AquaMaster Build

[Cactus Jack]

2 months ago the forum experts here helped me pull together specs for my first custom body. Here is the link to that thread: https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=31153.0.

Quick summary: split Jazzmaster, Basswood body, quilt maple top, Aqua Marine dye, natural binding. Rgnad was nice enough to mock up the image below to hold me over until the body arrives.

I anticipate the body arriving within the next two weeks so I decided to lay out the electronics and prep the neck. Today, I started with burnishing the neck. Cagey is the burnishing expert and I'm merely following his lead. I had no idea how to do any of this before reading his treads. This neck is solid dark Rosewood, I've only ever burnished Roasted Maple, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Cagey recommends burnishing necks using 3M polishing papers. He is absolutely correct. The first neck I burnished I used sandpaper, polishing papers are a monumental upgrade. One word of advice, before starting the project make sure you have 2+ hours set aside. Every step takes longer than the previous. I generally follow a 10/15/20/25/30/35 minute work flow. With all that said below is the progress I made today.

Starting with the raw neck here is the progress after every step:

Before/After:

A few TV reflection pics of the finished product :

Tomorrow I'm going to start on the frets. I'm going to level, crown, and polish. If I have time I may layout the electronics.

More to come!

 

[Axkoa]

That neck is beautiful. I missed the spec thread, but the split Jazzmaster with only the right pickguard is genius. Can't wait to see this done.

 

[rgand]

With that neck, it'll be quite a looker.

 

[Logrinn]

That looks absolutely amazing!
ccasion14:

 

[stratamania]

Looks good so far and look forward to seeing it progress.

 

[Cactus Jack]

This morning I assessed the frets and completed the leveling. Please understand this is not a "how to" post, and is in no way intended to be a tutorial. I am an unqualified amateur, and merely sharing the process I working through on my personal guitar. With that said, below are the steps I take.

Before doing anything my first step is to always perform a visual inspection of the stock frets. Warmoth does not perform any finish work, which was very apparent on this particular neck. As seen below, kind of tough to see, but the frets weren't crowned well and were in now way polished. The frets have been pressed into the neck, and that's all. This is not a ding on Warmoth, this is exactly how they sell necks, as they intend the end user to do the finish work.

Visually the frets appear to need some work. My next step is take a few measurements and assess how level, or unlevel, the frets are. I start by setting the neck as straight as possible. I measure the fretboard and the frets and adjust the truss rod until I get the neck as close to dead straight as I can.

Once I get the neck straight I bust out my fret rocker. I rock each fret in roughly 12 locations. Every area that rocks indicates a high spot relative to the opposing frets. I mark these high spots with red marker and fill in the low areas with black marker.

After rocking the frets it was crystal clear the frets needed some love. To be honest, of my 5 Warmoth necks, the frets on this neck are by far the worst. If you want to setup your guitar with .010"+ of relief and 5/64" or higher action, than you could realistically bolt this on and start jamming. However, with frets in this condition, they need to be leveled to get low/medium action.

At this point, I've decided to move forward with the leveling. I mask off the fretboard, and really like the multi-size masking tape shown below. I got it off Amazon for less than $10, and the various sizes make taping the fretboard off a breeze. Once taped off I get out my leveling beam, which has a nicely worn piece of 320 grit sandpaper and get started.

Before starting the full leveling process, I take a few light swipes to confirm the neck is straight. If a lot of material is take off from the ends of the neck it indicates I have a bit too much relief, if material is coming off in the middle it means I don't have enough.

My goal is to see a uniform scuff along the entire neck. As shown below, I just want to see a little scuff, and expect to see more material coming off the high spots.

Once I feel comfortable that the neck is straight I assess potential trouble spots. On this neck I had a few high frets (red) next to a few low frets (black). This means I need to keep sanding until I get down to the black, as such, a lot of material is going to come off the red frets.

