Mockingbird, p5

Here's some progress on the body. I put a 45-degree bevel around the whole thing, both front & back. This was more to aid in visualizing how/where to contour the body. I then drew in some basic ideas of where the top edge of the contouring would stop. Also penciled in lightly are some approximate placements of the bridge and pickups.

Mockingbird, p4

After talking with some other luthiers, I decided NOT to drop the truss rod in from the back, but to slice off a piece of the neck and continue construction with it being a separate fretboard. There are a couple of pretty good reasons for this:
1) Construction will be easier.
2) The glue line on the purpleheart sides will be virtually invisible.
3) Dropping it in from the back would leave a channel in the flamed maple that would have to be filled, probably with PH or maple. A maple filler, even if flamed and taken from the same board, would leave very visible glue lines. Neither PH or FM were acceptable visually to me.
4) Glue joints are typically stronger than the surrounding wood, so a pinstriped fretboard will (probably) be stronger than a solid one. This means the truss rod won't pop through the front.

The bottom line reason for doing this is to keep the pinstriped fretboard/neck visual. Everything was really mental wrestling with how to put in the truss rod while keeping the appearance of a "one-piece" neck. We'll see how it works out pretty soon.

The first pic here is the scarf joint being glued. The second is the neck blank our of the clamps with the fretboard & truss rod sitting on top.

Avatar = Pocahontas

Time for the first soapbox.

I can't claim an ounce of originality from this. In fact, I completely lifted it from another site who lifted it from someone else. Welcome to the internets! Anyway, this sort of thing bugs me. Hollywood recycles stories all the time. Look at any given chick flick - they all have the same basic plot. This one, however, went above and beyond the call of duty. The re-written sumary below says it all.

You can click on the image for a larger and more readable view.

Game Board, p1

I've been wanting to make a scroll-sawn chess set for a while. Since I got a book on how to do just that for Christmas, I did some planning and came up with plans for a full game board and set.

The board for checkers, chess, and othello are all the same size, so it makes sense to me to use the same board for all three. The board will be mounted in a box-like frame with drawers to hold the pieces.

The board itself will be 2" squares, making the board 16x16. This number was come to based on the chess pieces being 1 1/2" at the base. The board will be bocote, a Central American rosewood, and some other white wood, either maple or basswood. Right now, I'm leaning towards basswood because it has very little discernible grain. Bocote is very pronounced, so the basswood won't compete with it at all. Maple would be pretty grainless as well, so I'm currently torn.

The chess set itself is likewise only half decided. The dark pieces will be sapele. I'm also considering basswood or maple for the light set, but if something else presents itself I'm totally open to it.

The checkers and othello sets will be +/- 1 1/2" disks. To make these, I got a hole/circle cutter from Woodcraft. Because the pieces the disks are being gut from needed to me clamped down, a jig was needed.





1/4" MDF, #8 machine screws, and a few washers & wing nuts make everything line up and clamp down pretty nicely.

The checkers set will be oak & bloodwood. The oak will be ebonized, so I'll have the traditional red & black set. I'll explain how to turn the oak black when the time comes. These two woods seemed like the obvious choice to me.

The othello set was a little trickier to come up with. First, the pieces needed to be double sided, which means gluing two woods together to make the blanks. The only decision is which two woods? Traditionally, othello is black & white. I didn't feel it really mattered which two woods were used. Were one dark, the other is light. If one is heavily grained, the other is plain. In the end, I chose zebrawood and paduk. The colors are different, the grains are opposite, and I had enough on hand to make enough blanks. I think having enough on hand had more to do with the choice than anything, but that's what happens.

Over the next few days, I'll be cutting the checkers & othello pieces and finishing them up. I can't start the chess pieces until I get the scroll saw back from the shop, and I can't do the board until I get some bocote, which I'll get when I pick up the saw. And that is why woodworkers have a number of projects going on at the same time.

WIP: Mockingbird, p3

Here's the body blank cut, routed to the template, and planed to thickness, and the neck blank planed level.



One more shot, just because.

WIP: Mockingbird, p2

Here's the neck blank after it was glued up. I think these pics are hilarious. When I was making the neck blank, I surfaced the boards in the planer prior to glue-up. For those who don't know, PH is gray/brown when it's first worked, but turns purple when exposed to UV light. I glued up the pieces, then set it outside to drip in the grass. When I took it in and took the clamps off, you could tell which side was towards the sun and where the clamp heads were.

WIP: Mockingbird, p1

Here's my first attempt at making a Work In Progress series here. I don't quite have all the nuances oh how the post editor works yet, so this entire thing is just me going & hoping it'll all work out.

So anyway, I've always loved the oddball body shapes. BC Rich is one of the companies who's real bread & butter are oddball shapes, and they do it very well. The Mockingbird is my favorite from them, so it's time for me to give it a whirl.

A few months ago, I came across a local lumber yard who has a pretty good selection og American woods, and for a pretty good price! I saw some cypress there, thought about it for a few minutes, and decided to go for it. The wood was only about $2.50-$3.00/BF, so if it doesn't work out it's no big financial loss. Cypress has been used in classical guitars forever, so the tone can't be horrible. It's VERY light. I'm a little worried about neck dive. That's just one more bridge I'll cross when I get there.

Here's the rundown of what's planned/executed as of today:
Body
mockingbird shape
2-piece cypress
painted yellow
heavily contoured

Neck
normal bolt-on
purpleheart/flamed maple 7-piece lam
no extra fretboard - it will be the top of the laminates
Yes, this means the fretboard will be pinstriped!
black dot markers
tiltback 6-in-line headstock

Hardware
custom-wound RestorationAD PAF humbuckers with purpleheart bobbins
purpleheart pickup rings
chrome hardware
Kahler Flyer trem/bridge
Kahler locking nut
3-way, 1V p/p, 1T p/p (wither a tap & phase or 2 series/paralell)
possibly a mini toggle (phase)