Happy NGD to me!

Slofinger

Blues Junior
It takes a real talent to fix a mistake without highlighting it. You have done it! Bridge and tailpiece holes are the worst to get right.
 

Shodai

Blues Junior
I love watching the progress on this project. I have neither the skill, nor the patience.

Very envious of guys that can do this kind of thing, and really looking forward to the final product.
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
Thanks for the comments!

As expected I've been taking some time off from this to work on other things - motorcycles, lawn work, etc. But one of the things I wanted to work on was a cabinet for a tube amp I put together a while ago. I wanted to do it using only things I already had sitting around, and get it done over the weekend. Well, the other things I was working on prevented me from finishing it, but I have stuck to only using things I have around.

Anyway, here are the basics. A Firefly amp (about 1.5 watts IIRC) built off a printed circuit board. Pine I had originally bought for a shelf. An oval speaker I ordered for this a couple years ago. I should have measured things out to get the speaker more even but I was just tossing it together at that point. It's rough, I know.
Amp_5269.jpg


Max dimensions were dictated by the size of my bandsaw. I couldn't cut anything off the board that was longer than 12" so I couldn't make it as tall as originally planned. Ok, I could have made a couple cuts by hand for longer pieces but I'm lazy. It worked out. Instead of leaving room to change tubes in the cabinet, the chassis will slide out of the back when needed. I don't have any of the pieces installed to keep the chassis in place yet.
Amp_5279.jpg



It will have a removable front panel that holds the grill cloth and allows the speaker to be changed. I am not a big fan of plywood but it was all I had that would fit. I'll also print out some sort of faceplate for it.
Amp_5283.jpg


This has been on that list for literally years... it's not what I originally envisioned but it'll do. Chances are I'll play around with it for an afternoon and then stick it on the shelf next to the other tube amps I rarely use...
 

Many Moons

Biking+Blues=Bliss
Wow!!!! Boutique amps as well DD?? Is there no end to your talent?? Like I said before, I envy your skills. I'm currently working on a kit guitar and it's taking me forever, and all I'm doing is bolting things together!!! You'll have made this one from scratch, and a amp from scratch before I finish mine!!:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
I "finished" up the amp and screwed around with it for a while. It has a couple glitches but it works. The thing is I like my two other tube amps more, in fact this one didn't even make the shelf they are on, it's been put back on the shelf downstairs, next to the VT15 I haven't even plugged in for years. Anywhos, this is how it ended up. I may print out a faceplate for it at some point?
Amp_5300.jpg


I've been working on the neck. I think it's done being shaped, but I screwed up a couple areas. Nothing that will make it unusable and having no finish means I can still tweak it at a later date if I feel the need. My typical mistake building necks is I don't take enough material off and they end up being relatively massive. This one is the other extreme, it feels like a knife to me! Maybe if I do another it will be just right? Excuse the poor lighting, I really should do something about that. but you get the idea of what it'll look like.
Neck_5400.jpg


And the front
Neck_5412.jpg



Here's a little more detail on the dots. It also shows some of the damage on the fingerboard, most of which will be hidden by the frets when they get installed.
Neck_5420.jpg
 

JestMe

Student Of The Blues
IMHO that amp has that cool home grown look about it, which makes it cool.

The guitar looks very cool too. Coming out nice and has a real professional look to it.

thanks for sharing.
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
I put the frets in today. So far I like the material, though if I do this again I'll get the next size up. Or maybe not? I haven't played anything with frets this size, maybe I'll like them. The material was easy to work with, I haven't tried stainless yet but while I was working on the ends of these I did think "I'm glad these aren't stainless" a couple times.

The gold color isn't overwhelming, along with all the brown and the "orange" dots it will work fine.
Neck_5434.jpg


In some lighting you might not even notice they are gold?
Neck_5438.jpg


But now it's time to work on the body again. Sanding, grain filling, then spraying assuming I can clean up my shop enough to clear out a spray area and/or the weather cooperates. I need it to be nice to move a couple bikes, and I need to move a couple bikes to clear out the spray area.
Jag_5430.jpg
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
Zombie thread alert!

It seems I stopped updating this before I even stopped working on it. Since last posting on this thread I've retired, sold off a few (vehicle) projects, and pulled a long dormant motorcycle project out of the corner of the shop to start working on again. This week I started doing a clean up of the shop and that included cleaning off the bench this thing got buried on. Since I've been moving it around I figured I'd do an update here. Spoiler alert - it still isn't finished but it's close.

This started as a project for a guitar forum I'm on. That thread has a lot more detail (aka rambling) about what's going on with it. In that thread when I was sharing the plan, I wrote this about the finish:

"The finish remains to be seen. Preliminary idea was mentioned in an earlier post - I'm thinking an "Ollie Burst". Something akin to a tobacco burst. This is Ollie, so black brown and white. I noticed the other day that in the sunlight even his black fur has a tinge of brown to it, so I think the brown I used on my last burst would work well."

IMG_3087.JPG


When I wrote that, I wasn't really sure what an "Ollie burst" would be. That part is done though, so a few catch up posts.

Here's what the front looked like with sealer on it. I can't remember if it's been sanded yet here.
Body_5461.jpg


And what the back looked like after the second round of grain filler.
Body_3606.JPG

 
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DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
This post is stolen from the other forum

I have everything I should need to do the finish on it so it came down to making the final decison on doing a traditional tobacco burst, or stuck with my plan and try an "Ollie Burst" with white in place of the amber. Tobacco burst would be easier since I know what that is. Ollie burst is a gamble since I'm still not sure what that means and it may look pretty horrible when done.

Today I finally got around to starting to spray it. The direction I decided to go should be obvious.
Paint_5607.jpg


If it ends up looking horrible I'll sand it down and spray it all black.

