Carving the heel and preparing the Jazzmaster for finish

Into the final furlong now and there are just a few jobs left before the Danish oil goes on. To start the day I remove the neck clamps and check the joint.

For the neck heel carve I roughly mark where I’m aiming for.

With a spindle sander in my hand-held drill I start removing wood…

…until it is about the shape I want. I then finish by hand.

That’s the last of the woodworking finished. I drill the pilot holes for the hardware. The only complicated part is getting the bridge positioned correctly. As previously, I use a piece of cotton running from the bridge to the headstock and back again.

Drill the holes for the bridge.

While I’ve got the bridge unpacked I take a few minutes to run the base across a piece of 400 grit paper, to make sure it makes full contact with the body top once it is screwed down.

I mark up the legde of the control cavity and drill the 6mm holes for the neodymium magnets, and fasten them in place with CA glue. I glue magnets in position on the cover too, making sure the magnets are the right way round, so they don’t repel.

Check the alignment and fit.

All that remains is to sand and sand and sand. Working my way up through the grades to 320 grit, and then give the body a wipe with a damp rag to raise the grain.

And here are the first coats of Danish oil going on, using the approach I’ve written about previously.

One last thing, a couple of days ago Gtr1ab asked how I laid out the controls on the template. Below is a picture of the marked up template. If I was building an exact Jazzmaster replica I would have just transferred the positions from the paper plan, but I’m adding my own touches. I wanted the volume knob to be exactly level with the bridge saddles so using a square I extended the line down the body. I placed the centre of the volume approx half way between the bridge and the body edge.

I then drew a line, at a slightly descending angle, towards the tail end of the body. There was no science or measurement to this I just picked an angle that I found pleasing to the eye. I placed the other two controls and the jack socket along this line. When laying out controls previously I had measured equal distance between the hole centres but, because components have a different radius they end up looking mis-spaced. I measured each component and then made sure the gap between the edges of each was consistent. Again there was no science to this I just chose a distance that looked pleasing to the eye – in this case a 30mm gap.

Routing the Jazzmaster for the Gretsch Filtertron pickups

The Gretsch Filtertron pickups from Shanghai Guitars arrived in the post this morning so I have been able to crack on with the next stage of the build.

I had not realised that the baseplate of the neck Filtertron stuck out wider than the pickup itself. Because I want to have this in a tight rout, this needed modification. A few careful strokes with a hacksaw and that was easily sorted.

Next, to make the pickup routing template, I ripped some mdf to 35mm wide, the same width as the pickup and then taped them down, round a pickup, to the piece of MDF that will become the final template. NB: I checked the pickups were identically sized first because that is not always the case.

A run round with the top bearing cutter and I have the template…

…which matches the pickup perfectly.

I marked up their positions on the body, hogged out wood with a brad pointed drill bit, attached the template and routed to around 10mm deep.

Then removed the template and routed the final depth down to 19mm.

I check the fit, with bridge and neck in position.

Next job is to drill the runs for the pickup cables, and not forgetting a hole from the control cavity to just under the bridge, so that I can ground it. Here I drill through from the neck pickup cavity into the bridge pickup cavity. So much easier doing this before you’ve glued the neck in place, as I found out when I built my first guitar.

Final job for the day, with rapidly approaching storm clouds and a fierce wind picking up, was to sand the neck heel and neck pocket with 60 grit, give them a good clean and coat of Titebond Original, and clamp up the neck.

Suddenly it is starting to look like a guitar.

The next job will be to carve the heel to shape, drill pilot holes for all of the components, mount the control cover magnets, and sand it ready for finish.

Jazzmaster fretboard markers and control cavity

The plan was to drill out the black plastic fretboard markers and replace them with some black pearl ones (pictured).

As soon as I drilled these out I could see this wasn’t going to work – the holes were 5mm deep and the little inlays were only 1mm thick. Time for a change of tack. I’m going to make markers from brass tube filled with a black epoxy putty called “Milliput” instead. The putty is on order but in the meantime I got started with fitting the sections of brass tube.

I drilled a 5.5mm deep hole in a piece of MDF and using a hacksaw cut the 6mm tube into small pieces.

I had also bought some 2.5mm brass tube too so that I could make matching side dots. I drilled out the old ones.

With a dab of superglue in each hole I pressed in the brass tubes.

After allowing it to dry I filed the tubes flush with the neck.

Once that was done I tackled the control cavity. I had marked the locations on the MDF template. I attached this to the body and with a 2mm drill, made a hole right through template and body.

I used a 19mm spade bit to cut the countersink for the knobs, and a 10mm bit for the selector switch.

Once those were marked I could tackle the control cavity from the back. I had made a cover a couple of days ago.

Using the techniques I discussed in detail previously I made a template for the cavity “ledge” and routed that.

I made a smaller template and then routed out the inner cavity.

To finish I check the cavity is deep enough to allow the components to reach through to the front.

And that is all the work I can do until the pickups arrive. Once I’ve got those in hand I’ll be able to rout their cavities, drill the cable runs, and then glue in the neck. Once the neck is in I can shape the heel and I’ll be on to sanding and finish.