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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:09 pm
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zzdoc wrote:
all_thumbs09 wrote:
If he's interested I'd be willing to send him my carved top mahogany body to finish.


This is beginning to sound like the closing scene in the film 'Casablanca'. :wink:


:lol:

Just so he is informed as to what he may be getting into. This is how it looks at present:

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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:00 am
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chriske wrote:
Got an update for us tonight Ceri?

Hi guys: sorry for slow progress. Overtaken by events a little just at present and so not able to point much time at this thing. But I'll put something more up later today...

Meanwhile, matters arising:

Kong wrote:
I have a strat body that was drowned in a flood. I'm thinking of shooting it with my .357 and sending it to Mr. Ceri and see what he can do with that.

Haha - let's do it! :D

BTW Kong, have you seen this? It's the section from about 4:30 you're interested in...:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdChXIO0 ... L&index=20

orvilleowner wrote:
rkreisher wrote:
Wait for Ceri's next project. I learn something new with each installment. RK

Remember the wood he sawed up from his own old trees? The photos of all of that work made MY arms ache! I wonder what he's got in store for that wood. I suppose he's letting it dry out. I seem to remember him saying something about trying to make his own neck(s).

Hey Orville: I have plans to revive that thread and build a guitar (or two) from the ground up, body and neck, with wood felled and seasoned by me. In fact, I was expecting that to be the next project thread (which answers another question, above) and I have an unusual finish in mind for the job.

However, BigJay seems hungry to see a guitar built from iroko harvested from a boat a friend of mine broke up, and he's so insistent on it I think that one might find itself bumped to the top of the list. I have some little details planned for that, too (anyone remember a guy asking about making your own knobs...?). Jay wants to call it "the Hurricane Strat": a suggestive name...

all_thumbs09 wrote:
If he's interested I'd be willing to send him my carved top mahogany body to finish.

Hi all_thumbs09: again - let's do it! :D

Though you may want to hold fire till you've seen some finishing taking place on this thread. Gotta know if the fella can deliver the goods, after all...

More later, peeps - C


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:53 am
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Kong wrote:
I have a strat body that was drowned in a flood. I'm thinking of shooting it with my .357 and sending it to Mr. Ceri and see what he can do with that.

Haha - let's do it! :D

BTW Kong, have you seen this? It's the section from about 4:30 you're interested in...:

[/quote]

Ceri,

Shoot me an email, I really do have that body, and I'm willing to donate it if your interested. If you email me I can send you pics, it was routed for a Floyd Rose type trem and it is pretty messed up. I'm just not sure about shipping costs to cross the pond. If it is too expensive, I'll shoot the guitar anyway and post a video :lol:

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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:56 am
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Ceri wrote:
Hey Orville: I have plans to revive that thread and build a guitar (or two) from the ground up, body and neck, with wood felled and seasoned by me. In fact, I was expecting that to be the next project thread (which answers another question, above) and I have an unusual finish in mind for the job.


Thanks for the updating. How long does "seasoning" take?

- signed - Just Curious

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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 2:02 pm
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JasonSD wrote:
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I hate how the bottom of the switch on the newer 5 way switches are incomplete. So you can see a gap in either side if the switch is in the 1st and 5th postition. I like the switches they used like on the Strat plus, that was round all the way at the base, so it didn't have that gap, was stiffer too, without using a spring. Felt better built in general.
If anyone knows where to buy a 5 way switch like this let me know, I would like to put them on all my strats.
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Hey Jason,

I think I found the 5-way similar to your description at Callaham Vintage Guitars here: http://www.callahamguitars.com/partsstr.htm toward the bottom of the page.


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 4:12 pm
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Thanks Ceri and Strataholic for the tips, but those still aren't quite right.

The switch in the pic had some numbers on it, but no name, so I typed those in google and it came up with a company called electroswitch. And it has a list of websites that sell their products, but haven't found the switch on any of them. So I might write them sometime.

Stratoholic - Do you have any newer strats? and do you know what I mean by the difference in looks and feel of the switches compared to the strat plus, or probably any late 80's early 90's strats. I guess I'm the only one bothered by it lol.


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 5:36 pm
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Orville wrote:
Thanks for the updating. How long does "seasoning" take? - signed - Just Curious

Hi Just Curious: the answer is... it all depends. Temperature, humidity, seasonal change, etc. Far as air drying is concerned I think people reckon the slower the better. I've been following a book on "home seasoning of timber" and by the time I get to it my earliest batch of ash will have had about four to five years drying, gradually being moved to warmer and dryer spots over that time.

