L5½-S Progress
So far so good - I've just radiused the fretboard and it's very straight and flat (well, cylindrical I guess).
I put 'binding' around the headstock - not really binding because it's the full thickness of the headstock. The tight curves were difficult to do. The way I did it was obviously the wrong way. How do you shape binding to fit a very tight curve like a Gibson headstock?
Next up - make sure fret slots are deep enough for frets, make a plastic headed hammer, sacrifice to fret gods...
Anything I should do before I glue the fretted neck to the body?
I put 'binding' around the headstock - not really binding because it's the full thickness of the headstock. The tight curves were difficult to do. The way I did it was obviously the wrong way. How do you shape binding to fit a very tight curve like a Gibson headstock?
Next up - make sure fret slots are deep enough for frets, make a plastic headed hammer, sacrifice to fret gods...
Anything I should do before I glue the fretted neck to the body?
Views: 433
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Donald A. Fortune on
-
Hey Penql -- looks like you are coming rite along with your project--looks good --
Question before I start??? is the heel of the neck ment to be a set or a bolt on??
Donald
-
Permalink Reply by Penql on
-
It's a set neck - looks like a bolt on because the body is only 1-3/8" thick (the L6-S I'm sort of basing it on was only 1-1/4 thick). The extra bit beyond the fretboard mostly gets routed away for the neck pickup.
The fret gods were kind today - I used stainless because a friend had some - hammered in without any trouble. I read all of Frank's fantastic frets.com fret-fu articles last night. In particular this picture about making a slot depth gauge was helpful.
Here you can see the extra neck bit, and the slot gauge. Like you, I was a cabinetmaker for many years, so you'll appreciate the drywall screw in there for a clamp :)
-
-
OK I see what you are saying here- is the neck pocket done on the body yet??
As far as the dry wall screw goes, I use thoes things for making jigs and moulds of all sorts-- (cant live with out em)
BTW-- I like your design of the fret markers in the finger board too...
Best to ya guy and keep up the gr8 work :)
Donald
-
-
Thanks - I got the idea for the star shaped fret markers from a group of stars near the north star called Kemble's Cascade (astronomy is my other hobby) - and 7 pointed stars after the Australian flag :)
No neck pocket yet - I plan to do this sensible jig.
-
-
I like that jig looks better than the one I made just to do the pockets that I have been doing--
-
-
Well life got in the way for a bit, but I did finally finish it. Thanks to all who urged me to go with the bubinga fretboard, it's all good. I really need a treatise or article or discussion of how to properly set up an electric (nut, bridge, neck I mean - I know how to plug it in ;-) ) . Can anyone recommend something like the frets.com articles but geared toward electric set up?
She sounds real good.
-
-
hey guy -- nice work [ ('''Y Y''') applauds ] -- what did you use for electronics?? looks like you have a tone swich on it-- Bet its a dream to play too--
best to you
Donald
-
-
Thanks Donald, the mini switches do bridge, neck, both series, both parallel, then there's volume, varitone amount and 11 position varitone (position 11 is bypass). I'll change the chicken head knob to another top hat as soon as I can get a set screw in to it. Lots of different sounds.
-
-
By the sound of things I bet that bad boy rely screams :-)
Donald
© 2025 Created by Frank Ford.
Powered by
