Enter the Splintercaster...

Sid Nitzerglobin

Junior Member
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After several year of wasted hours playing with the configurator and trawling the in stock stuff, I finally could resist no longer, took the plunge and actually ordered something today :laughing7:

Neck:
http://www.warmoth.com/Showcase/ShowcaseNeck.aspx?i=VT1352&Body=1&Path=Neck#.VstZHPkrJBI

It's a vintage construction one piece bonus birdseye maple w/ 1-11/16" nut width, 9.5" straight radius, Boatneck profile, & black dot markers. I'm going ahead and having them prep for LSR nut and went w/ SS6105 frets and 11/32" vintage tuner holes.

Body:
http://www.warmoth.com/Showcase/ShowcaseItem.aspx?i=T4598&Body=2&Path=Body#.VstaavkrJBI


Standard Chambered Tele w/ Black Korina body and top and 1 F hole, vintage Tele bridge route, 7/8" input jack rout, P-90 neck and Tele bridge routs, contoured heel and tummy and forearm cuts, weighing in at 4lbs. 1 oz. (Also grabbed a couple sets of the staggered neck screws for the contoured heel and F hole Tele pickguard w/ P90 neck rout in .06" matte black.)

Planning to do dye + oil finishes (thinking TransTint for the color and tung or tru oil) on both and I'm hoping to hit a mild vintage tint for the majority of the neck. I'm a bit more undecided on the hue and saturation I'd like to go for on the body and the face of the headstock. My first instinct would be to stay towards more natural kinda coloration in keeping w/ the downgraded Bender concept I fell onto trying come up w/a headstock decal but am not totally averse to maybe trying some kinda more obvious transparent color if I think I might be able to pull it off. I've never done guitar finish work of any sort but it's sounded like the dye +oil route should be one of the most straightforward approaches and it sounds like something I oughta be able to handle from the conversations I've had. The sketchiest part to me seems like it would be trying to do the color matched headstock face both from containing bleed to the rest of the headstock and matching the color on the maple to the black korina of the body.

Here's where I left the headstock decal design last night:

It's not really all that close to any particular authentic Fender style, but I'm actually pretty good w/ that and I think I like what I've got so far. I'll need to change up the tremolo and contour body text as I was initially looking at swamp ash bodies and hoping to use the Doozy Radiator trem before I noticed the korina body and decided there was no way to make the Radiator work.

Hardware-wise I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go w/ the Duesenberg aluminium short Tremola mounted straight to the top, a Mastery decorative bridge plate and bridge thimbles, Staytrem 9.5" radius offset bridge, and reuse the LSR nut, Gotoh SD-91 locking machines, and Lollar Short Dogear Neck P90 from the a previous project tele this one will replace.  I've got a few bridge pup options if I want to stay w/ the Tele here (most likely candidates of what I've got on hand is either a JBE Danny Gatton T-bridge or SD APTL-1) but I might want to try something new (thinking maybe a Lollar Special T).

Sorta debating maybe skipping the traditional pickguard, bridge plate, and tele control plate and doing some routing to use a Duesenberg TV pickguard over the top of the standard tele control plate rout and maybe going to an english mount type T-Armond in a humbucker ring for the bridge pup and a Compton for the bridge but not too sure there.

Anywho, that's where I'm at w/ the Splintercaster. Super excited to get this one moving along :)

Thanks for reading!  I appreciate any feedback.
 
Welcome and hopefully you don't get any real splinters ...

With the finishing trying to get a dye to match over woods as different as BK or maple will probably just look a little odd.

If you do use a dye you need a water or alcohol based if putting tru oil over it. An oil based dye will react.

Actually even without dye at all I think you would end up with quite stunning results with those parts. Tru oil can really bring out the chatoyance of wood.
 
I think using amber or light yellow leather dye, and Samsung back ever so slightly, plus the tru oil would look awesome on this.
 
Spelling checker replacing 'sanding' with a phone brand? On phones the spelling checkers do a lot of unwanted replacing - with mostly hilarious and sometimes rather embarrasing results.
 
ByteFrenzy said:
Spelling checker replacing 'sanding' with a phone brand? On phones the spelling checkers do a lot of unwanted replacing - with mostly hilarious and sometimes rather embarrasing results.

Most likely explanation.
 
UH-OH!!!! I just sent a Strat body to Samsung for finishing!!!  :sad:Not very Smart, I guess... :toothy11:
 
1-11/16 Nut, 9.5 Radius, SS6105 Frets...we have similar tastes ;) lol

Looks like an awesome build man, love the look of that Black Korina!
 
Thanks for the replies and info guys!

I'm thinking more and more that I may indeed skip the dye and just go straight to the tru oil on the body and use one or both of these dyes in alcohol to do the neck:
TransTint Honey Amber

http://www.woodcraft.com/product/128481/transtint-dyes-honey-amber.aspx

TransTint Dark Vintage Maple

http://www.woodcraft.com/product/821825/transtint-dyes-dark-vintage-maple.aspx

Should I be worried about the neck holding up w/ only an oil finish?  I'd prefer to DiY the whole thing on but I'm wondering if I'd be safer in the long haul having my guy do a thin satin nitro on it.
 
OK, cool. 

Did some work on the decal tonight try to get everything scaled out, not sure if I'm happy w/ the proportions yet or not.  Also screwed around w/ tint of the neck a bit and think I'm shooting for something like this:

 
Although I've not used tru oil with a decal. Depending on the decal it may not be compatible with tru oil. You could always test on a piece of scrap which is a good idea for practice in any case.

I've done headstocks in nitro, and the rest of the neck in tru oil.
 
Was planning to skip the oil for the face of the headstock then put the decal on and hit it w/ rattle can lacquer (if I'm feeling particularly adventurous) or have my guy do it (which may be a better idea ?).
 
Wound up up entirely too late working on the body mockup:


I'm feeling I'll most likely stick w/ a tele bridge pup, now I'm starting to debate doing a 3 barrel ashtray bridge or the Staytrem+plate. What do you guys think?

Also, does anyone have a good source of nice nickel or SS control plate blanks that are $20 or less? Ideally pre-drilled w/ just the screw holes for mounting the plate? Thinking I'd like to do a reverse 3 pot (vol, tone, blend), 3 mini toggle setup (neck/both/bridge, series/parallel, and phase).
 
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