Official Luthiers Forum!

I posted a thread earlier about my build thread on the TDPRI. Alan Stassforth replied, and said he could not view my pics over ther, so could I post some here. I thought a better idea would be to post a build thread.
Now, full disclosure first. I have only built one guitar from scratch. I was in the middle of build two when the tele forum started their build off, so I put that one on hold to enter the challenge there.
I am not a pro. I suck a photography. I have a really cheap camera, and I do things my own way. I use minimal tools, and a lot of the times cheap ones. But if you are interested to see how an amateur with too much passion and not enough money builds guitars, read on.
Also, this build has a time limit. It must be completed by May 3rd. Therefore, i will have to do a True oil finish. If I make any mistakes, I'll have to repair them as best I can. I doubt I'll be able to hide them, so this will be what it is, warts and all.
This guitar is going to be made from simple woods. From left to right.

To the extreme left is some black walnut that a friend gave me. I don't really have the tools to dig into this wood tight now, but I am planning touse some of this for a headplate.
to the right of that is a maple body blank. This blank was given to me. And lastly, to the far right, a honduran mahogany neck blank and rosewood fretboard blank from LMI.
Specs
Soft maple body
Honduran 'hog set neck
rosewood board
24,562" scale.
22 med. jumbo frets
Carved top
2 humbuckers, 2 vol., and one tone.
Oh, did i mention this is supposed to be a tele?
The first thing I do is cut the body from the blank.

Then attach the template


And rout the body.

That's all for tonight. See you again soon.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Thanks for posting this, Mike!
Don't rush it,
but hurry up.
Looks good so far.
Good luck!
Alan

So, did i mention this is a carved top?
Attach top template #1.



First ledge routed.



Attach second template.



And the second ledge is done.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Before routing the third ledge, I need to drill for controls.



I use the little angled piece off my combination square(don't know what it's called) to eye the drill for straightness. I do this all the time, since i don't have a drill press. Works well.
I go all the way through the back, so I don't have to guess when I line up my control cavity template.



Unfortunately, the pics of the third ledge didn't come out, so on to the fourth.



All done.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Now to rough out the top carve. This is where I depart from most(of necessity).
Some guys use a ROS(random orbit sander) to do this, but I don't have one. I do have one of those 1/4 sheet sanders. When I was younger we used to call them jitterbug sanders. Don't know if they're still commonly called that. I tried to use it on the top carve, using 60 grit paper. It just basically sat on top of the maple and bounced up and down for about an hour. No dice.
Some people instead use small little hand planes to carve the top. But I have nerve damage from diabetes, and carpel tunnel, and the beginnings of arthritis(hard to believe that at 49, but there you are) in my arms, wrists and hands. I can't push those little planes. I have a really hard time pushing a block plane. A bench plane, or any plane with a handle and tote I have no problems with, and I use one to plane the but end of the body carve.
I need to get me a good ROS, but for now, what I use are a couple of really sharp chisels.






Getting there.





From here, the jit4terbug will smooth things out nicely.
On to the neck scarf.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Cutting the scarf joint.



As you can see, I use that little piece off of my combination square a lot. This time, to keep my cut square and straight. Wish I could remember what that piece is called.
Cut is finished.



Now I set one on top of the other like they were on piece, so that the angle cut into each one of them is in line with one another. I apologize for the quality of the pics, but some of this I've had to do indoors, and my camera stinks at indoor pics I believe Todd Stock posted an illustration of this method in a thread or two about planing the scarf joint. If you can't tell by my pics, you might want to search for that.



Then i simply plane them together as one. This makes them pretty much perfect mates for each other.
Like so.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Gluing up the scarf joint.



Moving back to the body, I place the template for the control cavity rout.



Even though i was carefull, and shimmed the shallow side....



I needed a quick repair, so since it was a small hole, what I did was fill it with maple shavings mixed with titebond. Remember, my time is short. I've got a deadline in order to complete this competition. It won't be invisible, but I'm hoping it'll look like a knot or some other irregularity in the wood.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Since this is a set neck, i need a little bit of angle or set back to my neck. This is how I do this.
I take a hand plane and , starting from a point just in front of the bridge, i plane a drop off in the top from that point to the neck heel on the body.



Since this is such a shallow angle, you won't be able to see it as I plane. Here's a couple of finished shots.



And here you can see, i have my drop off.



I prefer to do it this way, instead of putting the angle on the neck tenon. This way, when I lay the neck mortise template on the top, the template and the router will follow this angle, and rout the bottom of the mortise to this same angle. It also puts the pickups on this same plane relative to the strings.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

And here are a few shots of the body sanded to 60 grit, and the edges of the top smoothed over.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Here's a shot of the repair.



To me it just looks like a knot in the wood. I used wood shavings and titebond. I'll go back over that with maple sanding dust and titebond, just to make a smoother look.



And one final shot.



That's all for now. Hope you've enjoyed it so far.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I'm loving it, Mike.
Nice body shape and carving.
You are really kicking along here!
Alan

Thanks, Alan. Everything I've posted so far was done during the last 2-3 weeks. i've still got a lot more of this build I've already done yet to post. As soon as I can catch you guys up to speed, I'll be posting current progress pics.
That may be a while, since I usually do no work on Sunday, so today I had some free time to post all of that. Tomorrow I start in on this build again in earnest, and I'll need to post my progress on the TDPRI. But I will continue to post here as well, and try to keep everyone up to speed. But, since there's a deadline, the build comes first.
I'm glad you're enjoying it. I hope there are others here that are enjoying it as well. If not, I don't mind sharing my progress with just one, as long as you're interested.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Took the neck out of the clamps.

The scarf slipped a little, so now I have a hump in the neck where it joins together.
Enter the hand plane.

And it's all cleaned up now.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Thicknessing the headstock.

I took it down to 7/16". When i glue up the headplate, it'll have a final thicknes of 9/16".

But now I need a headplate.
I split this off of he walnut I have. It's around 1/2" thick.

After a few minutes with the handplane, it's starting to level out.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Once I get it close to the thickness I want, i bring it to final thickness with the sander.

Then i take a razor knife and trim it to size.

And here's a pic of it all cleaned up.

And here it is in the clamps.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Moving on to the fretboard. I cut the fret slots and sized the fretboard earlier. In the interest of time, I'm going to skip those pics and come up to my current work.
Time to radius the fretboard.



I use the 1x4s you see on either side of the fretboard to help keep the radius block centered as I sand the fret board.
Radiused and sanded to 800 grit.



I use tape on the board to lay out the positions of the fret markers.


And here they are drilled.



Then I cut 1/4" plugs out of the same maple the body is made from, and glue them in.



I'll let them dry, then cut them flush with a razor blade.
That's all for today. Thanks for looking.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Go Mike go!
I like your way of doing things.
Maple fretmarkers will be cool.
I'm doing a yellow siris body, with rosewood fretboard,
and yellow siris markers.
Looking good.
Thanks for posting!
Alan

Thanks, Alan. I like to use wood where I can. There'a a ton of guitars out there with pearl, clay, or plastic markers. No need to add another one, IMHO. I had a choice of maple or walnut. I just thought the maple would be best on the dark rosewood board.
I'm refinishing a one piece maple bass neck, and I drilled the black plastic markers out of that and plan to replace them with walnut.
I've never seen siris(that I know of). What's it like and what's it look like? I'd love to see a couple of pics.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I'm sure by now you recognize this little piece of metal. I'm gonna start calling it Thing.



As I said before, i use it for lots of things. In this case I taped a bit of sandpaper to it. This way i can lay it flat on the neck and snuggle up close to the edge of the headplate. Then i can sand an angle into the edge, so that this part of the headplate sits flush against the back of the nut. Thing's got a thousand uses.
After that, I drew out the dimensions of the neck on the blank, and cut it out with the jigsaw.



Once i get it close with the jigsaw, I take the surform and hog out most of the wood, getting it close to the line.



And follow that up with a long sanding block to get the sides level and to the line.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Here you can see I use the rasp to get in the curvy parts.

\

Lookin' good!



Time to cut the neck tenon.





Done!

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

After I sanded the inlays flush, I had a little bit of fretwire that was the right size. So i hammered it in.



I'll have to order more wire before I can finish.
That's all for now.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Yer killing me Mike!
Did you lose your job and have a lot of time?
When did you start this?
That "thing" is mighty handy.
You really know how to get by with what ya got.
That yellow siris is some wood i got 5 years ago,
for a weiss style, which I'm building right now.
I thought it was bland looking,
and almost sold it.
When I wet the wood to bend the sides, "bling'!
It's a golden color with some figure and bongs when tapped.
No pics, but i'll put one up here of the wood with a little finish on it.
Keep on rockin' on that slab!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A

LOL. Most of the work is done between the hours of 5pm and whenever it gets dark. I started the actual build March 14. I spent the three weeks before that drawing out the blueprint, figuring the neck angle, and making the templates. I still have to make a neck mortise template, and remake my humbucker routing template. All of my prior work is posted. As of yesterday, I'm up to speed. Everything else I post will be "real time". I've also been blessed with pretty good weather, which allowed me to keep moving on this build.

Yes, he comes in handy for a lot of things. I'd be lost without him.


This is what i hope the tru oil will do for my maple. It's pretty plain wood. As far as I know there's no figure to it, but it has dark little specs throughout it. You can't really see them in the pics. Don't know for sure what it is(spalting, maybe), but I hope it's accentuated under finish.
Thanks for taking the time to watch. I look forward to seeing the siris.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Thought I'd post a few pics of the neck with the fretboard laid on top, just for kicks. The nut is a cheap plastic stand in I had laying around, but it adds to the look.



And a closer look at the fret markers.


And the view from behind the nut.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Hey Mike, if you want, I could send you some corian nut stock I milled,
that is too short for me.
It's a little yellower than bone,
but it would be free!
PM your address if you are interested.
Alam
PS.. I like your headstock shape!
Also, plain maple is one of my favorite woods.