Ep 15 - Taking a Great Kit Guitar and making it Awesome

welcome to cribs

guitar

s welcome to the EMF kit bill

taking

a

great

kids

guitar

and

making

it amazing. I'm struggling to loosen this vise. We are in progress, if so, if you have been watching this series from the beginning, that's

awesome

, thank you. You really know where we are if you haven't done it right, this is a spoiler, you have to go back and watch it from the beginning. Damn, also if you're watching this in July 2018, you can, you can win. I'm going to stop talking about this guitar now because it's the first time I've held it as a guitar and I'm in love, the neck is glued on, it's nice, solid, done and dust-free, and I need, I need to fix the sound holes a little , they don't look the way I want, I have a beautiful metallic varnish, it's blue, of course, and I apply oil, fine sand, fret level, put hardware on all that, we have another one.

At least a couple of videos are coming, so without further ado, let's start building. I probably have to do some real sanding. I sanded the entire guitar. I sanded the back of the neck. Yes, the rest is fine. I'm going to do it. People have been asking in the comments while I'm building this, if I'm going to stain the back or in the mahogany program, how would that react? I'm going to dye the collar, I think I'm going to leave the body I don't want too many colors or too many things happening, but a nice dark collar is always attractive, so we'll do that in a minute.

I've basically moved on to 320 grit across the board and we'll see once I've stained the neck. I don't want to apply oil too soon, so I'm going to stain the neck and then it's time to do some fret work, so most of this video will be leveling the frets, etc. This stain has stopped the stain. I'm going to choose black instead of blue. I stick with the alcohol-based stain simply because that's what I have in my shop. We also do a really nice water based stain effect which was the I really like this I think I'm going to have to do the whole body too damn yeah yeah water based dyes have been the staple dyes which we have used for several years and have barely finished. developing and have launched the spirit, that's why I don't 100% agree with how they work, but well, how they react.

I have this experience now since I decided to make the complete guitar because it looks cool. I have a little problem with the bevels on the front where I carved the sapele. Ok, I have these bezels and I need to fix them. The problem is that I obviously already applied some oil just a while ago. One coat I will very carefully sand that back and they will very carefully apply more stains, there we go, looking good, although with 320 grit sandpaper, a little patience, so what do you think? I think I think I'm in love. I still need to make back plates the material has been processed it's down there I think miss let's continue with the construction.

Frick living this is the specialized part of the job. Everything else can be done with woodworking tools for the most part, but fret leveling there are some things I wouldn't be without. I'm biased. I own Crimson guitars. We made these tools, but we make them because they were hard to find at the level of quality that I need and now we are one of the top companies and we are doing it anyway. As an aside, we don't need a front rocker fret crowning file, fret leveling file or fret leveling beam, else to help, we will include this in a list below with links to our website where you can buy these things and potentially win this guitar.

Afiya, if you buy them in July 2018 and you can win this guitar, but I still have to level a file or a leveling beam. Today I'm using a beam, tape, a scared dressing file. I already said it's not like that. edge this is the rocket fret tool not straight on the first process is to use this to be absolutely sure that your neck is flat and that is the neck instead of the fret. I could put a ruler on the frets and get an idea of ​​whether the fret the neck itself is straight but yes it has to be absolutely perfect I'm sitting I'm sitting in an open drawer behind me this is a bad thing allen key to adjust the truss rod okay Nick it's flat there is no gap between the teeth they are set on the frick board rather than the fritz and that's what we want now at this stage you can mask off the fret board tape or around the ends of the fret.

I would say the best thing to actually do is put the loading end finishing file around the loading ends, polish them down to the end bit, and then move on to leveling the frets. It's less problematic that way, so I'm going to take this, it's perfectly flat on one side. rounded on the other and it allows you to cut the ends of the frets and then round them without causing too much damage to the fretboard, so first of all I'm going to cut the ends so they're flat like this and then I'm going to turn it over to the rounded side and I'm rounding the fritz and this makes it more comfortable while playing.

It's a little more difficult in this area, even more to do. There's another side, oh my God. Wrapped 240 squared paper. around the finger or the handle of a tool, this is rounding the side of the fretboard a little bit and also rounding the end of the frets and then polishing, then you'll follow up with 322,600, you said probably even 800 or so wet/dry now At this point, You really need to think about protecting your guitar, don't you? Maybe you've noticed it before. I was filing very carefully. I wanted to know exactly where I was. I don't want to get complacent now using sandpaper, though, yes.

It's easy to mess it up. I'm going to mask it with the aforementioned masking tape. I am NOT going to put this up too quickly. Anyway, I only have a layer of oil on this stain, that's enough to protect us, but rubber erasers with Silicon Carbide grain impregnated, perfect for polishing France and Great Britain. The good thing about these is that they are flexible and go around the corners and edges, which is much more difficult with sandpaper because you have to roll it up and very carefully, it is an annoying medium. I'm actually holding this at a fine certified angle, so the fred hens are done and the reason I did this is that once the fretboard is masked, you can't access the entirety of the fret end, which which makes polishing more difficult there.

There's always the chance now that in the next stage of the fret leveling job I'm going to mess this up and slip and scratch the end, which would be sad, you can't really see how shiny they are, but it's a risk worth

taking

. I just feel more comfortable with the guitar facing the playing direction. Yes, it is doable at this point if you had used the knot rule. I have several levels of tape and would not have been able to measure the level of the guitar. The actual neck was a permanent marker on the top of each fret, then the leveling beam.

It has 320 sandpaper which is relatively coarse, not how much you think you'll have to remove and they may bother you too. to change the paper that is on the leveling beam to start with, the longer the beam the better essentially the closer the travel length it will be the better for this particular job we make them 16 inches, 12 inches and 8 inches long, in fact I have a cut somewhere that is three inches and I use it from time to time for small jobs. They are surprisingly useful tools now that method is pretty important to you across the board and this is whether you are using a chisel or a hand plane or a fine saw or a cheap saw if you find yourself tense and using the little muscles that you have, workshop of weasel.

I'm trying to avoid alliteration, if you know what I mean, anyway, if you find yourself using muscles and really pushing whatever it is you want. you're working, then the tool you're working with is the wrong tool or it's not sharp enough every time it counts if you're a chef if you're in the kitchen if you're really pressing hard with your chef's knife you have to sharpen it because at some point you'll slip, it won't cut correctly, and you'll take off a finger. The same goes, especially if you're fretting. We have a mast here, it is relatively flexible, not very. but relatively and as I am living the phrase if I underweight I am going to move the neck as I go I am going to end up with frets that are not level at the end because the pressure is taken or the neck bounces back there was a very long way to insult you and teach you something, but you probably already knew it anyway do limiting we know the neck is leveled very smoothly and I'm taking off, there you go, you can see that I We've barely taken anything with the top of that fret, so there's some variation and the frets not much, you probably won't even notice it if you're playing.

I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it's less than we want to get. However, that is absolutely perfect and we want to keep this uniform across the width of the fretboard. Okay, now my mic guitars are trying to move, they might find it more comfortable to only move one way. I certainly do and you can see I'm also sounding in parallel. the center line of sight of the guitar this is because this guitar comes with a 12 inch radius. If we wanted a compound radius, we would go conical and parallel to the chords instead of the centerline and this is where the Fred rocket comes in.

That's all. okay, very good, do this and think visually that you have everything precise and nice, we move the way you move your body, change the way you use leveling, be more leveling, you could give it a twist, the Fred rocker is a mini straight edge with four different sizes that goes all the way to the mandolin and that means you can check the control to see if the middle threat is swinging or if it's swinging on one fret and you go through the different sized sections and yes you can double check , obviously. Now I've shown you how it works, but I need to check it again because I haven't done it correctly, so I'll see if there are any high or low points diagnosed and then, yeah, we have a low point right there and I can see that way. so I have a little more material to remove and I'm going to do it, although you don't have to look if you don't want to, okay, we'll come back, those frits are level, now we have to continue with the crowning process, which is as essential as everything else in this process, basically at this point the top of the frets are for the most part pretty flat and that means that the intonation point has moved from the center of the fret to the back end of the side edge of the bridge.

Let's say and we want the point to be in the middle and relatively well, plus with the crowning file it's excellence and well, it doesn't matter where you start, you're really looking at this one here, so let's have a Wow, this also has safe polished edges and precision ground, so I usually double mask it and you can see I just started going through, not enough to damage the fretboard, but enough to tire me out. Now you can see here how well I want the line in the center of the load, I have a few more to do it, okay, that's good, here's the closest one, you'll notice the tape broke a little bit, whatever you do, we have little bits of files from the dishes and every once in a while one of those will get caught under the aluminum foil and just rip the paper off, that's why we mask it, there's no way around it from time to time, as you can see, The next step is to polish the fritzsche.