I'm using Stewart Macdonald nitro and so far I'm not at all a fan. I used Re-Ranch materials on the last one I did and think their stuff is nicer. The Stew-Mac nozzles are generic crap with no "fan" pattern to then. Re-Ranch has different nozzles depending on what you're spraying that have an actual shape to the spray. I don't know how you can do a burst with no fan pattern - I'm hoping I can find the nozzles from re_ranch and use those. I also had an issue with drips but that may have been from my glove getting into the spray? In any case for the price of this stuff it doesn't spray any better than the Duplicolor paints you can get at your local discount place. Oh sure, the Stew-Mac stuff is nitro. if that matters to you then, um, I guess it matters to you. So far this has only convinced me further that I don't like nitro. Some day I will get off my lazy butt and spray a guitar with high quality autmotive paint out of a real gun. So much faster... once I get the equipment set up!
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
Once that was done this got shoved to the side while bikes took over for the season. Also, I've been giving my various projects a lot of thought and it seems guitars aren't one of my priorities anymore, this will probably be the last one I build.

I'm working through projects that have been sitting around and this one finally rose to the top again. I had made progress from my last update but didn't post anything. I figured out what an Ollieburst is. Unfortunately, things didn't work out so well with the spray cans so it was only partially successful.

Basically what I ended up doing was leaving sanding scratches so the colors had more of a "furry" look to the transition. It worked out pretty well, but was messed up by some other paint problems I was having. And, of course every time I tried to fix things I made something else worse. And then putting the clear on top brought out colors from the lower layer as the paint melted or whatever nitro does and I just left well enough alone. I think if I was using a real gun in a spray booth instead of spray cans outdoors it would have worked out pretty well for what I wanted. Lesson learned - I only had one shot at it and fixes made things worse.

Here's the front during one of the attempted repairs.
Burst_3703.JPG


Here's the back after spraying/before sanding.
Burst_3810.JPG


And after sanding. You can see the dots from the paint not laying down smooothly, then when it's sanded the white showed through where the brown should have been.
Burst_5866.JPG


The repair of that went pretty poorly - I ended up spraying the back solid black.

And that's how it sat for months until recently when I decided to rough out the pick guard. Then it sat like THAT for a couple more months until I decided to put the pickup routes in the pickguard and finish that up.

Here's where it ended up.
IMG_4112.JPG


I am working on the nut so I can lay out the strings and postition the pick guard. I found out the tuners I was going to use are too big - the buttons are too close together. I have some that will fit better but I was planning on putting them back on the guitar they came from, and selling that guitar. Hmm... I may use them here and skip ordering new ones.

Two takeaways from my recent progress - 1) I hate Stew-Mac spray can finishes. 2) This thing is going to be heavy! I haven't weighed it yet but when I picked it up this morning I was surprised how heavy it was, and it didn't even have any hardware on it yet!
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
I wired the pickguard, and decided to change the wire routing to simplify things. The new routing meant I had to mod the routing on the body so I fired up the router and made another slot.
Route_4114.JPG


I drilled a hole for the ground wire early on, but then I inserted the bridge post with no wire. Oops. Pull the post, insert wire, re-insert post. It always annoys me when I try to remove a pick guard from a Strat and the output jack's wires trap it. So when I went to install the pickguard, I decided to try a different approach. Pulled the bridge post again, pulled the ground wire, put some foil on the body, shoved the post back in, again, and then put some foil under the volume pot. Install the guard, the foil creates a ground, no? In hindsight I shouldn't have pulled the ground wire in case this doesn't work... live and learn. And yes I realize that tail of foil on the guard doesn't do anything.
Ground_4118.JPG


That done, I drilled the rest of the screw holes and installed the guard.

Then on to installing the tuners. I decided to use the set I had pulled from another guitar. Reamed the peghead just a tad to fit the first one. Then the second. Then looked at the bench and realized I only had three tuners left. This is not a five string guitar. I can't find that sixth tuner anywhere!

So I took a pic of it how it sits and will hold off until I find the tuner. I know the best way to find the tuner is to order another set but I'm holding off on that for now.
Jag_4126.JPG


That picture doesn't show off the brown in the Ollieburst very well... it's there.
 

DesmoDog

Desmo was my dog. RIP big guy
And that was the last post on the other forum. So now we're real time.

A few random comments - the finish was inspired by dog fur. It's not supposed to be a fade/burst type thing, the colors are supposed to be strands/lines. I think it'd work better with a real gun and better finishes. No, I KNOW it'd work better with a real gun. I'm not sure why I keep using spray cans, in the end it doesn't save any time. I spend more time trying to fix things when using spray cans.

Using this bridge means I should have angled the neck pocket. I suspected there woul dbe issues there so no big surprise. Instead I put a wedge under th eneck, but it's too thick. It would work but it will work better if I drop the neck a touch but keep it angled. That and finishing th enut are all it needs to be finished... I think. At one point I thought I might have to drop the bridge to get the strings close enough to the bridge pickup, but I don't think that's going to be an issue.

The thing is, I hate making nuts. I get worse at it each time I try! Seriously. I have at least 4 guitars that need the nuts to be finished. One of them is a 12 string. you'd think by now I'd have it figured out but nope, I keep screwing them up.

Anyway, here are a couple pics of how it sits now.

It's only got one string to get an idea of the neck angle/string height/pickup height.
IMG_4764.JPG


When it's truly finished I'll have to get a shot of it next to Ollie. The finish makes more sense if you're familiar with tri-color dogs...
IMG_4757.JPG


Yeah, the spray can finish limitiations got the best of me on the back. I finally just painted it black. That's dirt/dust ont eh back by the way, not a thin finish. At least I think it is! I didn't notice anything in person.
IMG_4762.JPG
 
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