Routing

Well, I've got my Dremel Plunge router attachment, although now I am kind of wishing I'd bought a Skil router instead. For what I'm doing it probably doesn't matter.  Unfortunately, still don't have the cheapo body I bought for experimenting, so I won't able to do anything until next weekend.  Anyway, I don't have the neck yet anyway.

I found a nice page at the Rockler site that explains what some of the different router bits do.  It seems that for my very specific task, I might be most correct using a rabbeting bit, but it also seems as though I'll be fine with my "plain" router bit.

The Plan

1. Rout area beneath the trem posts
2. Glue in mulberry block
3. Cover with wood filler and blacken with a sharpie
4. Put neck on, securing with clamp if holes not drilled or not aligned
5. Put trem in place
6. Put on high and low E strings to help with positioning
7. After tons of measuring, mark holes for trem posts
• Idea: put pickguard on and use that for a sanity check on location of posts
8.  Drill holes using rockler thing
9. Insert posts
1. Need rubber hammer?
2. Glue in with epoxy or CA?
10. Drill neck holes if needed

Crap

I need to buy some more stuff

• neck plate and screws
• strap buttons
• Volume/Tone/Blend knobs
• string tree

Useful Paulownia Info

From this post on tdpri:

some tips in using paulownia ... now, this is a soft wood - perhaps softer than soft white pine. do not over tighten neck screws. replace all strap button screws with ones much longer - i use 3" steel screws. pre-drill bridge, control plate and pickguard screws with a drill bit no larger in diameter than 1/16". after screwing in a screw, back it out and you can strengthen that hole with a few drops of quality thin cya - allow time for the cya to harden! do not use a standard tele jack cup, instead use an electrosocket jack cup and do not pre-drill the screw holes - just screw gun the screws directly into the wood.   

Another Build

For some reason or other, I'm doing another build. Specs will be

• GFS Paulownia Daphne Blue body
• Allparts SRSF-SW neck
• 22 jumbo stainless steel frets (.110" x .055"), modern
• Maple neck with vintage tinted finish
• Rosewood fingerboard with Abalone oval inlays
• Compound radius 9.5" - 12"
• Nut width 1-11/16"
• Heel width 2-3/16"
• Tuning Peg Hole Diameter .375"
• Truss Rod adjustment at head
• Neck thickness .87" at first fret, .98" at twelfth fret
• Hipshot locking tuners
• Lace Sensor pickups: Neck (Gold), Middle (Gold), Bridge (Burgundy)
• Blender wiring, pots, caps from Acme
• Wilkinson/Gotoh 2-point trem from Stewmac

The Body

Here's a picture

Interestingly, here's what was written on the thin protective foamy thing the bag came in:

According to a friend who knows Chinese very well, "as individual characters, they mean 'strong, powerful' and 'green'".  I suppose the moral is that when green becomes strong and powerful, it becomes daphne and blue.

I plan to glue in a block of harder wood in the spot under where the posts for the trem go, just like last time, as described in this post, and subsequently here.  I'll try to do a better job this time, and so I may buy another router bit and take a crack at using that dremel attachment.  OTOH, I'm still going to use a piece of my son's hockey stick, since it worked pretty well last time, and I have a piece that is almost exactly the right size.

Poor Man's Drill Press

For this time, I bought a Rockler Drill Bit Guide, which got very good comments on ebay.  It's a simple device and it should make it easier to drill decent holes.  Though I did ok the last few times just doing it by hand.

More on Gluing a Block of Wood Into the Body


As mentioned above, this was the iffiest part of the process last time.  This time I've ordered a poor man's plunge router attachment for my dremel moto-tool, along with a router bit.

Also, I bought an el-cheapo used body from a guy on squier-talk for $20, including shipping.  I'll perfect my routing skills on this body and then try it on the GFS body.  It would be great if the body and router arrive before this weekend so I can take a crack at it.