Both of your builds have looked brilliant
Great work.
Les Paul next ?
Ta
Set necks and carved tops, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
Luckily I dont like LPs, poor ergonomics for me, they’re too small.
So no plans to go down that rabbit hole.
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SG ?
Having solved a not insignificant hum by correctly earthing the bridge and bodging this switch tip to fit a blade switch it was not intended for.
Packaging much
It’s finally finished.
Plays well with a genuinely lovely to hold, smooth neck. The intonation is spot on. Fret work could be a little better beyond the 15th fret, however I cba to remove the strings to adjust. That can wait, I rarely play up there anyway, and it’s fine really.
Has tested my patience at times, but well worth it.
Already made a start on another one, from this lump of Spalted Ash sourced from my local wood recycling place.
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Have to say, that looks amazing !
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Beautiful piece of work - chapeau!
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Slow progress, taking my sweet time.
Nice neck joint this time
Lots and lots of sanding to 240
Leaning towards a strong dark orange stain with a satin oil finish.
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Stellar progress considering you had a holiday to fit in!
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Having a significant amount of the process saved in my head means I’m getting quicker - which is a good thing.
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That does look nice. I’d need a lot of grain filler to achive a smooth uniform colour like that.
The hardest part of all this is taking the plunge and applying the finish. I’d quite like to add some black stain, sand it away, then apply a strong orange colour. The wood I’m using is partly rotten and very open pore so it’s all a bit of a gamble.
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Black stain, that was immediately removed with 120grit.
Lots of hole drilling and routing today.
Direct mount pickups this time, no rings or pick guards to hide mistakes.
Had time this afternoon to apply the water based orange stain. Looks good with the black grain. So far I’ve added 3 coats of high build oil, 2 or 3 more to apply during the coming week.
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Great choice on the orange 
Looks really nice with the dark grain
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All the nickel plated hardware has arrived. I think this is possibly the last time I buy a complete new set of parts. I’m going to have to start rationalising and reusing parts from instruments I’m not playing. The money I’m dumping into this hobby is starting to mount up.
The body has had 5 coats of penetrating, high build oil over the week, it really does look the business, photos do not do it justice.
I’m now thinking about making a new maple neck, I’m not sure the dark Sapele on is going to work visually. We’ll see…
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To an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about (i.e. me), your guitars look utterly superb, far nicer than many of the mass-produced efforts that seem to fetch insane money, so could you maybe consider flogging any you’re not playing to fund the next project?
The average player with a few hundred quid to spend wants to see a brand name on the headstock.
The market for hand made is high end, perfection is a prerequisite, my efforts while good, are far from what’s required.
Maybe in the future I’ll attempt to sell one for cost to fund the next, but not yet, there’s too many imperfections.
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More power to your elbow then
I chucked the mahogany neck, with a lovely fretboard in the bin this morning. I absentmindedly sanded the back too far exposing the truss rod 
- no pics unfortunatly. A proper balls up, will learn from that.
So I set about making another from a 40mm thick lump of maple that needed resawing down to 20mm - my small record bandsaw made light work if it, that has been an excellent buy.
The quality of finish you can get with the Shinto rasp saw’s fine teeth (and a light hand) never fails to surprise me. Its removed all the bandsaw marks on the headstock and left a surface equivalent to 100 grit paper.
Got the frets prepared too.
I’ve got a new Radian router bit on order to cut the truss rod channel so work stops until that and the new fretboard turn up.
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See, thing is, I make guitar bodies to fit a specific neck. I don’t use a router with a template to make the neck, so they’re all bespoke in true artisan style. Thats fine until you screw up a neck after you’ve made the guitar.
Now I have to make a neck fit a tapered pocket so it is exactly straight to the guitar’s centre line because the bridge position is already set and cannot be moved.
The cotton thread shows the string path. With the new, part complete neck clamped in position, it confirms that correct alignment is possible, great.
Just need to work out how to drill the holes though the guitar body into the neck without removing the clamp that is covering the holes I need to drill.
This is now a total ball ace and will require some creative thinking.
The lesson here is always make sure the neck 100% complete before any guitar body routing and drilling. Every time I wave clamps and tools around risks damaging the body too.
To cheer myself up I’ve test fitted some of the nickel hardware, it has potential to look very smart, fingers crossed I don’t bugger any more than I already have.
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You’re getting a bit good at this, aren’t you mate 
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