I have a lot of progress to show you guys and boy does it feel great! :headbanging: I also remembered to actually take pictures.
A couple of days ago I filled in the body and neck holes. The body holes fit a dowel perfectly but the neck holes needed to be widened up to 1/4". Once I finally pulled myself together to drill in the body everything else came together easy. I was hanging out with guys from my old band all yesterday plus I wanted to have time to let the wood glue cure.
I don't have a drill press, and instead of going to the lumber store I threw caution to the wind and macgyvered a way to ensure I was drilling straight.
I secured my level to the battery of my drill (avoiding the little lip in the front) and verified I was level by placing it on my countertop. Perfection. Once the drill is going obviously everything moves so I made sure to stop and verify intermittently. If I was going to be slightly off (which of course I probably was), I wanted to at least have it angled so the screw would be pressing the neck into the neck pocket.
Then today I started with chiseling the excess dowel pieces and sanding both surfaces flat. I verified my measurements and angles a bunch of times. For reference, as the pocket was cut, this is the type of edge distance I was getting:
Once I adjusted the angle how I wanted it I was able to get it much better (picture coming up) with the clamp. I decided to drill the holes while the body was unclamped so I had to verify everything multiple times. With my home setup, and working alone I had no way to hold the guitar in a way that I could keep them clamped and drill correctly. I started with a 3/16 Brad point bit for the body. I kept an old washcloth folded up under the neck pocket to make sure I didn't drill into my coffee table. I used my neck plate as a guide, and center punched the holes with my awl. These holes went pretty seamlessly as I knew there was a little margin for error.
Then the neck which has pretty much no margin for error. I clamped the neck back on (using a sponge on the fretboard side, they are Stainless Steel Frets so I felt pretty safe with this), and reverified all my measurements and angles. The neck wanted to resettle back to the original position but once clamped it stayed put, so I figured once bolted on it wouldn't move either. I used my awl to center punch my holes in the neck, which worked out perfect because the width of the shaft on the awl was exactly 3/16" so there wasn't really any wiggle room for error.
Then I unattached the neck, and prepared to drill the holes on the neck with 1/8" bit. I didn't have my washcloth safety net for my coffee table, but I made sure I taped off my bits with the depth stop and went at it. This wood (Goncalo Alves) was much harder to drill than the Swamp Ash. I did the first two holes then attached the neck to verify everything again (I did this so many times, thank god I went with locking tuners). Rechecked my center punches for the other two holes and then went on to drilling them again.
So after all that, I attached the neck, and right away noticed that my neck screws were not going to cut it. I wasn't able to really screw them in tightly? Luckily, I impulse purchased the same size screws at Lowes (actually they were 1/4" longer). They were stainless steel construction screws that were advertised to not need a pilot hole. These went in perfectly. Their heads were a tad smaller than the actual neck plate hole as you'll see one actually goes a little deeper, but this doesn't bother me. The neck looks off in this picture but that is part my angle with the camera and part having to adjust the angle.
Voila! Perfect alignment once bolted.
Once that was done, all my smaller problems were cake.
My EMG T-Set and SPC came in, and they actually did not fit the bridge cavity which was expected because I needed to chisel away some pieces anyway. It turns out chiseling can be pretty loud so I laid some towels down on my carpet and did it very carefully. It encouraged me to properly chip away tiny pieces at a time because too loud of a piece would be extremely loud. My neighbors didn't complain but I wanted to be respectful.
Here's the route all chiseled out with my posterboard pickguard template. You'll also see a mark a made that I made using my hand to see which area I might want to carve a taper into for upper fret access. I haven't completely decided if I want to do this because it does take away wood from around my neck pocket.
Once that was settled I went to attach my EMG controls to my aged control plate from Gotoh. Turns out EMG's PCB board has the knobs spaced slightly shorter than the Gotoh plate has them drilled. So I aged the EMG control plate by sanding with a 400 grit sanding sponge until I liked how it looked. If I want to add more patina to it I can use bleach, or I saw something that does that at the fabric store I bought the Beeswax from (for screws). I had to do the same for my curved neck plate because I didn't see an aged one that was curved.
I also noticed that the EMG jack that was included has a shorter thread than the Mono one that came with my Electrosocket. I tested by removing one of the nuts but it seems that it is a different diameter measurement as well. My guess is that EMG has a metric jack so I'm going to buy a Stereo Switchcraft Jack with the long thread.
Next up is to do the carving of the neck heel. I made sure to leave a little meat for the screws and followed the amount that fender leaves on their American Elite series.
After that, I'll decide if I really need to carve more access by the lower horn.
Once all that is done I can finally move forward to the finish! I think I've settled on the stain. Minwax Wood Rose.
It'll look gorgeous with the hardware and the neck. A very close second is Burgundy (picture from someone else's project I saw on google)
Thanks for following along guys!