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I pretty sure I've let my mouth write a check my body can't cash, but I couldn't resist. I'd like to build a small acoustic based on the Gibson LG-O, but I may not have time for that. I've got some pommelle sapele to resaw, and I've also got bloodwood and mesquite already cut. The catch is I've already got some things underway, and some need to be finished. I'm working on a piece of furniture, and I've got a dred, a jumbo, and an electric underway. We'll have to see how it goes, my fallback will be a cereal box electric, I can whip out one of those in a month or so.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Since I'm new here, I thought I'd post a shot of some of the guitars I've built. The one on the extreme right is my '56 Gibson J50, the rest of them I built.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I've finished drawing up my plans, based on a Gibson LG-O. I'll be using an Allied truss rod($19.00) and Grover tuners from StewMac ($47.44), so I'm up to $66.44 before I start cutting wood.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Looks good on paper , Hope all goes well !

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Certainly! I have a few oddball ways I do things, so I've always drawn my own plans. I dome the top below the waist and keep the upper bout flat, and I use a hybrid scarf/laminated headstock joint. The center piece is continuous, and the outside pieces have scarf joints. It allows me to use pretty small pieces to glue up a neck blank. (I can get a complete blank out of a 2' piece of 1x6).
I also cut the sides to their exact profile so I don't need to sand in a radius dish, so I have to construct the profile of the sides on the plans. I cut up the plans into paper patterns to mark everything out on the wood.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I just finished up a neck like that. I wanted to use some qtr sawn walnut with a curly maple center. The maple was flatsawn. I liked the way it came out and I was able to get the most of of the small boards I had.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I've just about gotten all the bits and pieces that I'd like to use together, and I'm a little over the budget if I include the preamp and pickup (the preamp and pickup are just under $25). I can get under budget if I leave out a couple of items, like pearl side dots & B/W purfling. I haven't decided on my rosette or position marker inlays yet, if I use any shell I probably won't be able to use the preamp. If I use wood scraps the rosette and markers will almost be free.

Sorry Wud, but I don't have anything too interesting on the wood acquisition stories, most of what I have came from Alaska Specalty Woods, Home Depot, or FreeState Timbers (my local "exotic" wood vendor). There is a story on the top I'll be using, it's curly redwood I got off of eBay a few years ago. I was trolling through eBay, and this board caught my eye. It really looked good, there weren't any bids, and there was only a few minutes left on the auction. The starting bid was only $5, so I jumped on it with a $10 bid, thinking that would ward off any last minute bidders. It looked like it was easily worth $20 of $30 bucks. The auction ended, and I won it for $5, without ever looking at the shipping charges. They were nearly $30! I was pissed then, but it works to my advantage now.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I've eliminated a few things and gotten down to the budget, with nothing for free! I suppose I could call some of the offcuts free, but I didn't. When I was figuring the amount of board feet, I included an extra 1/8" for the kerf and final cleanup. I may be a little light on the cost of shellac, if I use the Everclear to make it. If I've left anything out I can always drop back to the Gotoh keystones, they're a little cheaper. Here it is:

edit: my list is posting poorly, the total is $149.51, details to follow

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

still not getting it!
Cost Item
$5.00--- Top
$4.10--- B&S
$0.50--- Back graft
$2.26--- Back
$1.67--- Bridge
$0.82--- Binding
$5.90--- Purfling
$1.00--- Rosette
$2.73--- Braces
$1.17--- Heelblock
$0.61--- Tailblock
$1.29--- Linings
$8.03--- Neck
$1.17--- Neck accent
$2.18--- Fingerboard
$1.00--- Position markers
$0.29--- Nut
$2.50--- Saddle
$3.23--- Frets
$3.58--- Neck bolts
$19.00--- Truss rod
$44.77--- Tuners
$1.00--- Titebond I
$1.00--- CA Glue
$1.00--- Shellac
$2.00--- TruOil
$11.99--- Preamp
$9.99--- Pickup
$3.58--- Input Jacks
$1.79--- Mic jack
$1.89--- Battery clip
$2.49--- Output jack
$149.51
That's the short version, the long version has a better description, the source, the unit price, and the quantity.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I've got a separate parts list for the preamp, but it's not going to post nicely either.
I'll either figure out how to post tabulated data or post a picture of the tabulated data if anybody cares.
I'll assume that nobody cares and be done with the accounting.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Nice looking wood. Not that I care.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

It is nice looking wood, and I do care... It's sweltering in the Capitol of the Republic right now, but the Salt Lick is still good!