Once I begin sanding my goal is to remove as little material as possible so I stop and check the marker often. Here are a few pics where the high spots are getting sanded, however the low spots are just barely being touched. To get the frets level with each other I needed to keep sanding.

Once I get down to where I'm just barely touching the low spot I SLOW way down. My goal is to remove as little material as possible so at this point I'm checking the frets after every 1-2 passes.

I keep going until the frets look like below. At this point I'm rocking the frets again and making sure they are dead level. The first pic below shows frets that are completely level with each other. It appears a lot of material has been removed, but the second picture shows the lowest fret on the neck. I don't stop until all frets are leveled to the lowest fret. At this point I re-rock all the frets, ensure everything is dead level, and stop. When I say dead level, I mean dead level compared to the opposing frets. You know they are dead level when it feels like the rocker is on a solid flat piece of granite. If there is any movement you know the frets are quite there.

Now that the frets are leveled they need to be crowned. I'll get to that soon.

 

[AirCap]

That body is gorgeous!

 

[BroccoliRob]

Dat neck got dat shine like a fresh dime  :glasses9:

 

[rauchman]

Really really nice work.  Love the body, and the burnished neck is outstanding.  Also, you have some great tips on the fretwork....thanks!

 

[Cactus Jack]

Crowned and polished the frets. Below is my process, again this is not a "how to," this is me just sharing my progress.

After leveling the frets I wrap some sandpaper around a sponge block and run it up and down the length of the fretboard. This removes any small burrs and rounds-off the corners a bit. The big benefit however is it gives the frets a frosted top look, which help me track my progress during crowning.

Once that's done I remark all the frets and get my crowning file ready. I chose to go with a 300 grit concave diamond file over the standard Hasco/Stewmac files. I read the diamond files were the easiest to use and leave zero chatter marks on the frets. Being a newbie to this whole thing I opted for ease of use over skill.

The diamond file is indeed easy to use. It glides over the frets and I have zero hang up. The file has two concave sizes, one side is for jumbo frets, the other for medium jumbo. Unfortunately, neither sides aligns perfectly with 6150 frets so I do need to manipulate the file to get a nice round top. I've found that simultaneously filing side to side on the fret while rocking a bit from nut to bridge gives me the best result.

In my opinion crowning frets is the most labor intensive part of prepping the neck. Leveling seems like a lot of work, but honestly it takes 15 minutes. Every time I level frets the more time I spend. It goes without saying but crowning removes material. If the frets are unevenly crowned you've just blown the whole leveling process so I'm constantly rocking the frets, checking, double checking, filing, triple checking etc. I'm probably a bit too OCD about it, but I really take my time, because it's the hardest part of the process to me.

Pics aren't special but show, not well, the ink being removed. Ultimately, I get a reasonable round shape that I can live with:

The second most tedious piece is polishing. After crowning I take a few hours off because it requires a lot of focus...polishing may take even more time and focus than crowning. No way I could ever be a guitar tech.

My first time polishing frets I used sandpaper and sanding pads. It was not easy. Thanks to Cagey for stepping in and setting me straight. He recommended wrapping strips of polishing papers around the crowning file. Wow, what a homerun...feel stupid for it never crossing my mind. Regardless, it works great and I'm grateful for the insight.

The polishing papers do wonders to the frets and really make them shine. Here are a few pics of the progression:

A few not so great before and after polishing pics:

I'm done with the neck. It's far from perfect, but I'm calling it good to go. Up next I'll get to work on the electronics.

 

[Cagey]

If you really wanna go above and beyond the call of duty, you can get these dremel buffing tips for $6/dozen, and a block  of this polishing compound and polish those frets before you remove the masking tape. Make's 'em look like jewelry  :icon_biggrin:

 

[Cactus Jack]

If you really wanna go above and beyond the call of duty, you can get these dremel buffing tips for $6/dozen, and a block  of this polishing compound and polish those frets before you remove the masking tape. Make's 'em look like jewelry  :icon_biggrin:

I’m following the masters lead. Bought the supplies and will be re-taping the neck tonight. Polished frets galore update coming soon.

