The build of the PURPLE REIGN
Well, it's the beginning of July and I have made a good start with the build of the Reign project.
So far I have shaped the head stock, cut the neck blank to the width I need, drilled holes for the Steinberger gearless tuners, inlayed the headstock, placed the truss rod and made a truss rod cover.
And I made a start on shaping the back side of the neck. I am trying to get a thickness of 2,2 mm fretboard included. The fretboard has a thickness of 6 mm so that leaves 16 mm for wood.
Did it all go as planned?? well... yes and no of course... actually only one thing (so far) didn't go as planned.
the neck is yet to be rounded! the headstock, truss cover and inlay the mother of pearl position markers
When I thought i was finished shaping the head stock, I drew the place of the holes for the tuners. After I drilled the holes I wanted to see what the tuners look like installed... as you may know I am a little impatient..... so I took a tuner apart for installation, put it through the freshly drilled hole and guess what, my head stock was too thick!! There was no thread left to put the nut on...
So I checked the specs and it turned out the head stock needs to measure between 12.67 and 16.89 mm. Unfortunately mine was 18mm thick. So back to the belt sander.... After some sanding and dust eating ( I wear a dust mask, don't worry...) I measured it again and it was now 15mm, so fitting shouldn't be a problem anymore... and guess what... it did!
I have to say that I am very pleased with the results so far... even the mother of pearl inlay came out very nice. It needs only a little bit of filling but I am afraid the mixture of grinded wood and epoxy will not stain as well or not at all. It could be that when I stain the head stock the filled bits right next to the mother of pearl will remain unstained.. I guess I will have to make a test run first to be sure. I also cut the mother of pearl and pink abalone inlays. This was a lot of work. I am not really satisfied. Well, maybe a little, but not completely so I think I will try to get them all the same shape.. not sure yet...
Paper shapes for the inlays cutting the inlays, using a jig saw inlays ready and put on the fretboard
august 12 2009;
Ok, it has been a while since i updated the story so far. In the meantime I have shaped the neck. It doesn't seem like a lot but i have been away to Turkey for 2 weeks of sun, beach and relaxing...
Just before we went on holiday I had shaped the first part of the neck closest to the head stock. When I returned I did the other end of the neck, When I finished that bit I did the part in between. Near the head stock the neck is nice and thin and it becomes a little thicker near the body. I like the feel of a little thicker neck for playing solo's. It's not much, just 1.5 mm. I know a neck should measure the same throughout but hey, it's my guitar and I want it this way!!
shaping the back of the neck and the back of the neck near the body and yes, those are my feet.
the router went in a little too deep here, but no worries, it won't show...
August 20 2009;
Today I got my piece of swamp ash back from my brother in law who was kind enough to saw the shape I had drawn on the body blank. He has a huge band saw and I don't... :-(
Although he brought it to me late in the evening, I had to work on it. I just couldn't put it on my work bench and do nothing with it. In the last couple of days I have been making a template to fit the neck into the body. The guitar has a set neck and I wanted the fit to be perfect, nice and tight.
Above you see an attempt to get the joint between the neck and the body as tight as possible.
After the neck was finished I got back to working on the master body. I tried to feel the surface for bumps and lower parts and I managed to get it pretty smooth and flat. I think it looks bad when a bright lights shines on a guitar and you can see that the surface is not flat so the reflection of the light constantly changes when you move the guitar. I hope you know what I mean. To make sure I have that problem eliminated, I painted it with chrome paint and used a bright light to check where it needs sanding or filling. I guess it's impossible to get it perfect doing it by hand. I think you need a CNC router to get it flawless....
22 august 2009 
As you can see it's starting to look like a guitar now. I assembled the guitar just for the pic. The next step I guess is glueing them together. As much as I hate to tell you, I think I made a mistake during the neck building proces. I could have used the Fender type of inserting the neck into the body and then glue it but I like the looks of the PRS style. You know, the neck has this heel of wood that kinda slides into the body. I glued a piece of the tiger striped maple under the neck where it connects to the body. So it was twice as thick as normal. By doing this, the final thickness of the neck was 4 cm. As you know I want to glue the neck so I need some wood under the neck to glue it to. If you make this too thin, chances are that it will break. So I left 1 cm of body under the neck. The thickness of the swamp ash is now 3,8 cm and I have to glue the maple top on it which is 1 cm thick.