So hopefully that's good enough (measurements say it probably is)...

Kong wrote:
Shoot me an email...

Kong, I'll email you tomorrow. Though what with shipping and all I suspect that if you have a hankering to shoot that guitar and film yourself at it you should probably give in to that temptation.

...Or have a go at some of this stuff yourself, why not? After all, Dave Gilmour's Strat was routed for a Floyd for a while and then filled in again - and look how everyone is drooling for copies of that Black Strat now! Way to go! :D

Jay wrote:
Ceri, if you recall, our guitar joint venture is called "Driftwood Guitars" and the first model is the "Hurricane".

Indeed - I remember it very clearly!

I have a fancy to tempt you with a prototype... :D

More in a few minutes...

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 6:53 pm
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OK - apologies for delay in getting an episode to you. A bit busy at this end for a few days and I'm afraid today's offering is quite small too. But don't worry - we're getting nearer the end!

At this stage we need to tackle the knotty subject of where to stick our bridge. Seems obvious, but...

As previously shown I plan to use a Wilkinson VS100 bridge, because it is one I've worked with several times and like. Here is the diagram that comes with that bridge:
Image

What matters about that drawing is that there are a couple of vital measurements missing from it - and that seems to go for the instructions that come with most other bridges I've seen too. All very confusing, so I thought I'd go through it step by step, for anyone as might find it useful.

What we need to know is exactly how far from the guitar's nut to place the pivot holes for the bridge. In other words, just where along the scale length of the instrument the bridge sits. Since the maker doesn't want to tell us we have to work it out for ourselves. Here's how:
Image

Drill a couple of holes in a scrap piece of wood to take the pivot bushings, as in the pic above. Another detail the diagram omits is the size of those holes. Or at least, it seems to represent the bushings as 10 mm across, so you'd have thought that was the size of hole to drill. However, I happened to see Trevor Wilkinson himself answer a question in Guitarist magazine's Q&A section and he recommended a 9.5 mm / 0.374" hole - which is what I'd found out for myself by trial and error a few years earlier. Put it on the diagram please, Trev!

However, on my dry run here I have indeed drilled 10 mm holes, so I can get the bushings out again easily when I'm done. Now you can see how I've stacked some bits and pieces up so that I can place the bridge correctly in relation to it's pivot poles. This allows me to make an accurate measurement from the top e string's breaking point on its saddle to the center of the pivot post:
Image

You'll also see that I've measured out the distance between the posts as 56 mm. It should in fact be 56.8 - I was attempting to be too smart and do it from memory without looking at the diagram. Which shows another very good reason for doing a dry run - Ceri's memory ain't as good as he thinks!

(Anyhow, having worked with this bridge before I find it is better to place the posts 57.5 mm apart - it gives a more pleasing spacing. A little tip from the coal face...)

So, setting the saddles almost but not quite all the way forwards (to leave ourselves a little wiggle room) I make the crucial measurement 7.25 mm / 0.285". If we subtract that from the scale length of 648 mm / 25.5" it gives us the distance from the nut we have to drill our bushing holes - 640.75 mm / 25.21". The vital number.

I apologise for not taking enough photos of the next bit. Essentially what I have done is to bolt a Fender neck into the neck pocket (it fits perfectly, by the way!) so that I can then measure that distance from the front edge of the nut:
Image

Like that (though in fact I used the millimetres side of the ruler for the actual measurement - easier to be precise). The right angle on that piece of steel transfers the measurement accurately onto the face of the guitar.

I largely failed to photograph the next bit - sorry. What I did next was to lay my ruler snugly along either side of the neck so that it reached down to the bridge cavity. I then pencilled lines off it which effectively showed where the neck would come if it extended all the way to the bridge. For those who want more on that method it is to be found in Martin Koch's book, Building Electric Guitars. The result looks like this:
Image

What doing that shows us is where to place the bridge from side to side so that the strings correctly address the neck from this end of their speaking length. We mustn't just measure off the center line on the guitar, because the neck may not fit the body absolutely perfectly, instead just veering a touch to one side or the other.

