Aug 31 - Sept 2 2015 - More of the neck

Here are two more pictures of the neck from the previous post after all of the finish spraying was done.

 I shaved the neck heel so that the neck would attach to the body at the proper angle (what we normally call doing a "neck reset"), got everything mated up nicely, and glued the neck back on. Unfortunately, at that point I realized I had made a beginner mistake. While I had the neck off (since the very beginning of rebuilding this instrument) I never once checked to make sure that the truss rod worked properly. As soon as I started trying to turn the adjuster nut, it sheared right off of the rod.

That's how, in less than 3 hours, I glued a neck onto a guitar and ended up taking it right back off.

holes drilled to steam the neck off... again... 

neck with broken truss rod, new truss rod, and removed fingerboard 

fingerboard being glued back onto the neck after truss rod replacement

During all of that glue-up time, Scott had me start disassembling my next guitar to rebuild. This one is still a Harmony, but it's a classical guitar instead of the normal steel-string guitars that we do. It'll be my first classical rebuild. It's actually built more similarly to a steel-string guitar than a traditional classical guitar, but I'll at least get to build a classical bridge and install classical style bracing.

24-28 Aug 2015 - Fixing up a neck and setting up a Strat

Sorry this post is a little bit late; Blogger has been acting up for the last few days. Anyway, here it is:

These pictures are the progression of the neck that I showed you in my last post.

all divots and scratches filled and brown stain applied to light spots

divots and scratches on front of headstock filled with black wood filler

front of headstock oversprayed with black; the clear coats will blend the logo in better

At this point, I faded in some brown tint on the headstock and the neck heel to hide the lighter spots still under the brown stain.

tint and clear coats done, ready for final wet-sanding

wet-sanded and sprayed with one last coat of clear, flat lacquer

I also ended up working one client guitar last week. The below pictured Fender American Stratocaster (unusually equipped with EMG pickups and preamp) came in for a set up and some electrical work. The electrical issue was actually just that the battery (for the EMG preamp) was dead. I replaced the battery and gave the guitar a basic setup.