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Do any of you use some kind of adhesive in hole that you install the neck bolt nuts on the neck?

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I use the brass inserts from LMI, you can buy them at a hardware store as well. With those inserts one does not need an adhesive, I still use a little bit of thin CA on the outside of the insert.

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Cool just want to make sure they don't pull out or turn when I'm tightening.

I have a question about the cap strip that goes in the truss rod cavity. Can someone tell me how that all works. I know how a truss rod works. But does the strip need to be glued how much space should I give the truss rod cavity with the cap in it.

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And what materials can I use. Would my bracing material work?

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If you're talking about the filler strip for above the TR, I'd use a hard wood, like Maple. The point to that piece is to aid the truss rod in neck movement, which is the whole point to installing one to begin with. It should sit flush on top of the TR, but make sure the rod is still functioning, and yes, glue it in. I use Titebond to glue the filler strip in place. For that Gibby style truss rod, if you're still using that, I cut a 1/4" channel, thus a 1/4" filler strip. Some trussrods, however, don't require a filler strip.

So I was wondering about gluing the back on and I better ask now. When I was gluing the front on I could see where the kerfing met the sound board and I was able to adjust the clamping pressures where needed to insure a tight fit. How exactly do you see the kerf that meets the backboard? Or how do you insure it's tight enough? Mirrors?

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
- Carl Sagan

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I know we are supposed to tape around our bridge to give it a lil bit of a mold so it doesn't slip while gluing. The problem with that is keeping the bridge in one place while doing said method. There was no way for me to measure hold and tape. So I came up with this Idea. I set the bridge down on some 100 pound paper and very carefully traced it out. I then used a razor blade to cut the bridge pattern out. I did this four times using the 100# then gave it two layers of poster board. What I have now is a perfect mold that I can set the bridge into and measure out the placement and to use for gluing in the right place. It's heavy enough I can use two hands to measure and move with out it moving completely out of line when I let go. Just tape in place and go.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
- Carl Sagan

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All right so I learned the same lesson twice in two days. Basically there is a right way and a wrong way to do something. First was the truss rod. I did this crap completely bass ackwards. I clamped the rod to the table and was trying to turn the thread die by hand. I tried this for a few hours, making my hands so sore. Then something just clicked and told me to put the die in the clamp. So that I did and then used a pair of vice grips to hold the rod and allow me to push down down while I turned. Almost instant gratification. It started a lil hard then easy. Got myself a nice lil double threaded truss rod. Just have to install it now and seize the thread.

The second thing could have been a lot easier. My friend that helps me is a professional contractor in the carpentry business. And we were both worried about alignment and getting the holes to match up perfectly. So we made this jig to hold the neck in a drill press to make the first neck bolt hole and then tried to use a bolt sized bit to make the first body block hole. I made good measurements but the body block hole was a lil off, it was a tad higher and a lil left. This really upset my friend, and he was ready to quit afraid he had screwed up really bad. I immediately saw how to fix it, but had a DR appointment so I assured him it was cool cause it was and we parted ways to go do what we had to do. I get home and realized what we should have done was drill the body block holes first where they needed to be a with a wider bit than what I actually needed to fit the bolt. Then flip the body over and use a drill bit with a brad from the inside to mark exactly where the neck nut holes needed to be. The extra lil width width in the neck block holes allows you room to align everything just right. Simple. So to fix my alignment problem I just drilled the 2nd body block hole where I wanted it then bored out the first body block hole. I then is talked the first nut and bolt and properly aligned everything making sure the neck was flush with the body then used my bradded bit to mark the second hole. So then I drilled the 2nd neck hole and installed the hardware.

So now I have my neck attached to my body I can now set my fret board and mark and glue my bridge, glue my backboard and do whatever finishing I'm gonna do.

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I have never actually had to adjust a truss rod, so how do you know when it's adjusted? Right now it's just at the point where it made a noise and I could feel it.

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The truss rod adjusts the relief, or the curvature of the neck due to string tension.
Fret a string at the 1st and 14th fret, and measure the height of the string above the 7th fret. It should be between 0.003" and 0.007", depending on several other factors. If it's in that range, I usually leave it alone. You can home in a bit closer to "optimum", but it's usually not worth the effort. It only makes a few thousands of an inch difference in action height, which may be significant to some electric players, not so much for acoustic players.

