This is a guest post by Vladimir Donević
You can find Vladimir’s Facebook album here.
Custom Flying V Specifications:
- Neck-through design with reversed headstock
- Body woods: Mahogany + maple wings
- Neck woods: Flame maple + walnut stripes
- Fretboard: Ebony with custom abalone inlays
- Scale length: 25,5“ / 648mm
- Number of frets: 24 Dunlop 6105
- Body routed for Gotoh tremolo, one stacked single coil and one regular humbacker
- Hardware: Gotoh tremolo (the rest was left for the customer to install)
Wood has arrived!
Finally unpacked!
Everything in one place for this build…
Flame maple, walnut, ebony for the neck…
Mahogany for the body wings…
Working on a proper thickness of the wood…
Walnut stripes for the neck sanded to proper thickness…
Flame maple for the neck cut, sanded and prepared for gluing…
It will look like this once glued together…
Neck glued together…
Look from another angle…
Top surface was marked with the pencil before final sanding…
Long thick piece of MDF with a sand paper on it for leveling the surfaces…
Ready for leveling the headstock…
Headstock leveled with my handmade leveling tool …
Some material is needed to complete the shape of the headstock…
Cutting the piece to complete the headstock…
Piece added and the headstock was glued together…
Removing the unnecessary material. Headstock was shaped with the template and the hand router…
Jig for routing the truss rod channel…
The cut was made with 6mm and 10mm bits…
Closer look…
Drilling the holes for the tuners using the headstock template…
Final shape of the headstock…
Back side of the headstock…
Quick fit check…
The neck is done for now…
Beautiful abalone shell!
It’s gonna look great on the ebony board…
Fret position markers were made with CNC machine…
Machining the inlays using 1mm router bit…
Machining the inlays using 1mm router bit…
The fretboar is ready for the inlays…
Inlays were cut with laset cutter…
Inlays are glued and sanded flush with the board…
Fret slots took a long time to finish. Ebony is very hard wood…
Slots were cut by hand saw, 0.6mm wide…
Clamping the board for the radius…
16“ radius was made with aluminum block…
The fretboard is done! Beauty!
Inlays look great in this dark ebony…
Perfect 16“ radius…
The fretboard is ready for the frets…
Frets installed and roughly shaped…
Rough cut mahogany for the body wings…
Removing most of the material with my hand router with 20mm router bit…
Routing with 8mm bit over the MDF template…
Marking the positions where the body will be glued…
Wiring channel drilled with the hand drill…
Sides were glued one after at the time…
Body wings after gluing, maple top added…
Finished the routing for Gotoh tremolo, pickups, switch and pots…
Finished routing the tremolo and electronic cavities…
Finished routing the tremolo and electronic cavities…
Headstock was swirled with Marble Magic paints, over white base coat…
Body was swirled with Marble Magic paints, over white base coat. Back side is gloss black…
Body was polished to get a mirror reflection…
The output jack, strap buttons and tremolo posts added…
Gotoh locking nut and string retainer bar were also added…
Closer look to custom abalone inlays…
Fret ends are rounded and polished to mirror shine…
It took a few days of polishing to get this mirror-like reflection…
Custom made cavity covers with the customer logo…
The paint is fading from the body towards the center of the neck…
Beautiful flame maple neck…
Headstock was painted the same way as the body…
The paint it fading towards the center of the neck…
Complete! Front side!
Complete! Back side!
Proud builder with his baby, time to say good bye!
Off to owner across the ocean!
This was a guest post from Vladimir Donević, make sure to check out Vladimir’s Facebook album here.
