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I checked a few of your pics....they were 1.8 Mb... a quarter of that is ample for good detail. There are free apps that automatically resize your photos. Anyways keep on posting however you like. I will just keep on knitting my socks while things are loading

I literally halved the images for the last post.
Maybe it’s throttled in your area - I don’t know.
Imgur are slow to load at the best of times.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I have managed to lose 8,000 pictures - Obviously lots of progress shots went with that bunch.

I will piss around with everything and see what I can recover. If not, I'll dump some "all done" shots and that'll be that til I get bored again.

Watch this space.

Ok.

Here we go.

It's time.



This stuff might be useful.



James makes a template . . . . .



. . . . . And promptly fucks it up somehow.



beavis_and_butthead_laughing.wav



What on earth might I be doing here?



Yeah - ok. Not often how one uses polish.





So, where the polish is, is where it's high. Where there's no polish, it's about where I want it. This is how I levelled it.
Crude, but functional.



This carried on for a while.



Not sure what's going on here - Think I'm showing the buggerring in the finish. All the cracks around the pots - How the hell does this even happen? They were there long before I got to it.



Oh. Ok. Guess that's ... Not the one.



... In which case, I shall have a clamp orgy.





The extra bits of wood are there cuz they're flat. This is me gluing its new ears on. The stuff I used looked real good, except, I didn't actually notice it was ply until I started doing the final carve. Ahh well, least it'll be strong.
I couldn't leave it there, though - I was just getting started.



Let's do something about the body... Again.



I think I had a[nother] go at it with the scouring pad and the palm sander.

.... Aaaaaand I think This is the end of this particular day, so I'll break the post here.

Makes more sense to me to have separate posts so here we are.

Also, yes - This must've been another day cuz it had glue.



Clamp orgy in full effect.



Ears: Featuring bits of paper strings came in so the clampy wood doesn't get too involved



They're just long enough. Wasting less!



You can also see they're too chunky - Brilliant. I can bring them down to an acceptable thickness.





And... Yeah. That's the truss adjust. So I'd best sort that out.
How bout a veneer kinda... Thing. 3 piece, like the 70s les pauls.



Hold on ... Don't want to glue the truss.



Sanded the ... Back thingy to fit snug.



But, what to do about that little ... Divoty skate ramp thing?



Why, a volute of course!
I made a good go of it. Didn't quite work.



Then I thought ... Ok, hold on. Why not make a mould of it with dick shaped blu tack?



... Nearly.



Here. That's better.



In we go.



... Yip, everyone ...



This volute ended up being a bit shit, but I'll come back to it properly shortly.
In the meantime, new template cuz I fuggered the old one right proper good like.
I was also having a go at the pickguard in the background - I'll detail this later on too.



Stepdad brought home the scroll saw again. Foolishly let slip to a colleague why he was borrowing it - Said colleague is going to give me a guitar to look at and attempt repair on if it's within my bounds at his earliest convenience.



Ok, but ...



... Yeah, there we go.





... Zing!



Now, I'm going to break the post there cuz the next photos have daylight and these were all taken with the lights on.

What's James got here?



Nah, not drugs.
It's a bone nut, pre cut to suit les paul style stuff.



Enough of that, let's get ugly.



Quite surprised how accurate this thing is. It was tricky holding it right but I got there.
Also here is a nutjob. It needed a shim.





Burgers, shitty warm beer, sonic youth, all wrapped up in the shed.



How's the volute going?







... Hmm. Ok.
Let's just line it all up for the tricky bit.





lol, my old template with the holes in the wrong place and is also about 3% too small



The state of it all!



Then I had a real good idea... You'll love this.



Template I made after the one I buggered was about 70% size of the jvpp spec fuckhuge image I scaled down on the scanner - As you can see, it's a tad smaller, but it's about bang on the size I want (oh, my!). Now I have more meat to play with (Oh, my!)



Another post break as dictated by amount of not sunlight in pictures.

Annoyingly, a whole bunch of pictures are missing. It is with a facepalm of biblical proportions that I skip ahead heaps in terms of missing progress and skipping bits to just fuckin finish posting and go to bed

The missing pictures include me flipping off the old volute, improvising a new one (which is heaps less pretty but loads more functional), playing with the jigsaw, doing a fuckload of sanding, and ... some other shit that sort of adds comic effect.

Anyway, on we plod:

The wood I made the new template out of (made it, stuck it on, drilled holes, sanded it properly) looked really cool. Yes, it is solid. The ears are ply.
It was a bit of a shame to paint it, but it left a pretty cool texture (trans black anyone? Reow)



No time for pissing around today.



TRUSS COVER ON
NEW HOLES DRILLED
NEW SCREWS BUGGERED UP TO LOOK LIKE THE OLD ONES YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH



Open book looking loads better.



Yes, I masked off the truss properly this time.



... Along with the sides, and back, which I ended up sanding nicely.



Yip, that beehive looking scrotum type deal is the improvised volute. Shortly thereafter, I realised there was no way I was getting the fuckery out of the neck, so I went right ahead and lopped most of the finish off. Feels pretty good really.





Neck heel proved tricky. I did tidy it up.



Ohoho, and there was a tin of stain in the shed too!



It blended surprisingly well.



I gently cut the nut (oh, my!) and got rid of the overspray on it.



Ferrules...!



... Pickguard!!



Fuck yeah, go listen to camel



Tuners...!... Oh.



The splitting didn't continue, and a code brown was not had.





They're all in line this time, and none of them are on the piss. I found a way to keep them straight.



Thickness not bad either.



Open book looking real good now.



Oh, yeah - The nut.



Literally cut and polished.



This is as finished as she's going to get until the decals arrive and I give her a proper setup what with the new frets and all.











I think I've done pretty well with attempt two. The shape and size are right (Oh, my!), the spray job is shitloads better; everything's far more consistent.

When the decals arrive, I will whack them on (dur) super carefully, and probably spray poly over to keep them all in one place.

I had a good go at the body with the palm sander and a careful whack of thinners - I think the gold looks alot more ... Authentic? Instead of the sort of plastic looking gold it was before.

Hopefully the following pictures and eventual "reveal" video shock in a good way. For now, that'll do.

Even better

woah woah man what's goin on here???

When I see the mismatched screws my eyes bleed

-snort-
Ok, I guess that’s fair.

What in God's name possessed you to do this ?
I mean I love a good clamping as much as the next guy but...

Excellent toil though. And image rich (poor Jvpp)

Which bit?

They are about 33% the original size. If they take ages to load, it’s his end that’s not playing the game.