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Installed my frets to the fret board yesterday which was not a fun job. I plan on buying a prefetted board next time if at all possible. So now I'm ready to set the fret board on the neck. Anybody any tips or tricks they would like to give before I start?

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I've seen many different ways of doing this, but I learned this way and it worked for me. It's really important that you don't have ANY slippage of the FB when gluing. I don't fret the first and 11th frets (you can pull those if already in and you want to try it this way).
Drill 1/16" hole into the fret slot OUTSIDE of the truss rod area. One hole in the first and two holes in the 11th. Drill so that your hole ends up about 1/4" into the neck wood.
I use (3) 1/16" brad type nails and these will be indexing pins to help avoid slipping.
When clamping the FB, I use a home made plywood caul, tapered to about the FB shape and which has two lateral strips of thin self adhesive cork lining which helps protect the frets and also helps the caul fit the FB radius. Don't' forget to drill some bigger holes in the caul at the basic locations where your index nails will poke up from the FB.

I cover the truss rod with a piece of blue tape and butter the neck and FB extension area of the body (need glue over the whole area but don't go crazy with it so you don't get skating) then REMOVE THE TAPE and place the FB with index nails. Cover with caul and clamp. I always have a clamping caul inside the body at the FB extension .
I also do a full dry fit before the process to be sure I have everything I need, that the clamps are set close to the opening they need, and I use C clamps to really clamp it tight. I've attached a picture of my last guitar FB after glue up.
I'm sure others will pipe up with their own techniques.

Cool thanks for that tip. My fretboard is now glued to the neck. Before I started though and since I hope to be able to switch it to another body if needed I first loosened up the neck bolts then put some aluminum foil around the area I didn't want glued. This works great as a barrier I have done this for years. It just peels off and it's so thin and compresses easily so it doesn't give you gaps. I then hand tightened the neck bolts moving everything into its proper alignment then I started gluing and clamping using the above method. I also made sure to put a clamp below the heel on the body block insure the fret board and neck were completely aligned and touching. After tightening the clamps and removing sqeeze out I finally tightened the neck bolts to full tight. And let it set.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
- Carl Sagan

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Ok I'm at the last most critical part of the build. The bridge now I know we've done some talking about it but I'm still very freakin nervous about it because if I'm wrong removing and resetting will be a problem nobody wants to have to do.

All right my neck is now 25.51 scale which put into the Stewmac fret calculator gives me two measurements of 25.599 at the treble side from inside the edge of the nut to the inside edge of the saddle. And on the bass side 25.725 edge to edge. Using Johns math trick I converted these down to Treble 25 19/32 and bass 25 23/32. First on my " compensated saddle ". And yes i turned the saddle around. Do I use the inside edge as my measurement or do I actually measure to where the string comes off the edge of saddle proper. I think it's the first. My mold worked great by the way to get it measured and in place. I taped it down and it's not moving. All right back to measurements. To locate it easily I measured the whole fret board which was 18 3/32 so I took that and subtracted the treble measurement 25 19/32 which is 7/12 inches. When I measured the other side it was in perfect alignment but the measurement was 25 23/32 - 18 3/32 which gave me 7 and 5/8. Like I said when the first was In alignment the second was too. I'm going to show my math and I would really appreciate it if someone would double check my math and please if you own a 25.5 scale guitar take some measurements and make sure they are right. Like I said nobody wants to have to remove and re glue a bridge.

Scale 25.51
25.599---------.599 X 32= 19.168 round to 19-------25 19/32 Treble
25.725---------.725 X 32= 23.2 round to 23----------25 23/32 Bass

Fret board from inside of nut edge to bottom edge of fret board
18 3/32 - 25 19/32 = 7 20/32 Treble 7 5/8
18 3/32 - 25 23/32= 7 16/32 Bass. 7 1/2

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The math looks right, but where your fretboard ends is probably different from mine, even though they're both 25.5 scale. I've developed an easy
system that seems to work thus far; on my "yard stick" I measure from the nut to the center of the 12th fret and make a mark. Then I slide the yard stick down to start at the 12th and wherever that mark lies is where the center of the bridge sits. Since your bridge slot is already cut, you shouldn't need to do any "compensating" as that's already been done by bridge make, hence the reason for an angled bridge slot. Couple that with the compensated bridge you're using and as long as you on the center line with the above measurements the guitar should intonate as planned.

