Swisher Guitars

Luthier Michael Swisher / Handcrafted quality instruments / San Tan Valley AZ USA / https://swisherguitars.com

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Winding Pickup Bobbins

Today I’m winding a couple of humbucker bobbins and one single coil bobbin. I’m putting 6500 winds of AWG43 wire on the humbuckers and 6800 winds on the single coil bobbin.

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Polishing Frets

With all the leveling crowing and dressing of the frets done, It’s now time to polish them up and give them some shine. I do this with a Dremel using a small polishing wheel and some general purpose brown polish. I get both the wheels and polish tube from Harbor Freight.

I charge the wheel by adding a little polish to it, and I find that I have to do this about every 2 frets. I go over each fret back and forth keeping things moving making sure not to heat the frets up too much.

Once I go over each fret, I can remove the tape and show off the shine.

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Leveling, Crowning and Dressing

All of this is tedious work, but the key to great fretwork is putting in the prep-work and time to get it right. I tape off everything leaving the frets exposed, making sure to protect the fretboard. Then I mark all the tops of the frets with a sharpie and level the frets with a flat block. The flat block has 400 grit sandpaper attached to it and I run it over the frets till all of the sharpie marks are gone.

At this point I re-mark the tops of the frets with the sharpie, and grab my Z-File crowning file and go over each fret to give it the thin crowned edge on top. Once I’ve completed the file work, I begin sanding each fret to smooth out the file marks. I’ll go over these three times, using 220, 320 and 800 grit sandpaper. I check the frets with a fret rocker throughout this process making sure I still have everything level.

Finally I knock any burrs off the edges with a fine fret end file. These frets are now ready for polishing.

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Decal Time

I make my own decals, I just design them in Inkscape and print them off on waterslide decal paper that you can get on Amazon. I will print these off on a whole sheet, and I’m usually able to get about 30 or so at one time. I’ll cut them out as needed. Since I have an inkjet printer it’s necessary to give them a few coats of polyurethane before I use them, to keep the ink from running. If you can print them on a laser printer, you’re good to go without a coating.

I’ve got a few coats of water based polyurethane on this new, and I’ve sanded the surface flat. After this decal dries overnight, I’ll add a few more coats to bury it and I’ll sand the finish flat.

Before you ask, No I do not provide the service of making other folks decals.

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Slamming in Some Frets

As with most things, the key to a good fret job is good prep work. After adding a radius to the fret wire, I cut each fret to size, leaving just a little bit of overhang on each side. Even though there is not a binding on this guitar, I undercut the tangs on each side of the fret. This leaves a little room to fill the gap in each fret slot on the end for a cleaner look.

I do lay down a bead of wood glue in each slot before pressing them in. This is not to hold the frets in place, but more to fill gaps in the slots. About every 6 frets I bend the edges with a few light taps and cut the ends close to the fretboard. I find that bending the frets like this helps them to hug the edge of the fretboard.

Once all the frets are in and trimmed, I file the edges down flat with the fretboard. I hold this file between my fingers resting the finger tips on the neck. This way I can keep the file off the wood a bit and avoid damaging the fretboard. Lastly I use my bevel file, which is just a file lodged into a 35 degree slot in a section of 2x4, and bevel the edges.

Next up is to fill the fret end gaps, and add finish to this neck, then I’ll level crown and dress the frets.

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Creating Heel and Headstock Transitions

This is another task I love doing and my tool of choice for this is a 4 in 1 rasp. I draw some lines at the heel that match the curve around the neck pocket and just start shaping with the course rounded edge of the rasp. Once the basic shape is obtained, I flip the rasp and use the smoother rounded edge to blend everything together. This goes pretty quickly as the rasp removes a lot of material. I also use a finer rounded file to further smooth everything out before moving to sandpaper.

At the headstock end I draw some curved lines that start from the edges and meet in the middle somewhere between the nut and the 1st fret.

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Carving a Neck

This is one of my favorite things about guitar building. I really enjoy shaping a neck by hand, and the Shinto saw rasp is my go to tool to get this done (and I know many use this too). I use the facet method, creating two facets along the sides of the neck and then thinning down the back creating a third facet. I like to shave the back to about .860 at the first fret and .900 at the twelfth fret.

I use straight edges to make sure I have everything even. Any gaps like the one shown here I can work the surface to flatten it out. Once the facets are in place, I blend everything together generally using the smoother side of the Shinto saw rasp. Eventually I move to a smoother file to remove the harsher tool marks of the Shinto. I use a contour gauge to check the shape at various points on the neck.

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All the Little Things

Before sanding this body down and prepping it for finish, I’m taking care of all the small details. I’m drilling the hole for the jack plate, bridge ground and wire routes from the pickups to the cavity. I drill the wire route from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup straight through the neck pocket. I use the small piece of brown board to help protect the edge of the pickup cavity. I drill the holes for the strap buttons and finally add a ¼” round over to the body. Now this body is ready for final sanding and finish.

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Final Cavity Cover Attachment

Using my original template guide, I mark the holes for the cover then drill the holes through and chamfer them.

Then placing the cover into the body, I mark the same holes across the control cavity. Then back to the drill press to drill the holes just deep enough so the screws will hold. Lastly I’m just test fitting everything to make sure it all fits.

