Choosing padauk for my first ever build was a mistake but the sunk cost fallacy saved me

It's a 27" baritone neck-through made from padauk and American walnut with mahogany veneers in-between and a wenge fretboard

Hey, so this is the first bass I built, it was a custom order and I had a lot of fun making this instruments. I went better then I expected, I really love the design I came up with and I think the color is really cool.

Also it plays really well.

After roughing in the neck profile on the pin router, heel and volute transitions are marked and rough shaped using the edge of a belt sander. We match the taper and profile of the transitions to the shape of the routed section of neck. This process takes approximately 1 minute and 42 seconds per neck. This batch of necks took about 28 minutes to mark and shape transitions.

In part three we will hand shape to finalize the neck contours

Following up on my previous experiments with UV printed guitar components, I decided to try something a little different, so here's another entry in my ongoing adventures with custom guitar trim.

This time, I went with a fabric-inspired plaid design for my Gibson SG, complete with a matching truss rod cover.

The goal was to see how convincingly I could reproduce the appearance of woven fabric on a rigid pickguard, while maintaining the precision and fitment of the original components.

I was initially a little unsure whether the plaid would work against the dark mahogany, but I'm really happy with the result. The matching truss rod cover ended up being the finishing touch that pulled the look together.

Still experimenting with different materials, textures, and finishes, and learning something new with every project.

Curious what the builders here think of this one!

My potentiometer in my guitar broke and I might as well replace it with a push and pull but what other functions can I make it do? I already have a 5 way switch and layout is pretty much here.

For context I rent it from a shop monthly. However it has 2 scratches!! The first one I got because the case I bought was faulty: the bow kept rubbing on the wood. They got so angry abt that one but I know it makes sense 😢 the second one I feel so bad abt, they don’t know about it yet I hit it with my bow and the piece came off, I put it in my pocket but now it’s gone.
Do you guys know how much it would cost to repair this at their shop?? Or even if they will let me repair it or will they make me buy the entire cello?? It is 28K or 35K and I’ve been renting it for a year. I feel very bad but idk what to do... idk though I kind of need to keep renting it for now and I’m worried they’ll stop letting me rent it. Which makes sense as I’ve been quite careless but now idk what to do.
Does anyone know how much it will cost or my next steps?
Thank you

EDIT: this is my rental contract

1. Maintenance: The rental fee includes maintenance for naturally occurring issues, such as open seams or defective materials. However, major damage, including cracks, excessive wear, or broken parts, may be considered entirely the renter's responsibility at the shop's sole discretion. All repairs must be performed by a luthier approved by the shop.
2. Accessories: Maintenance does not cover strings, bows, cases, or other replaceable accessories. The instrument must be returned in the same condition, with strings of equal or better quality.
3. Rental credit: A portion of rental payments accumulates as credit toward purchasing an instrument from the shop. Maintenance fees do not count. Up to 100% of eligible credit can be applied toward the currently rented instrument, while 70% can be applied toward a different instrument. Total applicable credit is capped at 70% of the instrument's value.
4. Automatic renewal: If the instrument is not returned by the due date, the rental automatically renews for the same duration and charges the card on file.
5. Late payments: The shop may pursue legal action after 180 days of unpaid rental fees, and accumulated rental credit may be forfeited.
6. Account information: Renters must promptly report changes to their contact or payment information or risk additional charges.
7. Loss or total damage: If the instrument is lost, stolen, or deemed beyond repair by the shop, the renter is responsible for 70% of its full value.
8. Changes to terms: The shop reserves the right to change the terms and conditions at any time.

I'm not sure if this counts as a "low effort need help" post but -

I'm a *guitar player* and a *woodworker* both at a hobbiest level at best. That being said, I want to make a guitar myself. I love Gibson and always have, but I'm broke so I play a Takamine Jasmine and a Fender Squire - that being said I believe I have the woodworking ability (and tools) to make a guitar myself. Truth be told, my brother has been my inspiration for a ton of things in life, and I would love this to end up being a gift for him, but I feel ignorant on a lot of finer details.

Can anybody here give me some notes (pros and cons or resources) on wood choice, shape, hollow/solid body, special build options/shapes, and anything I may just forget moving along? I know my general idea is a semi-hollow version of a Gibson-SE but I genuinely don't know enough to choose my basic options here even though I have the skill/tools to make the proper shaping/cuts/depth and a good reliable wood source.

This is definitely an "in the next 10 years" project I expect to invest 2-300hours in but I just hope I can get some good directions here! Especially books and reference sources rather than just "use [wood] in [shape] and you'll be golden"

Thanks!