Just briefly reading through this bridge part of your thread looks like most advice has been predicated on you drilling the bridge slot, whereas you already have that done from the looks of the pics. Unless I'm missing something, of course, which wouldn't be out of the ordinary for me. Good luck!

I use this to locate my bridge.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Special_tools_for_Bridges/Saddlematic.html


I have replaced a lot of bridges and this makes it a breeze. It will work on any scale and has adjustable locater pins that you can set for the compensation on your saddle.

It is pretty much fool proof and much easier that trying to do the math.


I have been reading through your thread and we are somewhat in the same situation with first builds. I have repaired guitars for over 20 years and finally decided to start building. I had the same idea about building my dream guitar, a copy of a Gibson CF-100 (see my avatar) with the fluorine cutaway. After listening to the good people here at the forum they convinced me to start with a kit. I am currently building the LMI Parlor guitar and I am really glad I did. A cutaway guitar is a challenge for guys that have a lot of experience let alone a first time builder.

One observation I had was in the shots of you putting the braces on it didn't appear that you have any radius on the top or braces. Is that intentional? I have seen guitars with no radius but they are usually small parlor size guitars.

I applaud your effort and struggles and wish you the best.

Cheers,
Bob

Thanks Bob. No I actually bought a second soundboard and redid all my bracing. There were too many things on the first I was unsure about or didnt trust. The second one turned out better and I finished by arching the tops of the braces in my fine tuning process. I admit its been a struggle but I really appreciate all the help I got from this forum. I was gonna buy a kit but on a budget it was easier to buy piece by piece and gave me time to learn about each thing before I tried it. Plus i like a challenge.The thing that I thought would be the hardest turned out to be quite easy (bending the sides). Although next time ill do things a lil different and get a better shape. I think learning about and making the machine was by far the most fun of the whole project. Thanks for the link that will make a worthy investment for the next build but I've already spent my project money for the month. I was thinking I might be able to make a sort of guage by taking some leftover braces and fitting them inbetween the nut and saddle on the treble and bass ends of my starcaster and using them to guage the bridge. What I need is a longer ruler or yard stick accurate to a 16th or a 32nd.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
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I have this kind of piezo electric pickup. Where is the best place to put it on the soundboard?

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I'm no "Piezo Pro", but from the pic it looks like an under the saddle pickup. Usually you route a little channel, or some even stuff it into
the existing channel, and then put the saddle on top of it. There's a thought process that says if you place it on the soundboard, you
won't get as much natural amplification since the pickup is "picking up" more of the body than the string vibration.

Mottola has a "how to" on his webpage that might be good reading. Gets a smidge technical on the workings of piezo and I think he
makes his own, but it's basically the same thing you're facing;
http://www.liutaiomottola.com/PrevPubs/ ... sducer.htm

LMII website has Luthier du Jour vidéos by Robbie O Brien and he has one called "Pickups" that shows the installation of both an active and passive pickup. One is "under saddle" like this appears to be, and he shows how to do that. I'm not sure if he talks about how to adjust the saddle, but you can carefully (keeping it very flat) sand the amount off the saddle bottom that equals the thickness of the transducer. (That's much easier than trying to rout the saddle slot deeper ).

Okie dokie, but it did come with a sticky tab that the pickup is supposed to go through. Also I was digging around in my starcaster and it seems fender put theirs through the X brace close to the soundhole.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
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Ok I think I get it now. That was a itty bitty brace I was feeling. I also looked at the saddle on my SC and saw how much higher the saddle is compared to the one I'm installing in my build. So I'm guessing the under saddle placement will make my saddle reach the right height.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
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Be careful NOT to drill through your X Brace which will weaken it. I've seen people use a piece of tape on the bridge to mark where the x-brace crosses the corner of the bridge on the side of the saddle where you're drilling for the transducer to come through. That gives you a visual to avoid hitting the brace.

My collet adapter came in today so I was able to route the binding channel but I had a bad booboo. The pilot caught a piece of side wood that had a splinter chewed up a spot of my soundboard. The only thing I could think to do was make a patch and fill it the best I could. It will never be invisible but I'm hoping to get away with not painting it.

The first patch.


Filling in.

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In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
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Final result.

_________________
In order to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe.
- Carl Sagan

Check out F.O.F. Custom guitars on Facebook.

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