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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
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Figuring such as flame occurs in any species and best guess is its caused by environmental factors such as stress on the tree at an early stage of life (Or in the case of flamed redwood its the sheer weight of the tree crushing it, it only occurs in the bottom 3rd of giant redwoods)
flamed,rippled or simply figured would be the most accurate description of this ebony... and it does look a nice bit, not sure i would have been able to resist
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It's like this all the way down and ripples like it should when you move it. It'll be interesting how well it shows once it's been radiused and finish-sanded.
I have to say, it's also (looked on face on) the blackest ebony I've had for a long, long time. I think @impmann 's got something a little bit special here.
Now I get it....Andyjr1515 having gained a bit of a reputation for taking on projects that most wise builders wouldn't touch with a bargepole, you've all got together and worked on a 'THIS will break him - you watch' conspiracy
More precisely, the - 'I'll tell you what - you know he's started building thinner and thinner guitars and basses...well, I'll ask for a particularly light guitar, and he'll wet himself at the chance of going WHISPER thin...and then [snigger]... then I'll ask him to put a pair of THESE in it!!! [peals of laughter swamp the TheFretboard server] ':
Yes - they really ARE that deep!
They are, I gather, a bit of a 'special'
I'll say!
They're stacked humbucking P90's cooked up over a bubbling cauldron by @Impmann and Alex of @Alegree
You can see the double coils here:
Is Andyjr1515 broken? Has he met his match?
Of course not!
The bottom coil and wires sticking out into the fresh air at the back of the guitar might catch on @impmann's jumper a bit but, hey, we all have to suffer for our art!
You're braver than I taking on a build like this. I'll be very interested to hear how these pickups go down. They are certainly a bizarre pair.
Hmmmm....and the 'if all else fails and he doesn't take the bait, he's a sucker for the "if anyone can do it" line...' ruse
As the next big task is preparing for the top to be glued on, I've taken the master paper template and simply run my thumb round the main cavity to produce an indent of the chamber position:
Next jobs are flattening the mating surfaces, gluing the wenge demarcation veneer to the top, routing the cable routes and routing a mirror main chamber in the top. Then I can glue it together
Well yes, it was...
But one of the first things I double checked in the preparation for the top was the flatness of the mating surface. And I wasn't happy with it.
Would the top have 'eased' under clamping to a good joint? Yes
Would that have niggled at me for the rest of the build? Absolutely
So a wizz through the band saw to cut the wing off, re-level with a jack plane and sanding beam and then reglue face down on the flattest plank I have in the house (just in case it's my workbench that's not absolutely flat):
Talking of flat planks - the plank I'm clamping this on is actually a chipboard shelf (I know...but trust me, it's utterly stable and remarkably flat). But it's the heaviest and hardest chipboard I've ever come across. When I cut it to length, sparks came off the struggling chop saw. When I routed a flat edge, sparks came off my router bit. What's that all about???
So, now the bench and flat plank are free, the first length of 2mm wenge demarcation veneer gets glued on with an offcut of the mahogany acting as a caul:
I will also be routing a shallow chamber in the top, mirroring the chamber in the corresponding back wing.
As ever subject to other plans MrsAndyjr1515 might have for me for tomorrow, there's nevertheless a distinct possibility the top might be glued on before the end of the day
Wenge veneer trimmed:
and top glued, ready for trimming of the back wings:
That's the next job. Anything, to be honest, to keep putting off my least favourite job in any build - radiusing an ebony fretboard...
It's only rough-trimmed and I will finish off with microplanes and sanding blocks. The couple of blobs, by the way, are not blemishes - it's just where the Titebond has squeezed up through a couple of the natural fissures in the top. They will sand out easily.
Why do I only rough-trim? Well, I find that sometimes the wood (particularly mahogany) bruises a little and if the template is absolutely spot on, there's really nowhere to go so I just find it easier to do the final smoothing by hand and that takes out any bruises or nicks easily.
By the way - as those who follow my build threads already know - I always try to stress that I only describe how I myself do some of these things, not 'this is how it should be done'. How I work is often quite different to how many good builders work ... so, please, NEVER assume I know what I'm doing!
The main difference here is that I use the top as the routing guide. Now pretty much every other experienced builder will say NEVER use the top as a routing template...and they are right. SO DON'T!!
In fact, the convenional wisdom - for VERY good reasons - is don't even use your master template as a template. Use the master template to cut yourself a working template and use that as the routing guide.
I do have a very logical reason for doing it the way I do it - and it works better and less risky based on previously tried methods for me...
The wenge demarcation veneer here is 2mm constructional veneer:
In case you're wondering, standard 0.6mm veneer works perfectly well, but when I do the carve, I want to emphasise the demarcation line and hence the thicker product.
The other thing I know one or two folks are interested in is the laurel camphor. You can see the natural fissures well in this shot - those are not damage cracks, they are holes in the wood. How stable is it? Very. It seems to have a similar stiffness and workability to figured walnut. Actually quite nice to work with and not at all impacted by the voids.
And just wait until I've put the finish on top!