 

[Cactus Jack]

While I continue to wait for the body, and now my Dremel polishing compound kit, I decided to mock up the electronics.

The pickguard arrives with body so in the meantime I downloaded the template from the Warmoth site. I really appreciate Warmoth posting the templates, super convenient for playing around with ideas. We'll I cut the sucker out, taped it to an old cereal box, and started tweaking.

One of my inspirations for this guitar is the Tom Anderson Raven. Something about that model just speaks to me. What I really like is the control layout, and especially the mini toggles...I love mini toggles. The Raven comes with optional "cut switches," which I confirmed with Tom Anderson is really just parallel switching, and a "VA boost" which subtly bumps the volume.

Pic of a Raven:

I like the 3 mini toggle look, but I plan on adding two series/parallel/split toggles, and thanks to Stratamania, I'm adding a bridge blower switch. If you're interested in learning more about blower switches please checkout my post below. Stratamania is extremely patient with my stupid questions and goes above and beyond helping me out. Heck, you can skip my post and check out the second link if you'd like. This link is to Strat's phenomenal blog post all about blower switches. Even if you're not a fan, you owe it to yourself to give it a read, it's that good. Amazing resource.

Wiring Post: https://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=31249.0

Stratamania's Must Read Post: https://stratamania.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/4pdt-blower-switch-for-guitar/

Below is my initial mockup. Got some tweaking to do, need to wire up the toggles, but I'm happy with the direction. Pots are custom CTS, Switchcraft toggle & jack, mini toggles are off amazon, Vitamin Q cap, treble bleed, Suhr Thronbucker pickups...should be a nice little tone machine.

 

[Cagey]

Keep in mind that those little polishing tips are only 50 cents each, so don't be afraid to use more than one. They tend to get tore up seemingly fast, kinda like sandpaper. Keep 'em loaded with polishing compound, and when they look ragged, chuck a new one into the tool. Remember - you're cutting stainless steel here, and unlike nickel/silver it doesn't like to get cut. I'll typically use about 3 or 4 per neck, but of course your mileage may vary.

Also, if your tool has variable speed, run it relatively slow. You don't want to heat up your frets and/or melt your polishing compound to the point where you're throwing most of it off the tool before you even get a chance to use it.

 

[stratamania]

Good luck with the wiring and thanks for the shout out.

 

[Cactus Jack]

:blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7: :blob7:

 

[BigSteve22]

:cool01: :cool01: :cool01: :cool01: :cool01:

 

[Cactus Jack]

I can't stand not knowing what the quilt is going to look like. There seems to be a wide range of quality and apparently it's dealers choice. Below are two examples of Warmoth quilt tops. I know which one I hope I get!

 

[rgand]

:icon_thumright: :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright: :icon_thumright:

 

[Cactus Jack]

Learned some new skills this weekend...fret polishing with a rotary tool:

Consistent with this entire project, I'm learning everything on the fly and doing 99% of this type of work for the first time. A few things I learned about fret polishing with a rotary tool:

1 - Every error, and all instances of poor craftsmanship, WILL be exposed. Trust me, I know from experience.

2 - Spend double the time with polishing papers to ensure EVERY scratch is removed. Trust me, I know from experience.

3 - Clean your frets before applying compound...gunk quickly turns to mud. Trust me, I know from experience. 

4 - Apply compound and polish frets SLOWLY, but move the tool Quickly. Friction leads to heat, which leads to a mess. Trust me, I know from experience.

After 2+ hours I finally achieved a nice mirror like finish. The finish is so crisp it very difficult to photograph well, but here is a quick pic

All in, tuners, burnishing, leveling, crowning, and polishing I probably have 8+ hours into this neck. Honestly, I'd say most folks with reasonable skill could finish everything in well under 4. Great learning experience, lots of fun, and hard work, and I'm now officially calling the neck complete.

Body arrives in two days. Excited to see how this project comes together.