Ivison Guitars '59 DC Model - Build Thread

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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16546
    My very first guitar build was actually a bolt on neck version!!!  


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  • AustrianJohnAustrianJohn Frets: 1666
    Great thread - thanks!
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  • sawyersawyer Frets: 732
    Why 3 degrees rather than 2 degrees? Are the p90's you use slightly taller? Loving this by the way! 
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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
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    sawyer said:
    Why 3 degrees rather than 2 degrees? Are the p90's you use slightly taller? Loving this by the way! 
    Bloody hell, What’s with all the questions @sawyer , mind your own business!!

    ;)

    The P90 covers are the same as they always were/are at 11mm, I go for 3 degrees because 2 degrees is just too shallow an angle over the pickup for the bridge I’m using. At 2 degrees, the strings pass over the polepieces, with only about 2mm to spare and playing with your palm rested at the front of the bridge (the only way you can with a wraparound), any additional pressure on the strings causes the classic ‘THUNK’ as the string hits the polepiece so at 3 degrees it just gives that extra bit of clearance to stop this happening :)
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • sawyersawyer Frets: 732
    Thanks for the explanations. Sorry for questions. I just find the whole thing so interesting. I'  just ssooo into Juniors.Cant wait for next instalment :)
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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
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    sawyer said:
    Thanks for the explanations. Sorry for questions. I just find the whole thing so interesting. I'  just ssooo into Juniors.Cant wait for next instalment :)
    Not a problem at all, i was only joshing, I enjoy the questions :) 
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • rexterrexter Frets: 369
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    Love seeing things go from slabs of timber to gorgeous looking bodies! Even better in multiples like this... look forward to more updates, thanks for the explanation re neck angle. Somebody was selling a job lot of lovely looking old mahogany on Gumtree here the other week - thick wide boards like this. Wish I'd bought it - not that I could build anything this nice!
    Custom colours, vintage restorations, high end guitar finishing
    www.rexterguitars.co.uk
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  • DanielsguitarsDanielsguitars Frets: 3261
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    rexter said:
    Love seeing things go from slabs of timber to gorgeous looking bodies! Even better in multiples like this... look forward to more updates, thanks for the explanation re neck angle. Somebody was selling a job lot of lovely looking old mahogany on Gumtree here the other week - thick wide boards like this. Wish I'd bought it - not that I could build anything this nice!
    Next time you see some give us a shout, love good mahogany and it's getting more difficult to get in a nice weight imo 
    www.danielsguitars.co.uk
    (formerly customkits)
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  • merlinmerlin Frets: 6597
    I love build threads, and I'm really looking forward to the way this one is going! Thanks for posting @miserneil ;
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  • rexterrexter Frets: 369
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    @customkits ;
    Will do man, I fear this was a really nice bundle to miss. Should have gone for it even though I was broke! Old guy clearing out garage, large and smaller boards, most of them 50mm+ thick all looked build worthy, dry stored for 20+ years All for £140.

    I look on gumtree everyday for guitars, timber and tools at the moment and barely anything decent ever comes up for timber especially. Railway sleepers, pressure treated 2x4s and people in North Norfolk trying to flog tables made out of dirty old wood they're labelling "reclaimed"  for £800 to the richer holiday home owners up there!
    Custom colours, vintage restorations, high end guitar finishing
    www.rexterguitars.co.uk
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16546
    edited June 2018
    rexter said:
    @customkits ;;
    Will do man, I fear this was a really nice bundle to miss. Should have gone for it even though I was broke! Old guy clearing out garage, large and smaller boards, most of them 50mm+ thick all looked build worthy, dry stored for 20+ years All for £140.

    I find that it pays to let people know you are looking, even if they are not interested in guitars.   That has led to 3 or 4 large stashes of mahogany coming my way, usually from old fellas that have been hanging onto a few bits. 


    Although it does sometimes mean I have to gratefully accept some free wood I don't actually want, hence the large slabs if iroko I have ended up with.  I just keep saying yes to it all and eventually some good stuff turns up


    edit: its not worked for braz rosewood yet

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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
    edited June 2018 tFB Trader
    Thanks for the kind words so far everyone, it is much appreciated! By the way, I'm not trying to present this as a 'tutorial' (cause I'm always learning myself) its more of a 'How I do it' thread, if anyone has any tips or hints that they can throw in, I'm always open to new ways of doing things!

    Anyway, onto the next.

    I start with an African Mahogany, quartersawn neck blank and mark out my neck(s) - The blanks I use, depending on size, I can usually get either 2 DC necks or 3 necks, (2 DC and an SC -  Double Cut Necks are longer than Single Cut necks by the way) with some careful cutting:



    The necks are rough cut out on the band saw, I then tidy up the headstock faces with a hand plane:





    I also check my headstock angle is the vintage correct 17 degrees here:



    Next up is the russ rod slot. I use the traditional one way rod (of course!). Now there is lots of conjecture about the truss rod slot in a vintage Gibson neck (.....well, there is on the Gibson anorak forums I read!! ) about it being a curved channel. It's not, it's a straight channel but it is angled over the length of the neck, 13mm at the headstock to 15mm at the heel end. 

    I secure the blank into the truss rod jig I made especially for the job and route a straight, flat bottomed 5mm channel:



    I then offer up the rod in the channel, measure and drill out for the anchor bolt and also measure how far the access route needs to recess into the headstock.

    I used to do this next bit in all manner of ways, clamp the blank in the vice and use a forstner bit in the pillar drill, tried it with a router and a rounded cutter and even gouges but it was never clean enough for my liking so I stumped up the cash to StewMac and bought the proper tool for the job...expensive as it only performs one task...but it does it neatly and it's quite important to the whole build really!

    So the truss rod access gets cut with a handheld drill like so:





    A little tip I picked up from another forum is to score the horizontal line of the stop mark with a razor blade and you get a lovely clean face with no fuzz or tear out:



    Once i'm happy that the rod fits nicely and the nut doesn't foul on the cover - on vintage Juniors, the nut often protruded past the headstock face and made the truss rod cover bulge out! - it's time to cut and plane down some Hard Rock Maple filler strips to hold the truss rod in place in the channel.



    Modern Gibson guitars use a plastic 'condom' around the rod (well, as far as i'm aware they still do?) to stop the glue sticking to it but, in the 50's they didn't so neither do I. Just takes a little more care when gluing the sides of the channel not to get glue all over the rod - hence no pic of this bit!

    But here's the filler strip clamped in snugly against the rod:



    I then clean up any glue squeeze out (hopefully minimal) and leave this to dry overnight.

    More in a couple of days! 
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • DougDoug Frets: 172
    Excellent! enjoying the progress pic's/info :)
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16546
    miserneil said:


    Modern Gibson guitars use a plastic 'condom' around the rod (well, as far as i'm aware they still do?) to stop the glue sticking to it but, in the 50's they didn't so neither do I. Just takes a little more care when gluing the sides of the channel not to get glue all over the rod - hence no pic of this bit!
     
    as long as you don;t soak it in glue it will release in use anyway.  Wood glue doesn' stick well to metal.   Although, you know if its got in there because you get unpleasant cracking noises the first time you use the truss rod... worrying if you don;t know what it is, but it is just the glue releasing from the rod
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  • DanielsguitarsDanielsguitars Frets: 3261
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    what size is the stew mac tool,  i use a spot facer which is where i think they got the idea in the first place,  your tool does look nice though lol
    www.danielsguitars.co.uk
    (formerly customkits)
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  • paulnb57paulnb57 Frets: 3044
    Enviable skills, really enjoying the process, thanks for sharing
    Stranger from another planet welcome to our hole - Just strap on your guitar and we'll play some rock 'n' roll

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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
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    WezV said:
    miserneil said:


    Modern Gibson guitars use a plastic 'condom' around the rod (well, as far as i'm aware they still do?) to stop the glue sticking to it but, in the 50's they didn't so neither do I. Just takes a little more care when gluing the sides of the channel not to get glue all over the rod - hence no pic of this bit!
     
    as long as you don;t soak it in glue it will release in use anyway.  Wood glue doesn' stick well to metal.   Although, you know if its got in there because you get unpleasant cracking noises the first time you use the truss rod... worrying if you don;t know what it is, but it is just the glue releasing from the rod
    Ha! Yes, on my very first build this is exactly what happened, I tightened the rod to make sure it was working properly and heard a big ‘CRACK!!’....I thought I’d split the neck! Most disconcerting! :)
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
    edited June 2019 tFB Trader
    After leaving the truss rod fillets over night, the next job is to plane them down flat to the neck:



    Next up is the fretboard. I use Indian Rosewood. One thing I really love to see is a rough billet of Rosewood planed down and, with a bit of oil, revealing a lovely grain pattern!

    So I start with some rough sawn blanks:



    These are then trued up and thicknessed to about 6mm.

    I then mark out the frets, I use the vintage scale length of 24.625 and start cutting the fret slots. I don't have a mitre box, I use a Japanese fret saw and a set square and after some careful sawing we have a nicely slotted fretboard:







    Once the slots are completed, I line up the centre lines and glue the full width of the board to the neck blank (i'll explain why in a minute) and leave it overnight:


    (And treat myself to a cup of tea....)

    Next day the clamps come off and I draw around the '59 DC Neck template with a white pencil, ready to rough cut it on the band saw:





    The neck is then taken to the band saw and I cut as close to the line as my nerves will allow!

    Which gives me this:



    I re-attach the neck template with double sided tape and clean up the edges on the router. This is always a nerve-wracking part cause one false move and 2 days work is down the drain. Carefully does it and we have a nice, clean neck shape, about .5mm oversize so I can bring it down to proper width when sanding:



    The reason I like to glue the whole width fingerboard to the neck blank and then cut it out is so that I get no gaps. Some people like to cut, shape & radius the neck and fingerboard separately before gluing to two together, which works great but it wasn't clean enough for me and my OCD(!), I got a couple of tiny gaps. The pictures of the dot inlays below are from when I tried this way but I returned to glueing the whole thing. This way is perhaps slightly more 'dangerous' in that one slip in the final routing stage could ruin the whole neck but I love the tight, clean glue line between neck and fingerboard it gives me:



    Next, I radius the board. Now I know of a lot of guys who have built a jig for this and use a belt sander or router to do it but I always thought "Na, bit of elbow grease is all it needs, a jig is just lazy".......I am now perfectly happy to admit I was totally wrong and and moron and these guys have it down...what a PITA!!! ;-)

    So the neck goes in the vice, I load up the 12" radius beam with 80 grit sandpaper and sand....and sand...and sand...and check....and sand...and check....and sand....and brew up....and check....and look up radius jig plans on google...and sand....



    FWIW, since this pic was taken, I have invested in a much longer, aluminium radius block which takes some of the work out of it but i'm DEFINITELY looking into a radius jig....

    Once I have the board radiused, I go up through the grits to remove any scratches and we are left with this:



    Perfect 12" radius:

     

    Next up are the dots. I use 1/4" NOS celluloid dots as per the originals and I get them from Dave Johnson (previously of Historic Makeovers).

      

    I mark out the positions.....then check I haven't lost any!





    The 1/4" holes are then drilled, dots seated and sanded flat with 240grit paper on the radius beam:



    And cleaned up:





    Next, the side dots are marked out, drilled, inserted, and flattened off:



    And then we are ready for carving.....

    More soon!


    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
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  • joeyowenjoeyowen Frets: 4025
    Simply amazing work
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  • WezVWezV Frets: 16546
    On radiusing boards, if you have a long enough block tryclampung the block to your bench and pushing the neck along it instead of holding the block on top...always seems quicker
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