Alright. Yea its chilly. But it could be so much worse. Glad you moved on with the project. You will like the bone nut better, most likely. I put bone nut and saddle into my acoustic and I could tell a difference, that was nice. I have yet to do this in my electric.
I was reading on a DIY luthier page months ago. He was saying a great alternative to buying nut files is getting a set of cheap guage feelers and cutting notches along the edges of the stacked group with a dimond file or a dremal. They will cut very well and you can dial in your width very easy since they are numbered.
If you look hard enough you can sometimes find deals in odd places. Like a Japanese website that sells anime merch, action figures and model kits.
Iāve ordered 3 sets of slot files, a fret end dressing file, and a set of crowning files from them and Iāve been very pleased with the service and the product.
[redacted] I canāt find a PayPal email to confirm what I actually paid so Iām clipping this part out. In Yen it was 13,850 and 8,400 between two separate orders, there was a third I canāt find anything for, but that was in 2021 and with out a conversion rate. . .
Right now this set is ~$74 USD.
EDIT: Lee Valley also stocks these but Iāve not checked their prices, they were considerably more expensive when I bought mine.
$70 is a bit more than would likely be willing to pay unless I was planning more than a 1-2 use application on these. I was using this kit to see what I could learn and while I normally buy nice quality, I also plan to use the item a lot when I do.
The MusicNomad set is about $90 and a StewMac set for about $80 on Amazon. Both of these look pretty good. The MusicNomad set looks easier to use. StewMac usually has nice tools.
what I got is super cheap and I know I will need to use them carefully. They wonāt stand up any abuse.
They do! I didnāt see that until you said so. They have poor lifetime acording to reviews, but I only wanted to do this one nut. If I find myself doing more, the StewMac files are a lot like the Ibanez ones. Iād do some better shopping if I plan to spend that much.
The weather has been unusually cool for an unusual long time, but it is āroom temperatureā in the garage today and should be a bit over that for the next few days. I started prepping the body and wiped a second coat of linseed on the neck. Neck looks more consistent now, and I expect a third coat will be just right. It is tacky in just a couple places after about 18 hours to dry, so maybe I will apply the last coat tonight.
The interior of the cavities for the electronics was pretty roughly routed out. I used a Dremel to create a smooth surface and round off the edges of most cuts. I was not comfortable with my ability to control the chattering of the Dremel on the surface areas, even on low speed, so I simply used a disc out of the Dremel tools and manually scraped it around to flatten the cavity and neck joint areas. This seemed to feel like the right way, not taking off much wood and being very controllable.
I then applied wood filler based on recommendations from sites around the web. They tell me that Mahogany will do better with filler. I have never used filler before, and this stuff definitely makes a mess when you sand it. First image is before sanding the filler, second is after.
Iāll need to tape it off and the smoother cavities will make that task a lot more reliable. When I apply copper tape later, it will sit in there a lot better as well.
For painting, I think I will wait for warmer weather. It is unusually cold so I should not need to wait long. My plan is to use a spray can and I was told by the salesman not to do more than three coats. There is no mention of minimum temperature on the can.
I did wait for the temperature to reach closer to room temperatures. I finished sanding the surface and took the body out to spray it black.
I am not terribly skilled at painting and was too close to a couple times so got runs. I was also not aggressive enough and had too lightly coated the edges in a few places. I had a very rough surface with both high areas and also areas that seemed like I did not have any filler in the wood. I had a total of 6 coats of paint before I was satisfied with coverage. I sanded with 220 grit after the second coat to clean up my drips. This did not hide my mistake very well as the paint still showed the problem when the light was right.
I was a little too early for the sanding. The paint was left to dry 2 days, but it still was rolling into balls under the sandpaper. I was feeling impatient and with my wife urging me to not worry about it, I decided to leave the finish looking a bit worn. I worked my way to 800 grit and was still having some trouble with needing to clean off the sandpaper every few passes. The finish mostly smoothed out, but was dull and I could not seem to buff it into being shiny. There were still a few low spots that were the original shiny of the fresh paint. I suspect this will look well worn in a couple years of play.
I didnāt get a picture of the copper tape in the body cavities. I made sure the tape was just over the top so it would contact the pickguard. I re-covered the underside of the pickguard with copper tape because the foil on it was not covering more than the pots and I couldnāt measure electrical contact with it. Once I was done, I was able to measure continuity across any two points.
I set the neck in place and held it with clamps to screw it down. I saw this in a video somewhere and wonder if is really helped. I doubt it. The neck sat straight and at a good height, so I did not excpect to need to resort to any shimming.
Next was installing the bridge. This is a six-screw floating style. I aligned it so that the underside would just contact the body at the point the screws were just starting to limit that movement. The opposide direction would already be limited by the body. I would later se the spring tension so the bridge sat parallel to the body when it was tuned up. The spring tension would need to be changed if I ever changed the string gauge.
I installed the output jack and was ready for strings. The kit came with strings that looked pretty bad. I decided to use them for the initial install and change them soon after any trouble was worked out. I did a horrible job of stringing them on the tuners, but it did tune up and made noise.
Now it was time for basic setup stuff. I roughly set the saddle heights and checked the relief. There was a bit of backbow, so I followed the assembly guide for the truss rod. I ran out of adjustment and still had back-bow. Weird. I looked at the truss rod picture again and wondered if I had it backwards. Yes! I did! I adjusted it the other way and the neck started to show proper relief. My dad used to tease me that if there were three ways to turn a screw, Iād do it wrong twice. Oh, the joys of dyslexiaā¦ I got the relief set and then went to adjust the intonation.
The string 6 intonation is a bit off and the adjustment is as far back as I can get it. All the other strings are fine. It is not so far off I can hear it, I can just see it on the tuner. I am more than willing to leave it as it is. āfixingā this would be a major endeavor.
I was VERY happy that the nut was an ok depth. I did not need to mess with it at all. It is a little low, but not too low. I find that the barre F is pretty easy to push down!
Since I had leveled out the frets when I did the neck work, there were no buzzing positions once I got the string heights set up properly.
First Play
The sound was generally pleasant! I had pretty low volume, but that made sense given the electrical measurements I made on the pickguard assembly. Volume worked, Tone worked (except for position 1), so that agreed with what I measured. One thing was weird though ā string 2 was very quiet. There were no adjustments on the pickups and they were not set up with staggered heights. I was a little concerned how Iād deal with this.
I also noticed that I couldnāt palm mute very well. The saddle screws were holding my hand above the strings. I needed to take care of that by grinding down the screws so they were flush or just below the saddle when the height was set. I needed to take off quite a bit.
I placed the set screw into my drill press and used a cutoff wheel on the Dremel to shorten it. I filed it to a clean edge and re-installed and set the saddle height again.
lol. Iāll take a close up and youāll see it is pretty rough. Very dull and scratched.
I have been thinking about a headstock logo - not sure what to do. I have a granddaughter visiting soon and she likes to draw. Might be a task she will like.
Iāll put up a sound sample some time before I am done as well.
