Absent Mind

Hey all, this has been in the pipe line since about December, a few specs have changed here and there but I am finally set (I hope).

This is a first build the (bad) kisakae mock up is as follows,



The finish Im aiming for can be found at this link, (I know there are a lot of swirls floating around in GB & C at the moment but I am not band wagon jumping, I saw this finish last year some time and I love it.

http://www.fededesigns.com/images/p...lery/650944.jpg

So specs,

Mahogany body

Bolt on 3 peice neck, maple, wenge, maple, AANJ heel, custom head stock

Ebony finger board

Custom inlays

81/85 combo, with 2 vol and 2 tone controls

3 way switch (independant vol controls in middle possition if I can wire it correctly)

Tom bridge and string thru

Chrome hardware

I can go into more detail if you wish.

The Raw form,



Neck lams and body



Electronics and hardware (only things not showing I think are fret wire and white MOP)

And so it begins...



Neck lams glued and clamped (clamped and clamped again, thats 13 clamps, gotta love friendly teachers), I used a lot of glue (probably too much) so its going to need a fair bit of cleaning up.



My advice so far,

buy more glue than you think you need (this probably goes for finishing supplies as well) I though I was going to run out but I had ample. I have some more on order now any way.

dont go crazy with the glue, keep it thick in the middle but make sure the edges are at least wet, it will ooze out more than you think,

tuck your shirt in, glue plus clothes isnt good, luckily I wasnt wearing any thing expensive.



Any questions? lol

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Ziggums

How much did you spend on all the wood/Parts?

I've been contemplating building a guitar in a few months.

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Suantum of Quolace?

Absent Mind

alot lol, it keeps mounting up and I havent even started to buy finishing products yet.

Body, about £30

Neck, about £30 also

Ebony FB, about £20

EMG 81/85 set £123

Tom bridge, about £18

Graph Tech nut, about £5

White MOP, about £6

The 3 way alone was £6

Knobs £10

Stew mac hardware order around £75 (which includes everything else unless stated above)

Melvyn Hiscock book, about £15


So far your looking at over £340 ($680) worth of stuff, plus glue, sand paper etc, may be it will be under £400 when finished.

The thing is if you just want to build one guitar as a hobby, your not connected in the luthier world, and everything is more expensive because you dont know where the deals are. For example I have made 2 orders from Craft Supplies, both cost me postage, if I had ordered them together I would have payed less than a single postage I payed twice.

So I would advise to plan to the point where you have every tool, hardware, wood peice, with a price next to it and the plans and skills to build it, and THEN start ordering.

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Ziggums

Thanks for the in depth answer
Do you have a link to the site you did the mock up on?

:S

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Suantum of Quolace?

Absent Mind

google kisakae

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Babylou

Ziggums

Thanks

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Suantum of Quolace?

james4

sounds pretty good.
By custom inlays do you just mean like the sharkfin ones in the mockup, or something else?

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Wiring your guitar?

jscustomguitars

sweet. Every time I see a Stew Mac box like that I get a chub !

Just wait for that import tax bill from DHL too lol !

Absent Mind

James, some thing else, the shark fins were just to see what white looks like on black (good ) I thinking of Just inlaying NEIL down 4-1 frets (tacky I know but I thought I'de get things like that out the way on a first built) If you have a better Idea I'm open.

and JS, the build with your ash blank will have to wait but an even bigger stew mac box is in order for that lol

I already got stung for customs, the order was £50 and I got charged £15, basterds

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jscustomguitars

I've had to pay about 500 over the last 6 months, I'm well pissd off with em.

thedonutman

Your build looks great. Swirls= awesome

I've got a rather stupid question though.

http://www.craft-supplies.co.uk

Is that the Craft Supplies that you refer to? I can't seem to find any guitar related stuff on there, other than those body blanks.

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Buy my stuff - Ibanez Xiphos XPT700 £300

Absent Mind

JS if you doing another order soon I'll go in on shipping with you

yeah donut man, give them a ring and ask what they have in stock, they did have an online catalogue you could have a look at but its changed (and the website sucks) I'll send you the old one if you like, its more expensive now though, but theres alot of stuff.

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jscustomguitars

Sounds like a plan mate!

jscustomguitars

If you go to youtube and do a search for EVE GUITARS, thats my user name, theres a 5 minute vid of pics of all of craft supplies stock. Im at work at the minute so I cant post a link as I cant get on Youtube but I'll do it when I get home if you cant find it.

thedonutman

Ah right, Lots and lots of exotic wood......

So do they just not put all their stuff on the website? Or am I just too incompetent to find them?

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Buy my stuff - Ibanez Xiphos XPT700 £300

jscustomguitars

nah, the web site is crap. it has nothing on it. there is a price list on there somewhere that has loads of stuff on it but they dont have half of it. You really need to go and pick the stuff out yourself

Absent Mind

Daft supplies sent me the wrong FB twice so far, so I doubt I will have the right one untill at least next week.

Should be cutting the body shape tommorow, may be some neck work.

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Absent Mind

Small update, a technician band sawed the shape this morning because they wouldn't let me lol

The body needs a hell of a lot of sanding to get it down to the line, so hopefully school has a spindle sander, or my dad was talking about getting one, gotta love it

Before



After



Here is a tiny problem, a saw mark is just inside the line of a lower horn, so I will either fill it and then sand smooth, or just make the horn a lil deeper or like a higher access horn, so sand it back completly to the bottom of the cut mark.

Either way its very small so it wouldnt be noticeable which ever method I choose.



The techies were talking about doing the routing (at least the neck pocket route) on the boxford lathe at school, which I'm guessing will be a million times better than trying to do it at home.

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