However, I am vomitously smug to point out in the picture above that in fact my neck pocket is as near perfectly centered as can be - the center line of the neck is about a fifth of a mil towards the bass side by the time the strings reach the bridge, as the pencil line against the glue join in the top wood in the previous pic shows. For those as have never tried it - that ain't bad going! (Modestly polishes fingernails on shirt front...)

The forward-most line in that pic is where the pivot post holes are to be drilled. The line behind that is the scale length, measured from the nut. And the line behind that shows where I have just decided to route the bridge cavity out a little more. I came to that conclusion after trying out the bridge in its future position:
Image

What I found was that it fitted nicely, but that if I wanted to do up bends of Jeff Beck proportions the block risked making contact with the front of its cavity. I'll show you the enlarged cavity in a minute.

Another thing I found and which you can see all too clearly in that pic is that I somehow have a VS50MkII bridge, not a VS100. How the heck did that happen? In fact, there are only two tiny differences between the two models, but still - rats! Perhaps this is the moment I take the opportunity to buy a snazzy VS401 instead. Fate intended it. Stay tuned...

Anyhow. Another little user tip about these pivot bushings and maybe many others out there. Here's what they look like with their posts in place:
Image

Notice on the left hand one that screwing the post all the way in makes its far end emerge from the bottom of the bushing. If we only drilled the hole in the body to allow for the bushing itself then one of the two following situations would occur:
Image

On the right hand one we can't screw the post all the way down - it is banging on the bottom of the hole. That could be amazingly annoying when we come to set up the guitar - but not as annoying as the left hand example. Here I have continued screwing in the post, with the result that it has dragged the bushing up out of the wood. Not good!

The solution is that we need to drill the 9.5 mm holes just deep enough for the bushings - but then drill another smaller hole in the bottom of that for the post to descend into. And if you peer into the finished holes I have drilled you can hopefully see that two-step shape I've created down the far end of 'em:
Image

Tidy, huh? But again, not mentioned on Gotoh's diagram for that Wilkinson bridge. I wonder how many badly installed bridges there are out there as a result? (All of this is stuff I discovered the hard way the first time I ever fitted one of these bridges, on a six-screw to two-point trem conversion on an old Squier body of mine. That's what Squiers are for!)

Also, that last photo shows the enlarged trem cavity routed out. Done by repositioning my routing template from earlier on the thread a little further forward and rerouting. Simple.

We're getting there, folks! Next, we need to prep this bod for finishing. Yeah...!

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 7:50 pm
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Yeah, another enlightening installment. Thanks Ceri. Made my night, now I know why I logged on.

RK


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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 8:55 pm
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Truly great work. Inspiring! My first Fender was a Squire Strat that I played for years as a kid. I eventually took it all apart, thinking I was gonna refurbish it. It was in pretty bad shape from years of use and abuse. I never got around to it, and now it sits as a box of parts at my friend's house back in my hometown. I'm now inspired to get it back and fix it up as a player. Thanks Ceri!

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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 6:17 am
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Ceri wrote:
...After all, Dave Gilmour's Strat was routed for a Floyd for a while and then filled in again - and look how everyone is drooling for copies of that Black Strat now! Way to go! :D


Just a correction Ceri, not an intention to dispute your knowledge (which is enormous by the way!). I really enjoy this thread and have learned much...

Actually, Gilmour's strat was routed for a Kahler tremolo for a while, not Floyd Rose. Here's the link for this amazing site of, obviously,a big fan of Gilmour's, a picture of The Black Strat with the Kahler tremolo included:
http://www.gilmourish.com/?page_id=66

Goran

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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 6:46 am
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Goranm wrote:
Actually, Gilmour's strat was routed for a Kahler tremolo for a while, not Floyd Rose.

Ha - yes of course, that is absolutely right. Glad to see someone is awake; thank you! :D

BTW, I might as well share this here:

Nikininja was worried I was running into a problem with my pickup screw placement, and with supreme tact sent me an email about it rather than raising it here, to save me from looking silly in public. Thank you, Nick!

As it happens, I have indeed had a little difficulty with my pickup screws, though a slightly different one. I thought it too minor to waste people's time with before, but I'm not bashful about the problems I run into, so I may as well share it. This pic tells the story:
Image

Nick was worried that the opening into the control cavity means there is nowhere for the treble side pickup screw to go. And I must admit, it is a very near thing. The two cavities join like that because that is how Fender originally routed that control cavity, and I followed their edge when rebuilding it. But I'd been privately wondering whether I'd have to build that edge up in order to take the screw. If so, I'd have done that with a little section of wood carved for the purpose - but I decided to wait and see if it was necessary.