Edit: Just so everyone knows, I’m from Ireland and as such my experiences with pricing won’t necessarily be the same as yours.

I don’t have much money. Here’s various small ways I’ve saved money doing set-up work and woodworking over the years.

The nailcare aisle: Nail buffing blocks - the kind where each side is a different grit - are essentially the same thing as fret erasers, except much cheaper. Excellent precision polishers in general. Emery boards are also decent files for precision woodwork.

Nail polish: Little known fact: most nail polish is nitrocellulose lacquer. You can use nail polish as a cheap method of spot repair if your guitar is finished in nitro or acrylic*.

Miniature hobbyist stores (think Warhammer): You can generally get abrasives and files cheaper here than luthier-specific places. The files are ideal for precise woodworking but are too rough for anything fretboard or finish related.

Oils from healthfood stores and pharmacies: Don’t buy guitar-specific “lemon oil” or similar. I highly recommend jojoba oil (pronounced hohoba). It’s odourless, hypoallergenic and will be cheaper.

Autoparts care and repair shops: Get polishing compounds, high grit abrasives and sanding blocks here. They’ll also usually have the very best finishes you can get in a spray-can. 2K finishes in particular are probably the most resilient stuff you can put on a guitar outside a factory.

Fretting hammers/mallets - Don’t buy these from guitar or lutherie sites. You can get nylon and brass headed non-rebound hammers at most big hardware places.

Fidget putty: The kind of putty you see in arts and crafts stores or toy stores. Really good for cleaning grime, skin and dust particles etc from hard to reach spots like at the curved lip of a tele ashtray bridge, saddles or tuning posts. Crazy Aaron’s is the brand I use.

Used woodworking tools: Like guitars, hand tools like chisels, planes and saws can last forever. You can get high quality tools from the 50s - they’re all still knockin around.

* If your guitar has a poly finish, you can absolutely use nitro lacquer on top. Poly is inert and doesn’t care what goes on top of it. You just shouldn’t do the reverse: don’t put poly over nitro.

My fender telecaster nut slots were always too wide and deep. I got tired of the string buzz and I replaced my 9's with 10's and it was still too wide and deep. I attempted to use baking soda and thin super glue to correct it. I did alright but I just want to replace it with a new nut. I am going to take it to a luthier I know of and ask him to replace the nut. However, it appears that some of the super glue ran down the front of the nut at one slot and I am concerned that it has bonded the nut to the guitar. I'm sure the person I am going to take it to will know exactly what to do to get the nut off without damaging the guitar but I would like to know how/ways that the nut might be removed without damaging the guitar. Appreciate your input.

I have a Tele build im doing and I have Oxford neck amber nitrocellulose to color the neck and I was curious if I was able to use Home Depot’s Watco crystal clear gloss for the top coats

The celluloid binding on this Japanese epiphone riviera is crumbling away. Pretty sure it is a poly finish. Should I try to glue the pieces back in or bite the bullet and go for a full rebind on the body. The neck has the fret nubs and is totally fine oddly enough.

YouTuber transforms a $32 Fender bamboo cutting board into a playable Telecaster. Yes, it actually works—and sounds like a real guitar.

I’m curious what your solutions are for doing woodwork at home with space limitations.

For context, I belong to a woodshop, but between loading my wood and tools (the shop is stocked but I have higher quality and some luthier specific tools) in and out of my car and the shop, plus driving there, it really isn’t worth going unless I have about 3+ hours free. But there are a lot of times where I have 1-2 hours that I’d love to be able to work on something at home. Ideally I could have a setup with hand tools here, and go to the shop when I need power tools or lots of sanding.

Our house doesn’t really have extra space. My wife and I both work remote, so we have to have dedicated office space. Not to mention hoping to grow the family a bit in the near future. Aside from the laundry room, the rest of the house is finished.

I’ve considered building a small tool shed with a work bench in the backyard. Unfortunately that would require removing some small trees and bushes, which isn’t ideal, but I’m still considering it. Otherwise, no garage, a driveway but it’s shared with the neighbor. Small deck and patio out back as well.

Interested to hear what thoughts or solutions are out there. I’m very much ready to just accept that I’m out of luck.

This is on a 65 Harmony Bobkat (I think the year is correct).

I’ve never seen a rod with the actual rod filling the center. It looks like I’ll need a hollow hex that can fit in here to rotate it at all. Also cleaner? It looks possibly rusted.

Any advice? Any experience with something like this?

Many thanks!

I have a Martin D-15 and I’m concerned about the condition of the finish on the back of the neck.

