Nomad's First Scratch Build

Nomad

Today's activities...

I took the clamps off the headstock veneer and cut it roughly to shape for now...

Here's a shot from behind, showing how much the rough-cut wings stick out...

The next thing to do was to add the access hole for the truss rod hex key, and I decided that I'd do this on the router table. The first thing to do was to add a couple of spacers that were thicker than the amount that the veneer sticks up by, and leaving the truss rod channel clear...

Then flip it over and attach another spacer that's thicker than the amount that the wings stick out by...

Then the fence was loosened and moved back, the neck placed over the same cutter that was used to make the truss rod channel, and the fence then brought up snug to the spacer before being clamped down. This meant that the centre of the neck was still centred over the cutter.

The cutter was then changed to a 7mm diameter ball nose type, the maximum position of the neck worked out (ie, eyeballed), and an end-stop clamped to the fence...

I did a couple of passes with the cutter quite low and felt that the overall length of the tapered slot was going to be more than I wanted, so I started lifting the neck and dropping it down at a certain point and then sliding it along to the end stop (I used the outer vertical edge of the wing and one of the pencil lines on the plastic insert in the router table as a guide).

A few more cuts, increasing about 1mm in depth each time got it to a depth I was happy with, after which I ran a long 6mm brad point drill through to the channel. I dropped the truss rod in and gave it a try...

It engaged fine with the hex socket, but motion was a little restricted. I added a little bit of clearance using a small chisel, which helped...

I'll probably tidy that up a bit (not planning on having a truss rod cover), and I may well stain the maple black,

Next, I started working on the end of the veneer where the nut goes...

The curved shape of the flattened area tells me that the outer edges of the veneer are higher than the middle. The tiny shoulder plane was used to tidy up the flat end of the veneer.

Here's a close-up...

After trying various things to flatten the main area of the veneer, a combination of sandpaper on a rigid block and the Crimson fret levelling file seemed to work best....

The nut blank is about 7mm wide but will probably go down to 6mm. Whether or not the platform is wide enough remains to be seen, but it can always be lowered a little to increase its width.

Nomad

Today part 2 - the headstock logo.

Time to try out the stuff I made ages ago for doing inlays.

I took a print of the headstock design and cut out the bit with the letter Z. This was then taped to a bit of mother of pearl using a backlight to align it. This was with the bit of tape on the left here...

The paper was then hinged up and another bit of tape stuck to the MOP. A drop of superglue on top of that and that paper was hinged back down and glued. So, masking tape stuck to the MOP, and the paper template glued to the masking tape.

This was then cut out using a jeweller's saw...

I should mention that I wasn't planning to cut the MOP to the particular outline in the print-out - there are some very thin features that would be fragile (certainly for me as a first-timer). The idea was to use it as a basis for a stylised Z.

The jeweller's saw table was dispensed with and replaced with my home-brew micro router table. There's a thread covering this in some detail but, in short, there's a Black & Decker rotary tool lurking underneath the wood insert plate and there's a diamond burr poking through. The bit of copper is some car brake pipe which goes to a flexible pipe, which is connected to a small vacuum cleaner - very localised extraction. For scale, the wood insert plate is 100mm square.

Most of the way through at this point.

The bulk of the shaping is done and I've switched to a smaller burr to get into the tighter bits. I found that the paper template tended to lift a bit at the edges rather than the burr cutting through it. I cleaned it off with a scalpel now and then but eventually peeled it all off to do the final bits of shaping where I could see the edges more clearly...

A note on the extraction - there was no clean-up before taking this photo. That's how much dust there was, and it's far less than what I got when cutting the initial outline with the jeweller's saw (that was raising enough dust when working very close for me to get the dust mask on - no mask used with this at all, and no dust was seen floating about at all).