As you will see later today it has worked out OK: there is just room for the hole and I have tried a screw in it successfully.

However, if you study that picture closely you can see I ran into a different, more banal problem. I had in fact already drilled that hole once - and immediately discovered that the drill bit had drifted backwards (towards the bridge) a mil or more from the pencil line. Just enough to make the pickup sit asymmetrically in the cavity, which would look awful.

So with much sighing I carved a little dowel out of an off-cut of ash and filled the hole, as you can just make out in the photo. As I say, I have now redrilled it in the right place and it has worked out well. Pics later.

I thought that was too trifling to bother mentioning before - but I guess after all it's a good thing to show each and every difficulty and how they were overcome...

More later.

Cheers - C


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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 8:50 am
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Very good installment, howbeit brief! Are you getting the snow and cold weather there???

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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 12:55 pm
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Xhefri wrote:
Very good installment, howbeit brief!

Erm - thank you. :D

Here's the real instalment for today - though it ain't much longer I'm afraid...

Haven't time to start spraying this afternoon, but at least we can get this bod prepped and ready. Lots of silly little bits of sanding and such that don't make interesting photos - so just consider them done. Also, several screw holes waiting to be added. Here is my Dremel with its flexible shaft attachment - the motor unit itself is hanging on that pole clamped to the edge of the table:
Image

Next, no matter how careful you are you get scrapes and dents, like this one to the left of the block cavity:
Image

That might be where a small chip got under the router plate while it was excavating the block cavity and got rubbed against the wood - or some similar injury. The recommended fix is to get steam into the wood so that the fibres expand and fill out the dent. A popular way to do this is by damping a cloth or piece of kitchen paper and then pressing a hot iron against it to create steam and force that into the grain. The grain expands and the dent vanishes:
Image

There I have put a piece of brown paper over the damp kitchen paper, because the other day I was reading a guy on a website telling us to do it like that. Frankly, I think it is unnecessary. I suspect he's confusing two different things: a well known trick for getting candle wax out of a table cloth is to iron it through brown paper, because the wax wicks into the paper and is carried away.

Just for an experiment I tried this with and without the brown paper: the paper makes no difference.

Now I'm going to use some grain filler. Every guitar finisher on the planet uses this - except Ed Roman. He is angrily against it (surprise) - so it is definitely a good idea:
Image

This is a water based grain filler which I find vastly preferable to the old oil based ones. You just mix some up into a paste and then spread it on the wood with a spatula or old credit card or whatever. Then you take a bit of old T-shirt rolled into a pad and burnish most of the filler off the surface so that it is just left behind in the pores and small cracks in the wood:
Image

Since the back and sides of this body are going to receive a solid finish the color of the filler doesn't matter, so I am using a dark one just to make it easier to see, both for working and photographing.

A massive advantage of water based grain filler is that you can reactivate it anytime with a damp cloth pad and take more off. Which makes it far more controllable than the oil based stuff, which you have to get right first time because if there is too much left on after it dries there is no option but to sand it off. I like this a lot better - and it dries faster.

As you'll see in a second I am not only using it to fill the pores and small imperfections in the back of this bod, but to slightly block up the revealed end grain around that reshaped neck heel, where the wood will otherwise be rather porous.

And just to be clear, no grain filler is going on the sycamore front of this guitar. That wood doesn't have open pores and is also in much better shape. No matter which colored filler you used it would only serve to spoil such flaming as we have on that front.

After all of that I gave the whole bod a final sand with P320 paper to create the right tooth for the finish to come. I took great trouble to produce as perfect a surface as I could, because the more bumpy it is now the more lacquer we will waste trying to create a mirror finish later. Then I degreased the entire body using first naphtha and then methylated/denatured spirit. From this moment on the body will only be touched with hands in rubber gloves.

Here's a final look at the body before we start throwing finishing materials at it. Back:
Image

...and front:
Image

That front looks quite nice, huh? Crying out for some sort of transparent finish. On the other hand, the back is... more than roadworn. Frankly, we have to cover that up. So we really need to apply two different looking finishes. Hmmm...

Tomorrow we start!

Cheers - C

EDIT: dumbo spelling mistakes. Pour/pore - curse those homonyms...!


Last edited by Ceri on Mon Jan 11, 2010 2:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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