Final pictures - this is it

First time playing...

As my playing is rather not worthy putting here, I recorded my son's first playing on the newly finished guitar...

Setting the intonation

After I had done all of the other settings, it came to the final part - the one that I was most afraid of, as it would "make or break" all my guitar-maiking efforts:
Setting the intonation. Now it would prove if the pickup and bridge were positioned properly, the string through holes in the right position and the guitar playable after all.

I tuned the guitar, then (in order not to bend the strings sideways) placed a capo on the 12th fret, to see if it would play a clean octave.
It turned out that the tone was too high on the 12th fret, i.e. I hade to make the strings longer by moving the bridge saddles away from the neck, using the phillips screws at the end of the bridge.

Starting from the low e string and working my way up, I tuned, placed the capo and checked intonation, using a guitar tuner as an additional aid.

As there was one bridge saddle for two strings each, I tried to do it for both sides at once, in order to find a good compromise setting for both strings.
Lucky enough,. as I was using compensated bridge saddles, I could achieve quite a balanced setting.

Turns out the bridge position was ok, and once I did a final tuning, I was surprised and really glad how nice the guitar sounds after all, with a very much balanced sound across all strings!

Adjusting the pickup height

With string height all set, I could now move ahead and set the pickup height.
Again, following the book, I set the pickup distance like this:

Neck pickup:
High e string: 5.5 mm
Low e string: 7.5 mm

Bridge pickup:
High e string: 1.5 mm
Low e string: 3.5 mm

I will see if this setting will be ok with my playing later on, and potentially adjust it again.

Adjusting the string height

Having set the neck, I went ahead and adjusted the string height. Following several books, the Fender web page and other posts, the rule of thumb said to set the string height to 1.6 mm on the 13th fret, for the high and low strings one a Telecaster. I used the grub screws on the bridge to lower the strings, but even in the lowest position of the bridge saddles, the strings were still to high.

 In order to compensate for this, I took the strings off again and placed a shim into the neck pocket, made of the same ash veneer that I had already used for filling in the neck pocket earlier.

With the shim in place and the bridge saddles still being in the lowest position, the strings were much lower (actually too low now).

Again, I used the grub screws to adjust the string height for the outer strings, measuring again with a feeler gauge.

Using a neck radius gauge, I then adjusted the inner string heights to match the neck radius, with the inner strings being a bit closer to the neck than the outer ones (to compensate for more movement of the low e string and allow for some more bending on the high e string).

Setting the neck curve

Once I had strings on the guitar, in the next step I checked and set the neck curve. I opted for a slight curve only, following some posts / advice on the net.
In order to determine the appropriate curve, I pushed down the string on the first and last fret and measured the distance in the middle, on the fret, with a 0.20 mm feeler gauge, adjusting the neck back and forth until the gauge would slide between string and fret, barey touching either of them.

Stringing it up

Finally, the time has come to string up the guitar - I decided for Elixir nanoweb coated strings, super light (.009 - .042).