Feeling pleased with myself, I decided it was time to cut the fingerboard into its proper tapered shape. A centre line was marked, along with lines to indicate the two sides (done very carefully indeed - sighting with a loupe, and clamping the two foot ruler down to ensure it didn't move). Then I used the bandsaw to cut a strip of MDF a bit wider than the fingerboard and stuck the board onto it...

If you look carefully, you can see that the left-hand end overhangs while right-hand end doesn't. The position was determined by using the taper lines I had marked and placing them just inside the edge of the MDF. The MDF was then used as a sled  to run the board through the bandsaw - the fence position was unchanged, meaning the MDF just missed being cut, while the fingerboard was sliced just outside the marked line. This was peeled off and the same done with the other side. The two edges were then cleaned up using a long plane.

I decided to put the bits together to give my eyes a treat...

I had a little 'moment' when I did this. I think when I saw it with the fingerboard now properly tapered, along with the improved headstock outline and the logo, it hit me that it's starting to look like a guitar - a guitar that I like, and that when it's done, it'll be mine.

Nomad

Been working up the design a bit more - layout of the bits on the body are now just about what I've been thinking of. I did consider having just one volume and tone, but I'm used to having two of each. Also thought of moving the switch down near the controls, but it messes with my head (I'm bound to hit it inadvertently). I also used the calculator on the Stewmac site to work out the bridge position and angle.

Here's how it looks now...

Next thing to do with regard to this is work out the cavity sizes to check that things will fit okay. I'm still a little concerned about the switch - possible risk of weakening the top horn too much. If that's the case, I have a plan B.

I also weighed all of the bits, and estimated how much will be lost when the cavities and carving are done. My prediction for overall weight is currently about 9.3lbs.

Rabs

Good stuff..   And if it does come out that weight... Id say that's a good weight..  Not heavy but feels substantial in the hands...

nick_s

Very cool looking guitar this will be

Sesh

That's looking great. And your first scratch build? Wow.

eldarvanyar

Thanks for sharing your build, really enjoying it and finding it inspiring and informative   

what is the computer program you are using for the design? 

Nomad

Thanks all.

@Rabs, anything around 9lbs is fine for me. The main reason for weighing the bits was a slight concern about neck dive because the body is quite small, but I'm thinking it will be fine.

@eldarvanyar, the software is a free AutoCAD clone called DraftSight...

https://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight-cad-software/free-download/

Works just about the same as 2D AutoCAD.

Nomad

Here's the latest.

I had flattened the fingerboard to a smidge over 8mm, but wanted to take it down a bit more, so I stuck it down to a length of birch ply using the superglue and masking tape trick...

The extra bits of wood at the ends are to ensure that the fingerboard doesn't get any snipe (uneven surface due to the piece tilting in the thicknesser when one end or the other is only pressed down by one roller). After a few skims, it was down to about 6.1mm, which is just about what I was aiming for. I want to make sure there's a decent amount of wood under the truss rod channel, which is about 9.5mm deep at the thin end.

As a little aside, here's how the tape under the board looked when I peeled it off...

The flat bit in the middle shows how far the glue spread. This was medium viscosity superglue, laid in a straight bead down the middle - no wiggly lines.

I also did a bit of shaping on the headstock and blacked the access hole for the truss rod with Fiebing's leather dye...

The logo isn't inlaid yet - just put it there because it looks nice.

I also marked a line along the side, which can just about be seen here...

This is at 16mm from the top surface, which is 1mm more than what I'm after. This will be cut in the bandsaw and I'll work the surface to 15mm by hand. The bandsaw is the easiest way for me to get a neat, parallel cut, but will need to be done before the fingerboard is glued on because the face of the headstock will run against the fence on the saw.

Something to note here is the chipping around the pilot holes for the machine heads. These were done with a 5mm drill bit in an old Stanley hand drill. I often use this for marking out holes before drilling on the milling machine. What I found out is that ebony is prone to chipping if the drill is turning slowly (which tends to be the case with a hand drill). When I have the parallel cut done on the saw, I'll do the 10mm holes on the mill with the drill spinning as fast as it will go.

Can also see that the join to the wings is barely visible - it's at the slightly darkish area near the middle hole.

I need to think for a bit about the sequence of stages for the neck because some things will affect others (like not fitting the board until the headstock parallel cut is done). I'm also giving some thought to the overall depth that I want - I need to measure other guitars to get an idea of what I like.

Also been working up the drawing a bit more to get the body planned out...

The inner pink line at the control and switch cavities is the actual cavity, and the outer line indicates a 5mm rebate for the covers. I need to measure some pickups to ensure that the planned rout for those is okay. Still to decide on the wiring channels. At the switch, the hole is shaped to match the shape of the switch (which will be oriented so that the toggle is top-left to bottom-right in the drawing). The angle might not be ideal, but I don't mind a bit of that (my Lemon Drop has a bit of tilt in the switch alignment, and it's fine). It makes it a bit easier to see what the setting is at a glance. The cavity at the switch is about 11mm from each nearest side, which I think will be strong enough. So, a bit more to do on this before I transfer to templates.

Nomad

Dupe post.

Nomad

The weekend's luthierising...

I cut the back face of the headstock on the bandsaw and gave it a bit of a sand, and then drilled out the holes for the machine heads...

The bit of scrap MDF helps to prevent tear-out on the bottom. It turned out that a moderate drill speed was fine (I tried on an offcut first). I assume the chipping with the hand drill was therefore down to inconsistent speed, while the torque of the motor in the mill kept the drill bit spinning.

You can see the join to the wing more clearly here...

I fitted the machine heads to get an idea of how things will look...

I'm happy with that. Part of the reason for making the headstock longer was to get the tuner keys positioned more centrally along the long concave edges. With the original shape, they were biased too far towards the top.

Next, it was time to do the inlay. After fiddling about with positions, I decided where I wanted it to lie and added a centre line to the MOP to act as a position reference...

I then stuck a narrow bit of masking tape over it to hold it in place...

...followed by another along the bottom part. I then scribed around the top part with a scalpel (still needed some finger pressure to keep the inlay in position). When that was done, I put another bit of tape over the top part, removed the middle bit of tape, and scribed that area...

...and did the same again to scribe the bottom part. So, there was always two bits of tape helping to keep the inlay in position while I was scribing.

I think it came out surprisingly well...

Most of the material was routed out using a couple of small downward-spiral cutters in a rotary tool. I found it quite hard to see when I was getting up to the scribe marks (even with extraction fitted to the tool's mini router base). Rather than risk running outside the lines, I switched to using a 3mm wide chisel to carefully pare away the material...

I still found this quite tricky, and it took ages. I think some even smaller chisels might be a good idea (I might try making something).

The end result isn't as good as I would have liked, although I don't know what can realistically be expected (especially for a first attempt). The logo is 17mm high, so I'd guess that the gaps are about 0.5mm or so...

I mixed up some epoxy, added some ebony dust, and put it in the cavity...

...and then pressed the logo in...

There were a couple of gaps, so I put more filler in using a cocktail stick. Looking at it now, in the photos, the individual bits of dust can be seen suspended in the glue, and I'm thinking I should have added more. Unfortunately, it looked very black when I was mixing it, and I didn't want to add so much dust that the stuff ended up too dry and stiff. Next time, I'll risk wasting the glue and try adding much more dust.

Sorry, no final sanded logo picture yet - that stuff will be left to cure for 24 hours. In the meantime, you can look at the leather-faced sanding blocks I made to entertain myself after doing the logo...

Made from bits of ash, the bigger one is 100mm long, and the smaller one about 62mm. Finished with shellac.

BigMonka

I'm really enjoying watching this thread @ ;
I bet it'll be an amazing feeling the first time you play it!

nick_s

Looking pretty damned cool so far  And the sanding blocks are a nice touch.

WezV

If you use superglue you can just pour dust in the gaps and add glue over it. Only think to be aware of is it can polish up shinier than the wood, but that's not an issue if lacquered over, can look a bit odd on fretboard inlays

With epoxy it definitely works better with dust mixed in first.  You get a thick black paste.  Doesn't matter too much though, you still have the option of staining it if the fill does look pale.  The stain will take to the epoxy more than the pearl.

also, colouring in the edges of the inlay with a permanent marker hides a lot of sins.  But too late for that now

fendergibson

Can't wait to see more, very very interesting, inspiring and enlightening ! 

Nomad

Thanks chaps. Part of reason for posting all this stuff is to hopefully inspire others to give it a go. I suspect this might be part of what motivates the other builders to post as well (the various build threads here certainly made me sit up and decide to give it a try). Another reason for posting is to get feedback on methods and techniques as things progress - there's always scope to learn other ways to do things (especially if you're a beginner. even if you have been absorbing info for ages).

Wez, I'm planning an oil finish (Crimson guitar oil). Noted on colouring the edges of the inlay - will look at that next time.

Nomad

Just about the last part of the inlay...

Later last night, when it had set a bit, but was still fairly soft, I went back and used a scalpel to remove the bits of epoxy that were proud of the inlay to save having to sand through lumps this evening...

I then taped up the headstock and one end of a levelling beam which has coarse paper on it...

The paper is probably 80 grit. The tape on the headstock is to protect it from the sanding, and the tape on the beam is to reduce the amount of sanding it does on the headstock tape.

After a while, the inlay was coming down a bit, and I realised that the ebony on either side was at risk, so I added some more tape...

This was in case the grit on the beam caught the surface of the ebony due to either a bit of tilt while I was sanding, or because of possible unevenness of the sandpaper.

Sure enough, a tell-tale appeared...

At this point, I pulled off the tape and switched to finer grits using the little sanding block and worked the inlay down to the surface of the ebony (but forgot to take pictures). There's still a bit to do to remove scratches, but it's pretty much there...

The filler is clearly lighter than the surrounding wood, but not too bad. The photo also emphasises the difference somewhat - the wood is much blacker than it looks here, and the filler is rather closer to the wood when viewed with the naked eye. The post-processing does show a difference, however, and I will definitely try adding more wood dust next time. For this, though, I'll oil it and see what effect that has. From any sensible distance, I think it looks fine.

I think I'll consult my notes to work out what the next step is. I suspect it depends on whether I want to put dot markers on the board. If I do, I'll want to fit them before I glue the board to the neck as a screw-up mitigation strategy - if I glue the board on and then screw up the dot markers, I've got a bigger mess to deal with than a board with screwed up dots on it. With the latter, I don't have a screwed up neck and just have to make a new board. Drilling the holes for the dots is also easier if it's just the board, because that's an easier lump of wood to handle when using the (milling machine as a) drill press - it's lighter and easier to manipulate with one hand while the other hand operates the drill uppy-downy motion.

TimberG

Nomad cracking build thread, I too am building a few scratch builds graduating from parts caster builds. Crimson guitar finishing oil is a very good product and I like it however if you want a real gloss finish be prepared to put a good 14-16 applications on body's and neck. Well done on the thread

Nomad

Thanks @TimberG. The Crimson oil is what I'll be using, although the amount of gloss depends on how impatient I get.

Nomad

Time to update...

After dithering about what to do regarding the fingerboard dot markers, and eventually ordering some from Small Wonder, I jointed and glued the cap at the weekend...

With the proper body outline marked, I cut out the shape a little outside the line (I'll use the outline of the main part of the body as a template for routing this to size after it has been glued on).

I did a mock-up to see how things were looking...

Starting to look like what's in my head. The cap looks carved but actually isn't. The tiger stripe has a very slight V at the bookmatch, and some of the colouring (like the darkening at the waist) somewhat implies curvature. The main body is to the right and is just holding the cap up.

