Angel resurrection (pictures fixed)

axisus

Some people may remember my Angel tele from back in the Music Radar days. It was my first guitar project, I got a tele body blank and did all freehand routing with no templates to fit HBs, neck, controls and a Floyd Rose trem (didn't know about templates back then!). Chinese themed, It was a cool looking guitar and I had tons of nice compliments about it, all lost due to the MR Fecktards pulling the plug on their forum with zero warning (I still boycott their site). Anyway, it was a cool guitar, partly due to an Ibanez neck with a tree of life that I put on it. 

Years went by and it fell out of favour with me. However, I am now resurrecting it, dropping in a sustainer pickup and building a neck of my own. This is partly due to me abandoning my second guitar build for various reasons and using some of the parts from it. 

The neck went wrong in places but I have finally gone back and mostly fixed the problems now. It is Rosewood with an ebony fretboard. I have done chinese number inlays, and as it will be for my Youtube channel I am installing LEDs in the neck as a bit of fun, experimentation and showmanship (for want of a better word).

Pix to follow, maybe later today.

TTony

I remember.

Adam_MD

TTony said:

I remember.

Me too that guitar looked excellent.  

axisus

Here's 'Angel' pre-work:



I've done quite a bit of the neck already, this was knocking up the template:



Rough cut plus truss rod channel routed



Taking width down:

axisus

For the fretboard I made Chinese writing numbers. I printed them onto water slide paper, dried them off onto some faux pearl material



the inlays were then painstakingly trimmed to shape with a special dremel bit. I mounted the dremel on a bit of board and flipped it upside down. My fingers were VERY close to the speeding cutter!



carefully filed afterwards. The green is going, that's just the template shape I'm following

axisus

Fine work on the small bits



I painted the fretboard white so I could see where to cut. Scored around the shapes.



VERY careful cutting to depth with the dremel. I wore two pairs of reading glasses so I could get extra close

axisus

Two finished cutouts. The round holes are for the LED fun.



all inlay holes cut, all pieces fit



glueing inlays in place

axisus

putting the radius on the fretboard



All inlays complete.

TTony

Thats some precision work.

mikem8634

Have some wow!

breakstuff

Brilliant!

Wow awarded.

ThorpyFX

Bloody hell, that must have taken ages, great work so far. 

paulnb57

Cracking job on the fit of the inlays! Nice work!

Sesh

Gosh.

BigMonka

Serious skills and attention to detail going on there

impmann

Brilliant.

Nomad

Love the inlay technique - I need to find some waterslide decal paper.

What paint did you use on the board?

Jalapeno

Wow ! (You have checked what it all means I hope - those Japanese Engrish nonsense T Shirts can be amusing )

Rabs

Awesome...  

Can I ask a question though..  Where do you get the tiny router bits for the dremel?  Ive tried a few and they were all useless.. Doing fancy inlays is one of the next things I want to get in to.. So far its all been trapizods, blocks which I do with chisels by hand.

Nomad

Small Wonder do down-cutting spiral flute bits...

http://www.smallwonder-music.co.uk/shop/Tools-and-Finishing/Spiral-Router-Bits/p-123-454/

Four sizes, starting from 1mm diameter.

Rabs

Nomad said:

Small Wonder do down-cutting spiral flute bits...

http://www.smallwonder-music.co.uk/shop/Tools-and-Finishing/Spiral-Router-Bits/p-123-454/

Four sizes, starting from 1mm diameter.

Thanks for that...  I think the ones I got must have been the smallest like the 0.6mm one..  It lasted about ten seconds when I tried to use them on an ebony board..

Whats a good size to go for?