Tiny Offset project...

[epizootics]

Some progress yesterday...

Roughed out with my *trusty* no-name jigsaw:



"I swear I didn't do this...Musta' been the cat..."



Catching the last bit of sunlight:


The inevitable bridge mockup:





Now, I'm getting headaches with this tune-o-matic. It has the right radius, the string spread checks, but I haven't found any definite data on how to angle it to make it intonable with a 25.5" scale. I would assume the 'moving the top back 1/8"' applies to the 24 3/4" scale length and might not give me enough adjustment room with the longer scale. But what do I know, I only ever used Fender-type bridges...I know some people here successfully used them on their builds, any insights about this?

The one thing I know for sure is that I will recess it into the body as I don't want to angle the neck or make the neck pocket too shallow. This will mean decreasing the string angle behind the bridge if the tailpiece string holes are kept flush with the end of the body. I'd be inclined to leave this angle as is, I like to have a bit of buzzy string mojo there

[paulnb57]

Stu Mac have a fret/bridge position calculator, which suggests


Tune-o-matic style bridges


25.562" (± 0.030") from nut to center of treble-side post. Mount bass-side post 1/16"-1/8" further from the nut.

https://www.stewmac.com/FretCalculator.html

[antisymmetric]

Would it be a plan to just not drill for the bridge posts until you have everything mocked up with neck, strings etc in place? Then your ears/ tuner can tell you. I try do do things this way now whenever possible after a frustrating mishap where I was sure I'd calculated correctly, but then had to plug/ re-drill to move the bridge because I was out just a fraction past the reach of the saddle adjustment
Cool project btw!

[AWSchmit]

Really neat project. Subbed!

[epizootics]

Would it be a plan to just not drill for the bridge posts until you have everything mocked up with neck, strings etc in place? Then your ears/ tuner can tell you. I try do do things this way now whenever possible after a frustrating mishap where I was sure I'd calculated correctly, but then had to plug/ re-drill to move the bridge because I was out just a fraction past the reach of the saddle adjustment
Cool project btw!

This is what I would normally do (as it saved me from VERY WRONG calculations before), but since I will have to route out a recess under the bridge to get a normal string height, I'm worried that intonation will go off once the strings lay closer to the body and neck...

[hpr_hpr]

Measure nut to saddle on high and low E on the guitars which have your favorite setup . . . that's 2/3 - 3/4 forward on the adjustment range of the saddles for the new guitar . . . the nut slots go to the same depth as those guitars over the 1st fret as your fave setup . . . make sure you can crank the bridge down far enough to get the saddle hight there at the same hight over the body as your faves (the depth of the rout should thus be the difference in saddle height when the bridges are sitting on a flat surface ... easy enough to measure) ... et voila . . . . you can replicate your favorite setup on the new guitar . . . and the bridge will be in the right place. AND as a extra check . . . on the treble side you should come to within a 1/16 or so of the number SteMac gave you.

Oh and measure EVERYTHING at least twice and make sure the measurements MATCH . . . if not redo until you have figured out where you went wrong . . . not just until the majority agree . . .

[epizootics]

That sounds about right, thanks a lot!

A bit of a slow week, lots of stuff going on at the workshop. I did some testing for the finish though. Here's what my test piece looks like after about fifteen coats of shellac and two encounters with Tru-Oil:





Two or three more coats of Tru-oil and I think that'll be it. I love shellac, but it doesn't provide an adequate protection against spilled beer during gigs, hence the oil topcoats. This combination works a charm. It also cuts out a lot of the slow build-up of tru-oil, shellac being a much faster-drying finish. I'm using non-dewaxed flakes and TO seems to be sticking to it without any trouble.

[epizootics]

On a side note, I showed the body to a cabinet maker friend of mine who's something of an exotic wood expert, having worked in Africa for years, and the first thing he told me was "hey, that's a nice bit of sapele you've got here!" So much for mahogany. I should have been tipped off by the absence of the typical smell of mahogany (or that of Sipo, for that matter) when I cut it, but then again, some of the wood we get at the workshop is so old it doesn't have much of a smell anymore...

[epizootics]

Some progress...I couldn't resist the cheesy mock-assembly shot:



Neck pocket / roughing up of the tailpiece / roughing up of the added neck bit / chiseling of a cavity for the tailpiece/ putting the pickup's bakelite tops to shape = all done.

Next is the filling up of the rabbet I routed all around the body with a printed strip of paper & epoxy. My wife joked that the modified headstock (by the way, I caved once more - I love those Kay/Harvester headstocks too much) made the guitar look like a cartoon catfish. I will thus print the Japanese word for catfish ("Namazu" - 鯰) on a blue paper, cut it to fit the rabbet and make a mess with epoxy resin.

[dylanafghjkl]

this is looking so cool!
love the body shape and that's a super cool headstock, was already thinking kay/harvester before i read the rest of the post
excited to see the finished product!

[Deed_Poll]

I really like it! Cheeky is a good description. It looks like a lovable scamp up to no good.

[kdanie]

I dig it!!

[epizootics]

I really like it! Cheeky is a good description. It looks like a lovable scamp up to no good.

It's getting cheekier and cheekier as it goes...I think I like things to be a bit silly

My week off work is turning out to be less productive than expected. I built more bookshelves than guitars. I did manage to route out the recess for the tune-o-matic (using hpr's technique to position it) and get started on the pickups. Here's the bakelite tops / forbon bottoms:



No one will ever see the red bottoms...But I will know they're there!
Bakelite turned out really fun to work with. You just need a really fast drill. The lines were my reference marks to position the rectangular drilling template I made for them and were going to be out of sight on the bottom side of the plates, but I thought they looked pretty cool and I decided to put them on top.

[epizootics]

That TOM is in, and I finally got 'round to drilling the tailpiece:



I also glued the extra bit onto the headstock and gave it its final shape:



Now, I was going to put a metal plate on top of it to hide the junction between the maple & sapele, but I'm so sure anymore, I kinda like the way it looks right now. Any thoughts on that? I looked at it so much when I was sanding it to shape I don't quite see it anymore...

[kdanie]

I dig the 2 tone headstock.

ken