanks for the kind words.

I love that through composite neck. Did you cut those pieces yourself. That´s a part i am rather scared of - you need incredible straight cutlines there - what saw did you use?

>So, I ordered the pieces from a good sawmill, but not any different from the pieces you started with.

I ordered two blocks of Marfim that were 100x7x3.2cm, 1 piece that was 100x7x0.9 and 2 pieces of Roxinho that were also 100x7x0.9. In hindsight I should have gone a little bigger, just because I had zero wiggle-room for mistakes. The black stripes are Roxinho as well, but they have a hydro-treatment (TW), which makes them go black. Those were just bass fingerboards.

The trick is that I've only got a small jigsaw. So rough cutting the glued part on a band-saw wasn't an option. I ended up using a print of the full head/neck/body profile, which I drew precisely on the computer and routed out on one of the thinner pieces of the neck/body. That became my template. I then glued the parts on and then routed them. It was quite finicky, also because I pre-cut the cavities for the wires. I suppose I could have drilled them after, but I could see myself getting that wrong, specially with how hard the Marfim is.

And your bindings... always a breathtaker. I think i myself would have gone with the blue Sig section only on the head and mybe the red square - but you know i really like to have a lot of natural wood to be shown, your inlaywork - insane!!!!!

> The binding is actually easier than it looks. I would suggest you give it a try. The best stuff to use is cellulose binding, because you can glue it using acetone. The scary bit is you have to have your wood mostly finished, and then cut the channel (and try not to have a heart attack), and lay in the binding. Tape it down with that stronger, blue masking-tape, and squirt acetone over it with a seringe. After 1h, it'll be really well glued. Insane. The acetone is quite agressive, so you need to do this before any kind of finish. Then you level it all with a scraper (really fun), sand and finish. Once the finish is done, the binding will not look so nice, but you just lightly scrape just the binding and it's done!

The head design is my son's idea. The guitar is his (I only play the Bass), and I was really happy that he got involved like that. He did some planing, sanding and banged in some frets, but I'm quite scared of him loosing a finger. Maybe when he's older I'll let him do more...

Here's another closeup of the head inlay, with the turquoise and red Howlite, and the copper inlay: