The missing post. Drilling holes for the controls

 

  

I forgot to post this step.  The drilling of the holes for the electronic controls. I first cut out paper patterns and placed them in the cavities. I then drilled 1/16" holes from the cavity side.

Now I can take this to my drill press and drill the proper size holes.

 

Here I have drilled the 1/2" hole for the 3 way switch.

  

After the 3/8" holes for the pots.

Gluing the neck on

Here I have gotten everything I think I need to glue this sucker on. Glue, wet and dry paper towels, Q-tips, clamps and radius block with steel bar.

Glue is applied to both surfaces.

Inlay

You can see I have already started cutting this out. I marked the inlay with a sharpie, next time I will draw it out on masking tape and then apply the tape and cut. The sharpie bled a lot on the pearl. You can see I drilled holes at the inside corners. Then I used a fine blade with a jewelers saw to cut. Next time I attempt this I will also purchase magnifying eye ware.

The cutting went pretty good considering I could hardly see what I was doing.

I then used the tools you see here to refine the shape. Dremel with diamond grinding bit. Assorted  files.

Not bad.

Here is where I really needed the magnifying glasses. I traced the H and highlighted it with chalk like I did when I did the inlays in the finger board. But this I had to free hand. You can see its not that good of a job. But for what this will be when I am done you won't be able to tell.

Here I have glued the inlay in using med viscosity  black super glue.

I am going to be painting the head stock black so using the black glue when I scrape the paint off the inlay after painting if I happen to scape a little to much it will still be black there.

Taped off to file and sand.

Update

The issue with the neck transition turns out is not a problem. Jack looked at it told me it should be fine. The dims. I mentioned where for a 59 Les Paul and those necks are much thicker than the necks you now see on electric guitars. I was soooo glad to hear that. I have been doing some fine tuning of the neck carve. Jack pointed out a couple places that needed a little more work. I think I am almost there.
I have also decided to put an Inlay in the head stock so I am trying to decide if I should do that before gluing the neck on or go ahead and glue the neck on and then do the inlay.  I am waiting on a jewelers saw and a 1/16" router bit. I have decided to name the guitar after my wife Hope. So I am going to put an H at the top of the head stock. I am also waiting on some water slide decals that look like the Hope custom# (in silver), that will go on the head stock in between the turn keys.
 

H

Hope          

                       Custom #______