The total thickness will be 4.8 cm which is a little thicker than I wanted it to be. I hope the guitar won't look thick because the top will be carved and the total drop of height of the carve will be a little more than 1 cm. Yes, the carve goes deeper than the thickness of maple top. Because the guitar gets a sunburst kind of finish you won't see the wood on the edge of the guitar. So I can go a little deeper than 1 cm. I am keeping my fingers crossed the guitar won't look thick because of the carve. Luckily the swamp ash isn't that heavy so it won't feel like a thick guitar. I could even remove some wood from the body before glueing the top so it will be a little lighter. Today I decided where the controls are going to be. After consulting Miranda ( she has an eye for these sort of things) we decided to go for a simple but great looking design. The 3 knobs will be in a straight line and so will the mini switches. The 3 knobs are spaced out 5 cm heart to heart and the mini toggle switches 4 cm.
I drilled the holes for the pots and switches through the body so I knew how big the cavity for the wiring has te be. Unfortunately my kids are sleeping so I can't use my router now... I guess I have to wait until tomorrow... Sleep well! talk to you soon.
23 august 2009;
I woke up at 10 o'clock. The kids were so nice to keep it down... I grabbed a cup of coffee and upstairs I went. I had already made a template for the control cavity. This morning I made the cover for the cavity. It fits like a glove. I had done this before of course but I never uesd a template. As you can imagine, those covers don't fit so well. but this looks almost factory made. Now I'm starting on the cavity for the battery holder. There will be 3 9v batteries in total, 1 for the sustainiac and 2 for the EMG pick up. These 2 will be hidden in the control cavity. If the difference between 1 and 2 is hard to notice, I think I will use only 1. In the pic you can see the cavity and the place where the battery holder will be placed.
The battery cavity is now finished. It was time to place the Wilkinson tremolo bridge. After measuring again and again to make sure to be placing it right, I drew the cavity for the tremolo. When I was routing it, I saw that the control cavity was too big. Now the 2 cavities are connected. SHIT!!!
I hope I can fix it so you won't see it. I am planning to glue some maple veneer on the back so with a little luck you won't see it. I should have done the tremolo first and then do the control cavity. Better luck next time! Now I need to route the cavity on the back for the springs for the tremolo. I already made a template for that too. Oh, and I did this part one the back where your belly goes into...
It's scary sometimes to do things you've never done before. And with this one, it's extra scary because I can't repair or fix it with filler or putty. The finish will be transparant so any repair to the wood will show. So measure, re-measure, think, re-think and then do...
24 august 2009;
I did a lot of work the last couple of days. I glued the veneer to the back of the body. I had never done this before and I was a bit anxious to start. First I did the lower part of the body, the easy part. Here is what I did. After routing the control cavity, I made a cover from plywood. And one for the spring cavity. I put the covers in their place after putting glue on them. Then I put the veneer in its place. When the glue had had enough time to dry I took of the weight and lifted the veneer and along came the covers. I cut the covers from the veneer with an exacto knife. I put the covers back in the guitar so I could match the remaining part of the veneer in its place. Glued it and it looks great! I sanded the edges down so you won't feel where the veneer starts. All I had to do was cut out the battery cavity. That was the easy part. Now the harder part. The upper half of the body. If it wasn't for the part where your stumach rests it would have been a lot easier. When I glued the lower half, I noticed that the veneer became very flexible. So I was hoping the veneer would bend enough to get this part too. Unfortunately the veneer ripped on one side. I want to try and glue in anoher piece of veneer. The back of the guitar will be stained transparent black. And to the edge of the guitar it becomes non transparant black. If the repair won't work, I will fill it using some putty and paint that part black so it won't show. Other than that, it worked out great. Oh, I almost forgot, I left a small space between the 2 parts of veneer. I found a little bag filled with purple plectrums and I thought it would be nice to put a thin line of purple between the veneer.Like you see on many western guitars. So I cut small pieces of the plectrums and glued them in using epoxy.