Really, and there are many different ways to do it. I tend to start with 400 or 600 grit wet and dry paper and then move on to Fred erasers because these little things are just amazing. You could do it if you have a shop where you can and we tend to do this on all production guitars, get a bench grinder with a polishing mop and use it with Rouge jewelers or something, it's very scary, but with gum it leaves you polished and quick, but if you're working at home you have a small workshop you don't have bench grinders or polishing mops or jewelers Rouge and all that jazz yes, this is as good a method as any one a difficult part of polishing Fritz is the sides, It's just uncomfortable, which is why Fred erasers are so good now that what I usually do is start with 400 or 600 grit wet and dry paper and I wrap it around a fret eraser and that gives a relatively flexible support to the paper, but it also allows you to get into the edges of the fret and it's really also very important to have these frets polished as much as possible.

An ultra polished and shiny fret makes the guitar much more playable and I mean this is something you can do on your guitars it is a quick and inexpensive way to improve the playability of virtually any guitar that has been around for a while and which just needs to be the same length as the frets so as not to go over the edge and damage the guitar at all. this is removing the file marks once we've done that, so it's a simple case of turning the Fred rubbers over and polishing them, although that's getting ahead of ourselves at this point.

I also need to do the top so nothere is a lack The marks are left in the next, once you have reached the stage where you have all the marks in the file, it is a very good idea to double check and make sure you haven't inadvertently removed enough material to create. a high or low point, well, to create a low point, the loading rocker is pretty much the most important part, it's the most important tool. If you disagree, let me know in the comments below. I actually do and this is a perfect object lesson. I have a fret that's either high or low so I need to figure it out, yeah, that Fred there, that Fred there, she's low, so I'm going to take a smaller leveling beam now and I put a little bit of drop on the end and I'm also going to use thinner paper, but this post phrase is done by hand, so it drops when approximately from the 12th fret to the 14th fret the leveling drops and that just creates a better, a better feel of an instrument is not something we do, it's something we do all the time in crimson, but it's not absolutely necessary, yeah, that's the lowest okay, duct tape and again, there's always more, there's a strip of duct tape here and essentially I.

I'm putting a tiny angle. I removed a permanent marker haha ​​and we got rid of the rock. Now it's time to crown and polish again and you've seen all that before, so here we go. I'm going to speed that up and that's the part of the work done on the fret rubbers. You can use them flat. You can use them standing up following the grain and length of the fret. It completely depends on you. One trick is don't overtighten because that's a good way to cause cramps. It is applicable to so many activities. We are in the middle fret.

Medium fret rubber. Sorry, I'm going with the fret length, obviously, I'll move on to the fine thing. I'm going to keep it flat and I'm going to go over the fretboard and then the superfine and I'm going to come back over here and we'll see how good we'll see how the first one looks in a little bit, well, it was fun, right? Now here we go, it's hard to film frets and shiny things, this is how they look now, after a little effort and this is how they look after wet and dry sandpaper, so now I have one more fret to do and then you detach the mouse at the tip, this is 100 percent achievable, anyone can do it.

Freeport Cleaner and this is the fretboard restorer. There are no petroleum byproducts in the missile, so if I were about to put the strings on, I would let it soak. For a while, this is just an initial protective layer. I'm going to put more on the fretboard oil and restorer at a later date so the excess comes off immediately. Yes, I'm very happy with this, here we go. Did you see the flame in the ebony on this fretboard and did you see that crazy habit? I was planning that this video would be more processes. I was going to apply oil and it's not too late.

It's too late. I was going to apply oil. I'm going to play with some metallic blue lacquer in some places, but that will have to wait until the next episode. Thanks for watching. I'm sorry this episode was particularly full of Crimson guitar products. This is where we start and where our forte is fret leveling check out the free leveling kit check out the quiet crimson guitars and don't forget if you're watching this in July you can win the guitar. I'm a little exhausted yesterday I had a birthday party for my four year old son followed an hour later by a birthday party for my 9 year old son.

I'm so tired I forgot he's eight anyway it doesn't matter thanks for watching thanks for being

awesome

. I'll be back soon with another video, like and subscribe and all that jazz. I don't know why I'm walking here. It turns out that you are going to give my weight that keeps the tripod stable. You know you'll want it. Comment below. Bye bye.