The MOP dots arrived from Small Wonder, so I fitted them this evening. This is one of those things that's easy to screw up, and it really is a good idea to check your work at every step. In this shot, you can see some light pencil marks near the fret slots to show which areas are going to get dot markers...

The marks are only there to serve as a visual reminder of which area is which. Where there is to be more than one dot marker, I put the correct number of reminder marks down. When I put the first mark down, I put it at the 4th fret rather than the 3rd. It's easy to screw it up. Having corrected the screw-up, checked and triple checked, I started marking out the positions of the actual MOP dots.

Each dot, or row of dots, is placed equidistant from the inner edges of the fret slots. For a single dot, I measure inner edge to inner edge, divide by two and put a mark across the centre line. For ones where there are two or three dots, I drew diagonals from the outer corner at one slot to the centre line at the next slot, and then vice-versa, so that I got a cross in the middle of each half of the area. Then draw a line between the centres of the crosses to set the datum for the dots...

I needed to set out a line because the board is already tapered (probably as a result of me dithering about whether to have dot markers - wanted to get on, but I knew there are ways to set things out without using a try-square). I could have measured mid-way between the slots in two positions, but this just seemed to be the way to do it to me. It may well be the case that this method has the effect of diluting errors in positioning the pencil marks (the diagonals will certainly do this).

Anyway, with that done, I then added longitudinal marks to indicate where the dots were to go - you can see two little marks in the photo above, inboard of the set-out crosses. I had decided that I wanted the dots to appear between strings, and had modelled this in the CAD software, which allowed me to take measurements of the spacings at the various positions on the neck. The little bit of narrow card in the earlier photo (between the loupe and the pencil) has a list of fret positions and spacings. I then checked all of the marks, both for the spacing between dots and distance from the centre line, before marking each position with an awl...

The next step was to make these little marks a bit wider using a 2mm bit in a Mk1 cordless drill...

The reason for this was to ensure that the actual drilling with a 4.1mm drill wouldn't wander at the start. If you look closely at the tip of a twist drill, you'll see that it isn't pointed, but is actually two edges (at an angle of 118°) meeting in the middle with a little flat or straight bit between them. It's important that your guide dimple has a diameter that's larger than the length of this flat. That way, when the spinning drill bit comes down to the dimple, it will tend to draw the dimple into centre and give a you a hole in the same position.

Have a look at the shape of the empty hole here...

The vertical side of the hole is about 1.3mm deep, then there's the inverted cone made by the tip of the drill bit, and at the bottom, there's a little round flat area - that's the bit that's left by the flat at the tip of the drill, and your guide dimples need to be a bit bigger than that.

The drilling was done with a depth stop, after doing some tests on a bit of scrap wood that's the same thickness as the fingerboard (the bits used earlier in the thicknesser to keep snipe away from the board - drillings done in a non-sniped part). Superglue was medium viscosity stuff, and only one hole/dot is done at a time. I used fine tipped tweezers to handle the dots, and a bit of sharpened stick to push them down. Safety glasses were worn because the glue can spatter a bit when a dot drops in.

With them all fitted and the glue cured, I sanded them down with a levelling beam fitted with fairly fine sandpaper...

Here's a close-up to see the fit...

Before starting, I measured all of the dots to check that they were in spec (all were in the range 3.97 to 4.03, apart from one at 4.07, out of 60 dots). This was a good thing to do because most drill bits are slightly smaller than their nominal size - a 4.1mm drill bit will normally cut a hole about 4.05mm in diameter, and that could be a problem if it so happens that you have a dot that's a smidge wider than the hole and everything's getting covered in superglue. Ideally, you want the dots to be a little bit smaller than the hole so that there's space for the glue to come up to the top, and it also makes it a bit easier to get them in - if they were a perfect fit, the dot has to be perfectly level with the board, otherwise its lower edge will snag on the side of the hole as you try to insert it.

A little mock-up of the neck so far...

I think my next step is to glue the fingerboard to the neck, but I'll have a think about that before I do it.