What else did I do? I glued the neck to the body. That was a bit of a puzzle because I wanted to put the clamps on 3 ways. 1 pulling the neck back into the body, 1 pressing it down and 1 pressing the side of the body against the side of the neck. I thought I'd rehearse it before actual glueing it. Thank god I did. There were a lot of clamps fighting each other for space... I recently bought a very long clamp. I thought I could use it pulling the neck into the body. Here's what I did. The fretboard hasn't been glued yet so you can see the routed space for the truss rod. I changed one side of the clamp so it would fit into the truss rod channel. And it worked.
The neck is set. My brother in law took my maple for the top with him because there was a gap between the bookmatched pieces. And he made it dissappear. I just glued the bottom half of the top onto the body. I had to use all my clamps because the top was a little warped. I hope it stays where it should be. Before clamping it I put a screw through it where the pick up is going to be so it couldn't move during putting the pressure on... Although the glue is on strength after an hour I will leave it like this until tomorrow, can't wait what it looks like... 
above you see the top roughly cut, on the left you see the top being glued to the body...
So no mistakes today? besides the veneer I tried to make a little rectangluar piece of wood for the output. From the Grenadil I also used for the mounting rings for the pickups. I didn't want to put the output straight into the wood but like PRS and gibson have their outputs. The first one had the grain in the wrong way. So when I was trying to bend it using steam it bent alright but not the way I wanted it... I made another one with the grain the right direction. But that one broke drilling the hole. So I took the last piece of this wood I had left for yet another one. It was almost finished but during the final sanding it broke too. And now I'm out of right grained wood.... I guess I have to order some more wood or make one from plastic or metal.... I think wood would be the best option, considering the rest of the guitar. Maybe I'll try one more time and hope that the grain won't be a problem.
I was so happy with my piece of wood but it didn't last very long... as you can see... :-(
25 August 2009
Today I glued the other half of the top on the body. Unfortunately the first half I glued moved a little so now the joint of the top is not in line with the joint of the body. I am glad the side of the guitar will be painted black so it won't show. Besides that I am very happy with the result. I routed the hole for the trem. I hope the grain has the same pattern after carving. It has a very nice pattern now... keeping my fingers crossed!! What else did I do... let me think... Oh I remember now, I routed some of the inlays of he fretboard. I really tried hard to get it as close to the inlay as possible and it worked out great!! I have a pair of reading glasses just to see it a little better...A very nice fit, until I noticed I had the fretboard in front of me the wrong way!!! OH NO!!!! Stupid a$$hole... Lucky for me the the inlay is almost a circle so I had to adjust it a little to make it fit the right way... As long as the mistakes are like this and nothing major happens, that's fine with me! I had to rehearse with my band tonight, otherwise I would have done more... but there is always tomorrow!
Talk to you soon!
26 august 2009;
here is what I did today and some pics of my work:
I glued some of the inlays in the 3rd and 12th position. The difficulty is that it is a compound radii.
No easy sanding with a 12" sanding block but with a very small sanding block about the size of the inlay. But it looks and feels almost okay. Tomorrow I will fill the gaps with epoxy and grinded wood from the fretboard. After the epoxy is dry, I will do the final sanding and polishing so the mother of pearl will have this nice and shiny gloss...
the 3rd position marker, still sanding.....
the 12th position marker, yes, it's a real @ !!!
Just to see what it will look like finished.... very pretty, I think...
27 august 2009;
I planned to do so much today, even went home a little early from work. But I forgot Miran had to go and take the car. I needed to go to the local hardware store to get some stuff for my router machine. I wanted to get some plywood and some pipes you use for central heating. But i guess I have to do that tomorrow. I did do something but now I'm stuck. I had already build a part of the machine but I realized it was too small. I had this piece of plywood that I thought was big enough as my base of the machine. So now I am using my work bench as the base. I need to drill some holes in it to mount all the parts. And when I don't need the machine, I can dismount all the parts and store it. It won't take so much space like this. As you know I am working on my attic which is very small and the lesser the stuff I have to store, the better! I also planned to fill the gaps of the inlays but I didn't feel like doing it today. So why take the risk? Tomorrow I will go to the hardware store and get the stuff I need to complete the machine. I did do another trail version of the body. When the machine is ready I first have to try it and I am not using my actual body to do that, as you can imagine... I hope I can tell you how it turned out soon...
