The Highline Whisky Special Guitar Is For Sale!

I just listed the Highline Whisky Special electric guitar on eBay. This guitar is my best build to date so far. If you'd like to bid on it or buy it now, click here.

Luthiers and Woodworkers BEWARE!!

The next time you purchase exotic wood for your next guitar project, consider what Gibson is going through:

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/gibson-0825-2011/

The Whisky Special Update: It's A Done Deal!

Like all of my guitars, this one ended up very different than I had planned. Originally, I wanted to build a solid, all Canarywood guitar. Unfortunately, the sheer weight of the body required a rethink. As a result, I ended up carving out the body. Then I added a few Mahogany accents and some sound holes. The result, I feel, is my best effort to date. Of course, like all of my other guitars, this one will go up for sale soon. If you're interested, $800 + shipping will put it in your hands.

A New Guitar On The Workbench

It hasn't got a name yet, but it'll hardly anonymous. This guitar features a Honduran Mahogany neck and body with flame Maple caps. The neck has a pair of carbon fiber strips to resist twisting and warping. Set-in construction is being used for the neck to body joint and by recessing a tune-o-matic bridge, I'll be able to keep the neck straight.

The Highline Whisky Special Update: It's Getting Close!

After applying numerous coats of gloss tung oil, I rubbed out the finish with 0000 steel wool and followed up with some carnauba paste wax. The result really shows off the body wood's grain and texture while preserving the neck's silky feel. Check it out so far:

The hardware was temporarily installed to make sure everything lined
up as it should.

The next step will be to wind some pickups that will compliment the guitars tonal capability as well as its visual style.

Revamping the Nosferatu Guitar

A while back, I stated my lack of love for nitrocellulose lacquer as a finish for electric guitars. Not only are the fumes toxic and explosive, but the resulting finish can take forever to cure. After well over a month, the nitro I sprayed on the Nosferatu guitar just didn't want to harden up. Every time I picked up the body, I'd leave fingerprints imbedded in the clear coat! For that reason, I decided to strip the finish all the way back to bare wood so I could start over with water-based lacquer, a finish I'm far more enthusiastic about. Here's how the process has gone so far:

After sanding the body to 220 grit, I brushed on some black acrylic.

Next, I applied red acrylic with drips and splatters.

Finally, I sprayed on about 6 heavy coats of Hydrocoat Resisthane Plus
water-based lacquer. I'll wait a week or so to let the lacquer cure
before I proceed with wet sanding and the final polish.

 The nice thing about the water-based lacquer I'm using is it dries rock hard in only a couple of hours. In my experience, this stuff will cure out many times harder than nitro. Hurray for modern chemistry!

Highline Single Cut Update: A Little Necking Today

The headstock has been rough sanded to shape. The cap is Maple
with a nice flame pattern, which will match the body.

I started blending the back of the headstock with a rasp file.

The heel was blended the same way as the headstock. At this point,
I'm thinking of adding a long tenon, but we'll see.