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Making a Control Cavity Cover

Using the same template I used on the body, and my router inlay bushing set, I attach it to the piece of alder I’ll used for the cover. This time I am using double sided tape. Routing the cover is different than the control cavity section, as the bushing must be held against the template at all times. It takes a bit of practice, and I’m not going to lie, this took a few tries to get it right. I added a small island piece to the center of the cover for support across the template.

Once I routed deep enough, I remove the template and cut the cover out with the band saw. I made it about 3/8” deep. I’ll be sanding it down to about ¼” using the drum sander. Once the depth is close I fit it into the cavity and sanded it flush with the body. It was a very tight fit, so as I do with all cavity covers, I added a bevel around the edge. It took a little sanding around the edge to make sure it wasn’t too tight of a fit. Over all this method took longer than my normal sand to a line method, but there’s no rush and I think it looks pretty good.

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Routing the Control Cavity

I made a whole new set of control cavity templates for this guitar as I wanted it to be slightly smaller than the cavities I have made in the past. I also wanted to make the cover with a router inlay kit for a better fit. With the templates complete, I layout the controls and drill the holes for the pots and switch all the way through the body. This just helps me with the layout on the back of the body.

Flipping the body over, I can trace out the template and hog out a good chunk of material with forstner bits. Then I attach the template to the back of the guitar, again using the CA glue and tape method and route out the cavity clean leaving a little over ¼” thickness at the bottom of the cavity.

This part was new for me. I’m using an inlay kit to create the cover route and ultimately the cover hoping for a little cleaner looking fit. Previously I had a template for the cover route and would just craft the cover by hand. An inlay kit has a router bushing guide and a removable bearing that allows you to use the same template to route cavity and cover for a very accurate fit. I got the kit on Amazon if you’re interested in checking that out search “router inlay kit”. The router bit hit the side of the cavity at some point when I was lifting it out of the template. I had already planned on adding a recessed notch to make it easier to remove the cover, so I used a Dremel and added the recess. In the next video I’ll show how I hade the cover.

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Routing Pickup Cavities With the bridge in place, I position the pickup cavities and hog out some of the material with a forstner bit in an effort to ease some of the wear and tear on my router bits. Then I attach the templates and route the pickup cavities to depth.

As mentioned in many past videos I’m attaching these templates using masking tape and CA glue, it gives me a few seconds to get the template positioned just right before the glue sets.

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Placing the Bridge

Next step here is to place the bridge and drill the through holes and anchor screws. I mark off the intonation line at 25.5” and attach my paper template to mark the holes. I almost exclusively use Hipshot Products bridges and tuners, and one of the nice things that they provide on their website is drawings with dimensions. I make these paper templates using Inkscape and just mark the position of each hole, and then toss the template.

Next I drill the holes for the string through and flip the body over and drill the ferrule holes. There are lots of ways to do this, but I use another template and just attach it over the holes and drill them to depth. Then I can drill the anchor holes and test fit the bridge.

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Shaping the Body

With the neck pocket area cleaned up I true up the sides of the body by sanding to a line. Here I can blend the sides and angles together visually, taking my time to make sure it’s a smooth surface. This is a Rigid oscillating spindle sander and I do the longer sides and back end with the belt sander attachment, and switch to the spindles for the tighter curves. Lots of folks tackle this task with a template and router, but I prefer doing it this way.

The little stick I’m using to clean the spindles is called an abrasive sanding stick, you can find them on Amazon.

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Attaching the Neck

I had pre marked the neck pocket holes in my template and I’m transferring those to the body. Then I’ll take the body to the drill press and begin drilling the hole. First I’ll drill a shallow large diameter hole for some ferrules that will support the bolts. Then drill the holes for the bolts.

Next I hold the neck in place and mark the holes in the neck with a transfer punch. Then moving back to the drill press I’m drilling holes for some threaded inserts and lightly chamfering those insert holes. Then I’m threading the inserts in place in the drill press ensuring they go in straight.

Next I’ll attach the neck using the ferrules and bolts, to make they fit, but mostly for this next step.

I’m using a flush cut saw to remove the small piece of overlapping neck pocket from the lower bout. Then I remove the small area on the lower side of the neck pocket so I’s flush with the neck. Next up is to shape this body and blend the lower bout into the neck pocket area.

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Cutting out the Body Shape 

After getting the neck pocket routed in, I’m rough cutting the body shape on the band saw. Since I drew the shape from my template I’m just cutting close to the line and clearing out the areas around the upper and lower bouts.

I know the lower part of the neck pocket is still in place, in the next step I’ll attach the neck and  clear that area out by routing that area against the side of the neck for a clean look.

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Adding the Truss Rod Window

I almost exclusively make necks that have the spoke wheel type truss rods at the heel end of the neck. I position the same template I used to make the window at the end of the fretboard, to the end of the neck pocket.

As mentioned in the previous video I am using the masking tape and CA glue method to hold down template as it gives me 7-10 seconds to position the template before it sets and ensures the positioning is perfect.

I do go over this area with two different bits. I use a ½” bit to hog out the majority of the material, but switch to a ¼” bit that shapes the inside corners of the window for a tighter look. The ¼” bit was loaded in my smaller palm router when I filmed this.

Lastly I remove the template and test fit the neck. It fits just right leaving room for the finish that will be on the neck.