28 August 2009;
done nothing.... Nothing?? serious?? well, I made a trip to the hardware store and got some things I needed...
29 August 2009;
Today I spent most of the day upstairs. I finished my machine. Once I was done building it, I took the try out body I made earlier. Before I did the real thing I had to see how the machine responded and what to keep an eye on... I had to make some changes and improvements during this try out.. But when I was almost done carving I got the hang of it... So I gathered enough courage to do the actual body with the expensive quilted maple top. Was it a perfect run?? No! I made this thing of teflon that feels the master carve, and drilled a hole in it, put a screw in it and I thought that was it. Unfortunately the screw came loose, and that made the router go in the wood deep. 
The only thing that makes it not so bad is that it is near the edge of the guitar and that part will be black so I can fill it.. pfff! So far I have a little angel watching over me, I guess.
What else did I do? Well, I drilled the holes for the pots through the top. Remember I already did those but that was through the swamp ash body, the top wasn't glued to it yet. After the carving I routed small circles in the wood where the volume and sustainiac controls knobs are going to be. So the surface below the knobs is nice and flat. I made the cirlces just big enough for the dome knobs so they disappear in the wood a little... nice! I had to do 1 for a mini switch as well. Did it with a dremel and a router base because all the router bits I have were too big.
The tremelo is installed, springs and all...
But not all things went well, The fragile pickup rings/ pick guard I made of wood, broke. It broke once before and now it happened again. So I think I will make it of black pick guard material. It is a little more flexible and tougher. I doesn't look as good as wood but maybe I can change it in the future.. 
I was so busy I forgot to take some pictures today. I will take some pics of the final result of today. So what's next? I have to make the control cavity a little deeper otherwise the pots and switches won't go through. I think I will only do the part directly underneath the pots to keep the wood thick enough. The fret board needs to be inlayed. As you know I did 2 already but I have to do 8 more. Now the fretboard is too wide, so that's another job...Then I need to glue it to the neck, making sure the truss rod is inserted the right way!!! Routing the cavities for the pickups and making the template for it. All these extra things you need to do take a lot of time. If I ever build another one, I can just take out the template I need an go! When the pickup cavities are done, I think all the big work is done... just some little repairs here and there, sanding, sanding and did I say, sanding? I can't believe I am almost ready to start with the stain... but that's a completely different story....
So there will be a little more of my reports and then we'll take it to the "staining chapter" ..
Well, I did all the things I wanted to do today and finish the "heavy" work. No more routing and drilling!!! YEAH!! Very pleased, although I got a piece of wood in my eye during my last routing job... can you believe it?? And I wear safety glasses for crying out loud!!!! Can't get it out.. shit! I guess it's off to the doctor's tomorrow...
I started on the new mounting ring for the pups. I decided to use the black pickguard material instead of wood. I don't want the risk of breaking it again.
Looking back, I think I have learned a couple of things again. Like doing the tremolo and spring cavity first and then the control one to make sure the control cavity isn't too far up so it's in the way of the spring cavity. never too old to learn, right?
So I have been staining already and damn it looks gooed.. you can read and see all about it in the purple stain section.
But this doesn't mean I'm all done building... I still have to make the pick up mounting ring out of pick guard material. I already did 3 versions but all 3 were not good enough. So now I am working on another one and this is my last chance. After this one, the raw material is gone. I could order some new stuff of course but that would mean more time... And I just can't wait to get this thing ready..
What else do I have to do? I have to alter the bridge so I can mount the piezo saddles on it. I want to install a ghost system on the guitar.. That's about it, I guess.. Ok, I have to assemble eveything of course but that is obvious.. I hope I can get the electrical part to work. Just a normal guitar, nothing fancy is no problem but installing the ghost and the sustainic system combined with the active EMG pick up is something else. Still not sure which one I'll use. Either the 81 or 85. I think I will try them both. on 18 volts of course.
6 september 2009
Well, it's been a few days since I wrote something here. In the meantime I have done some work on my guitar. I routed 3 more position markers and yesterday I glued the inlays in the fretboard. Today the epoxy will be cured and it is ready to be sanded flush with the fretboard. This time I routed a little deeper so less mother op pearl is sticking out. I did this because I am inlaying a compound radii fretboard and that is a lot harder than doing a single radius one. Here are some pics of the guitar so far:
. 
You can see I have to inlay the last 3 position markers, the first small inlay is not yet glued because I want to glue them all at once. After that is done I need to make the fretboard flush with the neck. Put in the truss rod and glue it all together. I think I will use some titebond glue for that to avoid having problems with unstainable glue.
Yesterday I finally ordered the sustainiac system (sustainiac.com). When I receive it I can place the pick up in the mounting ring. Let's hope it has the same dimensions as the EMG so it will fit very nice. I hate to see the 4th attempt of making the mounting ring going to waste because the pick up is smaller... but I think it will fit.. Until yesterday I didn't know which pick up I was going to use, the 81 or the 85 but I'll take the 81. The 85 has some scratches on it and I don't want that of course. I think I would have picked the 81 anyway because of the sound of it.. maybe I can sand the scratches out and use it for another project..
I hope I can get the electronics to work. I think I said it before.. but this guitar doesn't have a basic set up with 2 HBs. I can always go to Rikkers and ask them. They are very helpful and you can ask them anything.
As you know I have been building guitars on my attic. Very warm in summertime, small because of the roof. You can imagine I could use a bigger and cooler work shop. and guess what?? I have one now! My brother in law has a garage, 2 actually and one has no use, unbelievable right? He offered me to rent it for a small amount each month. Symbolic of course. In the garage he does use, there are a lot of tools too which he said I could use too and I even get to use the attic for storage... So I think someday soon I will move my stuff........ Of course I have to build a work bench (or 2!!) and make some shelfs but hey, it's for a good cause! I'm really excited!!! I will make some pics when it's done and ready for business! I think I will do the heavy work there and small stuff in my attic. But I'm not sure yet. It would be nice to have everything in one place... suppose I routed something there and discover at home that a cavity is not big enough, then I would have to go there to fix it... Thinking about it I think I will do all the building there and the staining part at home.. That way I won't have to deal with saw dust and wood all over the place. Because no matter what I do, it somehow manages to get through the whole house...
more to come in a couple of days...
6 september 2009
Hi ppl, a small update, I made a start of sanding the inlays on the fretboard, and it's almost ready. I did the copper shielding in the electronic cavity, and that was it. Some staining but you can read all about that in the "purple stain" section. I thought it was time to start thinking about a serial number... 0001??? No! that would be too optimistic...I'll go for 001 and even that is a little too far fetched..
I finally came up with a plan for the truss rod cover.. I'll have it engraved by a professional and then mix some clear epoxy with some white mother of pearl or some golden powder... put it in the engraving and that's it...
pics soon!!
later!
10 september 2009
So, it has finally happened! I ruined my fretboard... first screw up: I did an inlay at the 24th position but after I glued it in I realized my fretboard is only 23 frets long... Ok, I could fix that.. but I also did too much sanding and not only the inlays but also some of the actual fretboard. Now there is some wood missing right next to the inlay. And I could even fix that... and maybe I will.. or maybe I won't. After a long consideration I decided the inlays are too big. The fretboard is still 6 cm wide and will be smaller so the inlays will look even bigger. And when I am honest, there is too much difference in inlays, bigger, smaller, taller..
So I took my 12"radius fretboard, and did it all over again but this time with different inlays. I used the picks I also used for the dome knobs. Of course they where too thin to be used as inlays so I took some acrylic sheet and glued the shaped picks to it. Then shaped the acryl like the picks and now it's thick enough! Routed out the wood from the fretboard, glued it in and now it's ready for sanding. I am glad I can use my 12" sanding block. Ok, I won't have the compound radii one but that's too bad. I have always played guitars with 12" radii so why stop now?
25 september update:
Here is a picture of the 12" radius fret board. I decided to give it one more try with a compound one. I finished this one just to see what it would look like..
I think it looks real classy...