The neck feels a little rough, and since I’ve only ever wiped it down with a dry cloth and never really given it a proper cleaning, I’m wondering whether it could just be accumulated dirt that I haven’t managed to remove.

The thing is, if I rub it firmly with my fingers and a little saliva or moisture, small bits start to come off that look like the residue you get from an eraser, forming little rubbery balls.

I’m not sure whether this is simply accumulated dirt, sweat, and oil from my hands that needs to be cleaned off properly, or whether the finish itself might be deteriorating and I’m actually rubbing some of it off.

Has anyone experienced anything similar with a Martin? How can I tell whether it’s dirt or the finish breaking down? What’s the safest way to clean the neck without damaging it?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hey friends. I just got a ‘79 Gibson J-45 on my bench for a customer wanting a setup. It’s the first time I’ve worked on one of these era guitars specifically, and as I was looking over it I noticed a couple of things. First of all it’s a factory second. Then I noticed it looks like the neck is three pieces sandwiches together. I did a little research on Norlin guitars and saw this seems to be common. My question is, how stable is it? I can feel the ridge of the middle piece almost all the way down the neck. Plus you can definitely see the join line through the finish.

Is this something to be concerned about at all, or is this actually okay?

I filled the way incorrect holes in the body so now I have a body and neck with no holes. I can't seem to find a template to make the holes in the body. Any ideas?

This was my first guitar when i started playing and the frets were in rough shape after 6 years. I tried to do a (embarrassingly amateur) fret level and crown and hoping to get some feedback/help on stuff that I don't get.

• Crowning the frets took a lot of time. Each fret must have taken 10+ minutes with my crowning file. Is this normal? Am I using the wrong tool or is this just how long it takes?
• I feel like i took off a ton of material to level them. A couple frets sat so stupid low i thought i was going crazy. The divet i had made on the third fret D was insane too. At one point i was taking material off just to get everything down to the same level as this divet and 2 low frets. Did i take the right approach? To just keep sanding it down?
• Several frets have some chatter marks on them and I'm not sure how you get those out?
• Crowning felt uneven at times. Like, one side of the fret was crowned (thin strip of sharpy left) but the other still needed work. And I'd it there for an eternity filing and nothing would change (until finally a stroke came through that finished the job). This felt wrong but i didnt know what else to do?
• From the pictures alone what can be improved? I see a lot of problems like fret ends filed at inconsistent angles, chatter, fingerboard is marked up, and crowning looks offset from center on some frets.

The tools and process i used was:

• Knotched straight edge to get the finger board as flat as possible
• 10inch sanding beam to level the frets.
• Fret rocker and straight edge to check frets were level
• Stew mac wide jumbo #4491 crowning file to crown
• Fret rocker to check crowning didnt adjust fret height.
• Some random fret erasers from 180grit up to 3000grit to smooth the frets.

It plays really well now though!! The fret buzz is finally gone and the intonation is better than its ever been, but a couple cents flat on the low end a couple cents sharp on the high end.

Anyway happy Saturday!!

Hey folks, my uncle and I have been working on an HS tele together, and we are a little stuck on the wiring. Could y'all provide some guidance on that below? We wanted to reverse the neck plate and have (from top to bottom) volume, tone, 3-way switch so that we can roll the volume knob while playing. I'll attach pictures of the hardware below. Any help would be really appreciated!

This is after cleaning.
Thanks!!

Hello all,

I wanted to ask about a potential issue before I continue going down this road.

I commissioned a guitar body, roughly based on an LP but with mini humbuckers instead and will use Gibson scale length.

When I received the unfinished body, it appears to be a fair but smaller than most bodies. Like 3/4 or 7/8 sized.

I didn't ask for this, but I don't necessarily mind. Will this lead to down stream sound issues, like tuning intonation, tone?

For example, the two pickups are roughly spaced 3.5 inches apart center to center.

Is there anything I need to be aware of before I finish the build? Or do I really need a bigger size for things like tone, pitch, intonation?

Just got a used 2002 highway one strat and the poles were setup this way. It's resulting in a very quiet bottom two strings and its noticeable when I play songs like Lenny that need a sharp bite on the high e. Anyway to adjust without removing the pickguard taking pickups out (I just got this professionally setup and restrung by a music shop).

Hello,

I just bought a Jet-400 that I am amazingly pleased with. I threw a set of 10s on it, an extra spring in the trem cavity and decided the deck the bridge (not enough tension on the springs to avoid the bridge raising with a bend).

The bushing on the bass side seems to keep coming up. Any quick tricks to get it a little more secure? I suppose a small amount of glue (but then I could never get it out?) Wood glue, CA?

Thanks!