I've had this bloodwood for quite a while, I bought several boards over 10 years ago, I really like the color and it was pretty cheap. I've used some of it, it has a tap tone like glass. I'll probably go very thin with the sides and back, it's as stiff and dense as rosewood. I had a lot of trouble bending it last time, but these sides are from a different board.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

It will look striking under finish, I think - nice.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I've made a little progress, I've glued up some offcuts for the blocks, cut out the pieces for the neck.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I've also gotten the top joined and all the thin strips cut. Spruce for the bracing, holly and bloodwood for the binding, and oak for the laminated linings. After I finished all that, I swapped the blade on the bandsaw so I can cut out the mold and bending form.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

I got the back joined. Getting a decent joining edge on the birdseye maple was next to impossible, I don't have any edge tools sharp enough cut it without any tearout, so I had to resort to the beltsander and a file.
Also got the mold cut out and glued up.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Now what may be the fatal flaw, the rosette and position marker design. It may be too elaborate for me to finish on time, but I think I'm going with it. Ebony squares, bloodwood chevrons, bordered with holly. The colors should look great together.
I've gotten all the ebony and bloodwood pieces cut out, it'll take a while to get them all to fit.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

No progress pics, there's a bit of a goat problem

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Now that's agility

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Hi Rodger,

I like your wood choices - this is going to look good. Have you considered using some $10 tuners (from HK on eBay) to get your costs down for the build challenge? You can always change them out later....

Cheers,
Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

I'm actually good on the budget at this point, there were a couple of items I'd included in the cost, like the back grafts, that I ended up not needing. I used offcuts from the redwood top for the back grafts, it was already included. I also have a couple of items, like hookup wire for the preamp, that I left out. I'm pretty sure I've gotten everything I'll need together and I'm still under budget.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Thats what I like about these challenges , Makes a person think a bit more in using what he has available to get to the desired budget . I believe there will be some excellent examples this time around as well.

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

While I don't harvest trees, I do work mostly from rough lumber I obtained locally where I pay a bd/ft price. I've picked up quite a few boards big enough for several guitars for less than $100 each, some as low as $20. I've got some lyptus I paid less than $20 for a 4/4 6"wide x 5'long that I've been dying to resaw. I've got cherry, pomelle sapelle, walnut, birdseye maple, and some kind of mahogany the I will resaw sets costing me less than $20 each. Not everything they have is cheap, I think koa is $70 BF when they have it, and gaboon ebony is $80 BF. They usually have ebony large enough for fretboards on hand, and a pretty decent selection of exotic woods. Freestate Timbers in the name of the place, they have a website with the phone number and address. If you don't pay much for wood, a $150 budget leaves room for some nicer stuff. I've used cheaper tuners on a couple of electrics I made for my grandkids, and I wasn't happy with the cheap tuners. I don't believe the truss rod is a reasonable place to economize for a builder of my experience, although the last two haven't really needed the rod for adjustment.
The top on this one was meant for a challenge, I ended up paying nearly $30 for it, which is still a little less than I usually pay for my tops, but almost all of it was shipping. I'm not completely happy with it's stiffness, but it is pretty light, so I'm going to use it.
I made the preamp really cheaply as well, most of those SMT components are sold in lots of 10, so it cost about $70 to build one, but less than $100 to build ten.
The only real compromise I've had to make for the budget is the bridge pins. I could make my own, but I sort of prefer a pinless bridge anyway.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

The back came out to be either barely wide enough or nearly wide enough, too close to call until the sides are bent and in the mold. I added some small wings from the offcuts just to be safe.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon