What TTony did next

PhilKing

Is it a Bouzouki (or Cittern)?

TTony

It's nothing as clever or complicated as a Bouzouki/Cittern/Mandolin.

Clicky Linky

PeteC

Cigar Box Firebird - but with no cigar box, and a rather nice Firebird shaped body instead !  

TTony

Firebox.

Or Firebirdbox.

Rabs

Hello Kitty Firebird??

paulnb57

Half a P Bass pickup works well......

Chickenbone John does loads of specific parts for CBG’s

https://www.chickenbonejohn.com/

Are you 3 or 4 string? 

TTony

Spent the morning  in the garden, and now have a large pile of logs for firewood (from a tree blown down in the storms).

Spent the afternoon in the workshop, and now have a large pile of sawdust.  Whilst in the workshop, I also made an opportunity for a creative solution.


The neck will run through the body, so body cut out for the neck


And then I measured once, marked out and cut.


Always measure twice TTony, *always* measure twice! 



And that gap is my opportunity for a creative solution.    I could just find an offcut and pack the gap, or maybe I can think of something else.  The strings will be running through the body there, so it probably needs something to support the tension.


On the upside, it fits nicely.


The top of the thru neck was about 2mm proud of the top of the body, so that's now cut away so that the cap fits properly on top.  The back of the box is 11mm thick.  I'm going to glue the neck in, but add a couple of screws too for added rigidity.


Ended the afternoon with a quick bit of neck shaping


To do

- drill the tuner holes and finish sanding the headstock.
- fret the neck
- clamp the cap in place temporarily, rout out the pickup position in the cap and the neck (decided to use a P90) and vol  control.
- decide whether to cut a control cavity into it, or do everything via the jack socket hole (mini-pot will fit through!)
-  make the nut and bridge.  Work out how to ground the bridge
- wire it up
- glue the cap in place
- fit nut and bridge
- drill string-thru holes
- decide what finish to use.



Reading that list back, there's another day / day-and-a-half of work to add to the day-and-a-half that I've already done.

Not bad?

Samgb

Have Gibson been in touch telling you to play authentic and threatening legal action yet?

Looks great. 

guitargeek62

TTony said:

Firebox.

Or Firebirdbox.

Tinderbox, surely?!

TTony

Samgb said:

Have Gibson been in touch telling you to play authentic and threatening legal action yet?

Cheers @Samgb.

I think some of the woodwork is up down to Gibson’s QC standards



guitargeek62 said: TTony said: Firebox.

Or Firebirdbox.

Tinderbox, surely?! Are you politely suggesting that I should set fire to it @guitargeek62 ??


TBH, this was deliberately a bit of a mad build.

No plans other than what I showed in the first post (an A4 size outline of a Firebird body and the headstock), no templates, and just using offcuts and other waste bits lying around, and trying to get it done in a couple of days of workshop time.

Rabs

Very cool.. I like the neckthrough technique there 

paulnb57

Just an observation Tony, I made CBG ages ago and notched the neck to fit the wall of the box as you have, when under string tension the neck was weaker at the notch so curved more than acceptable, so I made a new neck and notched the box deeper leaving the same amount of meat for the length of the neck...

TTony

Yup, I think you’re right @paulnb57 in that the neck-notch has removed too much wood.  I cut away twice as much as I should have done, which was a dumb mistake.

I cut too much away there, as well as at the end.  I’m going to screw through from the back of the box into the neck, at both ends of the box, so that should take the strain.

I thought I’d either recess the screws into the back (11mm thick, so enough material), or I might leave them proud as strap buttons.

It’s an opportunity for a creative solution ...

TTony

TTony said:

Yup, I think you’re right @paulnb57 in that the neck-notch has removed too much wood.  I cut away twice as much as I should have done, which was a dumb mistake.

I cut too much away there, as well as at the end.  I’m going to screw through from the back of the box into the neck, at both ends of the box, so that should take the strain.

Thinking about it through the night - I've concluded that the best approach is to remake the neck.

I've got the timber, I've got the time, so I'm going to do it properly!  I am going to try to avoid remaking the fretboard though, so time to experiment on how to remove a fretboard from a neck.

PeteC

Good decision.  What glue did you use for the fretboard ? 

TTony

Standard Titebond.

There are no frets in it, so the usual soften the glue via heating the frets approach probably won’t work.

The neck is waste anyway, so I think I’m going to bandsaw the fretboard off the neck, and then use a router to tidy up the back of the fretboard.

Every mistake is an opportunity!

paulnb57

I think thats the right thing to do, if it were me I would deepen the notch in the body and not notch the neck at all,  and keep the neck profile quite bulky, its amazing how flexible a CBG neck is...out of interest are you going with 3 or 4 strings?

TTony

Quick bit of neck destruction ...

Double sided tape fixed to the back of the neck and then stuck to a long piece of old offcut so that the bottom of the fretboard would stay parallel to the bandsaw fence.  Lined up and read to  cut ...


Neck on the left, bottom of the fretboard on the right.  There's still a tiny bit of Ash from the neck left on the fretboard in a couple of places, so I think that's probably as close a cut as I was realistically going to get.


After sanding the back of the board smooth, it's still ~5.5mm thick, so thick enough.  Result!  That was a lot quicker than cutting, fret-slotting and radiusing another fretboard!

Change of wood for the neck, new blank planed and thicknessed ready to go.


Fretboard now dotted


And neck fitted into the box.


The neck is sitting slightly proud of the box in the photo above - but its now sanded level and ready for the cap to be fitted.

Once I've done all the other things that I had to do about this time yesterday before I realised my silly mistake!!

Andyjr1515

Great save, @TTony ;

For a very similar reason, I have a very odd shaped heel on the first through neck bass I ever made.  I realised that - as I had envisaged it - I was going to basically inadvertently reduce the neck thickness at the heel to about 4mm!


Luckily I realised before gluing and stringing it up!

entee

Looking great - very much reminds me of the chambered electric baritone ukulele BillyBo, I had made last year ~ I'll dig out a photo.
Fabulous work @TTony