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I've begun the work!

It's not at all the design that I thought i would start with - but my plan is to have something totally unique, but still very functional.

My first question - (I am using recycled piano wood for this, and this piece is veneered on both sides. I was going to cut it into appropriately sized pieces and then glue em together. The guitar's body would then be only a wee bit thinner than an average stratocaster.)

Should I sand right down to the bare veneer, or would simply scuffing the varnish be good enough for glueing the plates together?

My second question - I'm poor and can't afford to go out and drop a bunch of money on clamps. any other ideas? i was thinking about jacking up my car and then letting the car down on the two joined pieces. I know this sounds absolutely trashy but i can't think of any other way i could apply tons of pressure to the body.

thanks for your help folks!

I'm no expert, but I'd think you'd want to get the veneer off and make sure you have good wood-to-wood contact. As for clamping, do you have access to some weights or cinder blocks? The weight of the car would be overkill. You don't want to press all the glue out. Using your jack, you can rig up a way to press the wood against a backstop with a caul on top.

Welcome to the forums and congrads on starting an interesting journey. If you are anything like me, you will start selling everything you own to get the tools/supplies needed for your newly-found addiction... If you can't afford clamps, wait till you find out the price on other luthier tools required! YIKES If you have a harbor freight near you - they have clamps for cheap or see if you can borrow some from a friend - it's probably the best way to go - of course, Roger, who just introduced himself on this post has been very creative with his first build without emptying the bank account Good luck man - I'm watching - keep them pics coming....

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Definitely see what's under the veneer. I don't know what the sides look like but you'd wanna make sure it's not plywood or some other junk. If so, you might be better off finding some scrap pine from somewhere. I found a few pieces that would make a good three piece body. 2x4s you may need to glue more pieces together. I do think a solid piece of wood would sound better than plywood though.

And yeah, don't run over it with your car.

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will this guitar be painted or have a natural finish? If it is going to be natural then definately get that veneer off of there you will already have a seem going down the body anyway, so no need to accentuate it with dark veneer lines. however if you are going to paint it it really wont matter much. In either case get the varnish off and get a nice smooth surface or you will never be able to get those things glued together correctly.

as far as the car idea goes... not conventional for sure.. but I think it would probably work, depending on the car. If you are driving a one ton dually then definitely that would be over kill and would likely squeeze all the glue out of your joint, but and midsize or compact car I think would probably actually work, there are a lot of cars that only weigh a couple thousand pounds anyway, and if you were to put it under one of the rear tires that isnt carrying the weight of the engine, I Imagine you would probably only have a few hundred pounds on it, which is easily within the realm of what is normally exerted by clamps.

cinder block or weights can work, but in my experience do not provide the nicest glue joints, they really dont exert that much pressure when you consider they only weigh maybe 20 or 30 pounds each. honestly, though not the conventional method at all I think your car tires would work better than cinder blocks. just make sure that you put something underneath it to keep the wood from being dented real bad.

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I had a piano like that I tore apart only to find it was dovetailed poplar underneath. Made good wood for jigs.

You might take off the veneer on one side using that side to glue together for the body. You can see if you have good wood to work with.

Hey guys. Here's some pictures.

The wood looks like pine or poplar and it's 1 x 4's joined together, then veneered.

The guitar is going to be painted solid black, so the appearance of the wood is not important at all. This is only a prototype, as I have something kind of unique planned for this. The wood is pretty much the perfect thickness that I can make what would be my routes out of (the shapes for neck pocket, control cavities etc) So I will simply cut out the top piece with all the "routes" already in the design and then glue it to a back of the exact same thickness, without any cavities in it. I am fortunate with these pieces of wood that it worked out that way. This will yield a total body thickness only a hair slimmer than a standard fender strat body, but thicker yet than the cheap squier bodies that are considerably thinner.

And yes, this thickness will be deep enough for my neck pocket, which will actually be set. Set necks are acceptable with guitars that have no neck angle, right? I'm still debating whether to do an angled (one piece? scarf jointed?) headstock or a fender style with string trees and a retainer. The scale and string spacing will be that of a Gibson flying V.

This is going to be the grossest bastardization of fender and gibson building traditions i've ever seen. hopefully it will work. The only thing that could make it nastier would be if I would angle the neck, but the pickups that are going onto this guitar are surface mounted, and from neck to bridge are all the same height (not adjustable either). I do believe this would place the portion of the scale closest to the bridge too high for the pickups to do a good job (the pickups are only 5/8 of and inch high).