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).

Aging and mounting the plates

Once I got the engraved parts back, I did some further aging of the headstock plate and the truss rod cover, based on the tests I had done before, i.e. I dumped them in a layer of salt and slightly covered them in water. Once done, I let them sit for half a day.

This time, the result wasn't quite what I expected, but I went ahead anyway as I wanted to rub them off with the charcoal-colored wax that I had used already on the wooden body.

Also, I darkened a bit more the text on the pickguard, and based on the results that I had seen at the engraver's shop, I decided to use a permanent marker for that, marking all black and then rubbing it off again, so that only the text would remain slightly darker.

I then went ahead and mounted the plates.

In progress...:

...and done:

Getting my parts back

This past Saturday, finally I was able to pick up the parts from the engraver.
When I arrived at his shop, his was still doing the final part, the pickguard, and as the text that I wanted to be engraved, was bigger than the available area, he had to do it in chunks.
I even got to have a look - of course not before putting on safety goggles....

He would first use a black marker on the areas to be engraved, then engrave a tiny layer, barely taking of the marker, to check and finalize the positioning, then he would start the actual engraving process.
In the second and third picture, one can see the bright light as the laser is doing it's job.

This is the finished parts as I got them back:

I absolutely love them!

Soldering together the parts and further assembling the pieces

Although I had purchased some preassembled electronics, I still needed to solder them to the pickups.
Also, it turned out that the grounding wire that connected the two pots, had been placed on the side of the pots, and this made it impossible to fit everything into the routed cavity.
This is the circuit diagram:

I removed the grounding wire between the pots and started putting together new ground wires for the pots as well as for the shielding of the routed cavities and the pickguard, bridge and control board.

I then connected the bridge pickup and the neck pickup to the pots, switch and ground, with the neck pickup requiring me to add a new ground wire as I had chosen a 4-way switch for my Tele.

I then assembled the bridge, making sure that one of the ground wires would connect with the bridge from underneath.

When I then tried to assemble the control board, it turned out that the routed cavity was still not wide enough for my pots to fit in completely.

I took my chisels again and made the cavity a bit wider in those areas that the pots would go, making sure to keep them narrow enough so that they would still be covered by the control board.

I then painted these parts with shielding paint again, two layers...

Once dry, I tried to assemble all of it again, and this time things fit together nicely:

I screwed on the knobs, then I selected a switch cab. The plastic ones didn't look nice, so I took a nice metal one, but again, it was all too shiny, so I had to use some sand paper, wax and heat to make it look a bit more aged.

Some further assembly activities...

Last night I spent some time again on the guitar with some further assembly activities.
First of all, I extended the shielding paint from the routed pickup cavities to the top of the body, so that I could more easily connect the cavities' shieldings, pickguard, bridge and control board to ground.
Also, I painted the inside of the hole for the input jack with the shielding paint.

I then mounted the strap buttons:

(I deliberately mounted the front button a bit further down the tip rather than placing it exactly horizontally, hoping to reduce the pull / wear on the button over time, as this way, the direction of force is shifted a bit towards the inside of the body, plus some added friction between the strap and the body once hooked up.)

I then mounted the input jack, just to find out that the jack plate would not sit flush with the body.
Checking the net and my books, I found out that this is normal for Teles, but first of all the jack plate has fairly sharp edges, and frankly I dont like the look.

I then removed the jack again, and using a chisel, I carefully widened the opening of the hole, so that the jack plate would fit better.
Afterwards, I covered the naked wood with some wax and shielding paint again, and mounted the jack back in. (I also used the opportunity and sanded down the jack plate a bit to give it less of a shiny look.)
Now, I like it much better: