The Hub

Hi -- I am planning to have a maple Thinline Tele top painted by an automotive paint shop. They've made a glossy and a matt sample for me and it looks great. I wonder if anyone has any experience with this, and specifically: - if I bind the top first, will the paint stand very proud above the binding once I scrape the paint off the binding? - the matt looks terrific, but it looks like it will burnish and get shiny in spots or line…

Hello -- I am trying to joint a Tele-style mahogany neck blank. I have a Metabo planer in good condition, but no jointer. I secured the c. 40 mm thick blank to a flat plywood sled and shimmed it well. It's hot-glued in place, and absolutely no rocking from any corner or edge. But as I plane it down, I still have about 1 mm difference from one end of the blank to the other when I put a straightedge on the surface (see photo, with backlig…

Hi -- I'm building a Thinline Tele and accidentally over-planed the mahogany neck blank. It is now 18.7 mm thick on avg and my rosewood fingerboard is 5.95 mm -- for a total of 24.65 mm instead of the recommended 25.4 mm (1 inch). So the total thickness will be thinner by 0.75 mm or so. 1. Am I still within practical tolerance and therefore should just go ahead with the build as normal? 2. Should I try gluing a 0.55 mm maple veneer I hav…

Hey everyone, I just had a Tele clone built by a small builder in my Proper's Guitar Workstation for a new nut and a fret level. It was clamped down in the workstation for less than a day. I just noticed that the rear hold down clamp left its footprint in the finish. No, I don't know what type of finish the builder used, but I'm trying to find out. I'm thinking its not nitro or poly because I use my TVPGW everyday and this has never hap…