My Baritone Death Kelly building thread (tutorial, lots of pics)

[Ruins]

My Baritone Death Kelly building thread (my 2cents tutorial, lots of pics)


Warning, contains lots of pics prepare yourself for a VERY long read.


Big thank you goes to ss.org and projectguitar.com. this places helped me a lot collecting valuable information by watching how others do it.
Also big thanks go to my friend who helped me to do it and to my wife for her patience and understanding.

I hope that this thread will encourage all those people that thought or hesitate for whatever reason to build their own guitars will do it after all.
learn from my mistakes, think 3 times about what you are about to do to avoid the mistakes i went through.


I had this dream of custom guitar for a couple good years now and finally it is done. This is my first build. It took me 1.5 years to finish it and not because it was so hard but because of lack of everything, tools, working space and money. I started to work on it literally with just few screw drivers and files…. I had to ask a friend of mine to go with him to his work place after his working day to work there for couple hours since I had nothing at home until one day his boss said that I am not allowed to be there. It took me a lot of work at home with hand tools until I found my current job and they have there very nice working place with almost every possible needed tool but by the time I happened I was almost completely done with the work

Specs:
-baritone 27 scale set neck construction
-5 pieces neck Maple/Venga, Ebony fret board no radius
-swamp ash body
-Blackouts, 3 way switch 1 vol, 1 tone
-no name Floyd rose
-no name tuners
-candy cherry red finish

very lame sound test as i am really out of shape
SoundClick artist: Ruins1 - page with MP3 music downloads


So let’s get started how I turned this


(the fretboard and the fret wire pics in their raw look are missing)






in to this





it all began from many many different sketches that I have done in my school times my in my school books and pages.
Here are few sketches I have done while I was searching for what I actually want to do




This were the sketches that I took and drew the final 1/1 size blue print of my design.


the 1/1 mokeup of my design



the venga pieces were too short for the neck length (what shall i say i had extreamly limited budget)




gluing it together



unfortunatly this didn't turn out so well and that pisses me off until now










unfortunately the body piece was also too short so i had to use the excess pieces to build the rest

























and another unfortunate happened the neck turned out to be some how too narrow so i hadd to glue some pieces from the side







time to work on the body some more now






-Preparing the rest-

-Continue-
the reason there are so many pictures is to show how step by step piece of wood turn in to guitar.


time to continue the work from home and in our bed room because there is no other place

trying the first lines of the bavels and starting to work on them.























































-preparing the rest-

[Andrew_B]

i dont know if its just my net.... but half the pics dont seem to want to show up lol....

[jsousa]

looks cool finished hha

[Ruins]

-Continue-





time to rout the trussrod channel out.










and now the attachment of the fretboard. the fret slots have been routed by my friend at his work place on cnc machine (i don't have pictures of that)








and now for the neck pocket. it was done with the same machine that did the trussrod channel




glued some excess wood on the head stock to cut out the headstock





lets see what we have so far. notice that the neck still doesn't feet in the neck pocket well more works needs to be done.





the headstock was cut out.




the fretboard was worked out from 300 to 1500 grid sandpaper




THIS WAS BIG MISTAKE. i used really bad vertical drill to drill this holes even though my marks were perfect for the holes the holed got drilled not the way i marked it at allllllll


i had to fill it up and redrill the holes again with normal good drill again...
this could be avoided if i would say no to my self and resist the drilling on the crappy one




time to work on the input jack and the electronics cavity.
i have seen this design very long time ago on some custom fender like guitar and i fell i love with it i knew that i had to have the same!!!!










so lets see what do we have so far and continue









the neck joint







-preparing the rest-

Originally Posted by Andrew_B

i dont know if its just my net.... but half the pics dont seem to want to show up lol....

i think its the traffic on the server. this thread will have almost 400 pics.... just refresh

Originally Posted by jsousa

looks cool finished hha

thanks

[thedonutman]

That looks really cool

The body shape reminds me of the Warwick/Status Buzzard a little.

[HighGain510]

Considering the tools you had to work with and what the final product turned out to be I think you did a great job man! The sculpted contours look badass and I really dig the body shape.

[Xaios]

This is THE ultimate picstory.

[Ruins]

-continue-


Let start shaping the neck. I was after Ibanez wizard like neck. The only problem was that I didn’t have any Ibanez wizard neck around to copy :/
So I had to go by feel what feels comfortable.

















Unfortunately I have missed taking pictures of the pups routs and the bridge but here how it looks all together so far








After this stage I didn’t bother taking pictures because it was just small adjustments over time. I would take it and try it and find something small to correct and leave it for 2 weeks and then try the neck again and it would feel weird so I would work some more on it over all there was also big brake from work because I didn’t have money for the pups at that point and the paint.

-preparing the rest-

Originally Posted by thedonutman

That looks really cool

The body shape reminds me of the Warwick/Status Buzzard a little.

thanks man! hmmm could be indeed as a bassist i spent lots of time looking for basses more than guitars. this guitar was the wish and the need for low tunned sounds for my own personal recordings.

Originally Posted by HighGain510

Considering the tools you had to work with and what the final product turned out to be I think you did a great job man! The sculpted contours look badass and I really dig the body shape.

thanks man!

Originally Posted by Xaios

This is THE ultimate picstory.

oh yeah... and its pain in the ass to post this all i bet it's even more pain i the ass to read it all

[TimSE]

epic pictures

[technomancer]

That's pretty damn cool

Nice work, and awesome pics

Though that is NOT a Death Kelly :P

[hairychris]

Epic.

[Ruins]

-continue-

By now this project lasts already 1.2 years….


Ok now its time to send it all down with 800 grid sand paper to make it nice and even. I didn’t go above 800 grid because the surface must be raw enough for the filler to stick to it properly.



Here you can see that the first time I tried to do the switch rout I simply f***ed it up. Honestly, I thought I will kill myself from anger that it happened… I didn’t have long enough router drill so I took some 15 or 20 size standard drill and tried to rout it OFFCOURSE it jumped off and drilled very nice and big hole all the way through.
I had to fill it up and redo it. What calmed me down was that I will be painting it so it won’t be seen any more. And how ironic when I was done with it I got a nice long 11 size extra long router drill. Why I couldn’t get it before?
(the reason I didn’t buy it myself is as I already said ihad and still have big money problems. I had to get along with whatever I had and I didn’t have much)


The same goes about the drilling channel for the pickup wires. I bought the cheapest extra long drill and I regret that. I drilled 2 bad all the way through from pup cavity to electronics cavity channels :sigh:
In the end I decided to go through the sprins cavity in the back and from there to go to the bridge pup cavity and use the hole of the bridge cavity for both of the wires.
This could be easily avoided if I would THINK all the way through this as I began my build how to solve this problem but I didn’t and this is what happened….





Now it’s ready to be painted with filler.
Big thanks go to my work college that agreed to help me out with his experience with painting.










Now it Looks awesome it’s so greyyyyyy….. until I took closer look and saw all the unevenness in the surface. Little holes and in some places here and there the texture of the wood simply copied it self in the filler in though there was like 2mm thickness of filler O_O
Well this is the whole Idea of filler to fill it in. I started then to work with a 600 sandpaper to send it down to nice surface and unfortunately I reached all the way down to the wood. Bummer because now it have to be painted with filler gain….













-preparing the rest-

Originally Posted by TimSE

epic pictures

Originally Posted by hairychris

Epic.

thanks guys

Originally Posted by technomancer

That's pretty damn cool

Nice work, and awesome pics

Though that is NOT a Death Kelly :P

thanks.
yeah i know it's my own version of it. i struggle until now to find a name for it. if any one have suggestion i am listening

[S-O]

This is really cool, but I must lawl at the 'mistakes', not saying the guitar is shit, just adds a kind of comical, yet unique(?) feel to it

Looks great in the final pic, I would not have expected any of the issues you had.

[Ruins]

-continue-

I have marked all the imperfections and there were quite few of them.














Now what do we do with all of this imperfections? We close them. How? Simple. All of this holes are result of filler not getting in to them so I made this holes simply bigger with some screwdriver and then filled them up with filler with a little brush.






There was quite much to fill up….








Great! Now what? Send them down to a nice even surface.






Great! But it still look not good. Yes but at least all the holes and imperfections are closed so now I could paint it with filler again.
If I wouldn’t do it and go directly with paint I would end up with different pigments of paint result because wood and filler have different density and that would cause the effect how the paint would react with the surface.

2 pictures of me working on it for the last time making the surface nice and even without getting all the way through to the wood.
By the way here is the same story with 600-800 grid that the surface will be smooth enough but not too smooth that the paint will be still able to attach to it. This time I could do it wet because there was no naked wood aria.



I decided to go with candy lack for my first paint job and guitar build….. what a mistake….. candy is damn hard to do because of so many layers and because of the shape that I have here not to mention so many steps so many times more chance for something to go wrong. And off course it did.
Candy lack is:
1 layer of bass paint usually its silver or other metallic paint with metallic particles.
1 layer of the candy itself it’s transparent kind of paint
1 layer of clear lack to protect it.
Here we started to paint the base paint, silver.



















All looks nice and great time to leave it to dry for a day or two
Now lets examine how it looks like, just look how some scratches just got through the silver and other particles glued to it and that’s what I mean that there must something go wrong.













Ahh weellllll what can I do with it now? Nothing, I just leave it there because If will try to fix it up I will just cause more damage.

Candy time.



















By the end of applying candy it looked like slaughter house O_O



Let’s have a look how did that turn out
















And again some crap glued it…. And there is nothing to do about it …

-preparing the rest-

Originally Posted by S-O

This is really cool, but I must lawl at the 'mistakes', not saying the guitar is shit, just adds a kind of comical, yet unique(?) feel to it

Looks great in the final pic, I would not have expected any of the issues you had.

i would prefer that it wasn't there but there is nothing to do about it if i would be a pro or would have the pro conditions it would be possible considering with what i had i am happy the way it is and yet this cosmetic flaws bother me.

[HANIAK]

You shouldn't be bothered, you should proud of the imperfections. They add to the guitar personality. Only thing I dislike is it's not a 7-stringer...

[Ruins]

-continue-








Few pictures of it on day light with clear lack on it already and the same story as with the filler it had some holes and imperfections that I had to fill up.











Lovely… and now I took 1000 grid and sanded it down because in the end I will send it all with 2000 grid any way.





























-preparing the rest-

Originally Posted by HANIAK

You shouldn't be bothered, you should proud of the imperfections. They add to the guitar personality. Only thing I dislike is it's not a 7-stringer...

yeah....
it was supposed to be a 7 string if i only had more bloody money
it was tough call to agree on a 6 string and the main reason was money offcourse for the parts and the backing up reason was that its my first build i better off practice on this one so that the 7 will be perfect already.

-continue-

Now I started to work with polish and wool by hand after I wet sanded it with 2000 grid

















































I really liked the mat finish it reminded some what the loomis but the candy effect was barely seen.

-preparing the rest-

-continue-
Now for the final pictures of the finished product












Few pics of my wife with it. for some reason this guitar looks much better on hands that on stand alone. O_o




Few pics of me with it





Over all I am fine with it not too happy and not sad. It didn’t turn out perfect but good enough for the first time. If you would ask me how do I feel am I happy a year ago I would say yes bloody yes but now after 1.5 years it just doesn’t feel the same. Yes I endure this whole time of seeing this guitar undone and dreaming finishing it and playing it already but now that it’s done I don’t feel it. simply too much time have passed and I waited too long to be extremely excited like I was supposed to be. Though the most priceless thing that I have gained from building this guitar is not the guitar itself, but the knowledge of how to do it. my next build will be for sure much better much cleaner.
Ohhh I didn’t add any pictures of the side dots they are done with luminescent pigment in clear lack the glow in dark
(thanks Patric, ......... guitars for the tips )

[Hollowway]

Dude, many thanks for the pics! This has to be the best picstory EVER! I've had GBS (Guitar Building Syndrome) for a while now, and this is making it much less scary! Can't thank you enough. And nice work!

[Strike07]

WOW
what more can i say,
just...wow

so envy a guy like you,
the one with that much of skills...

[Apophis]

so ....ing awesome picstory
as your first guitar it looks awesome imo

and I really think it's the most exciting looking metal axe I have ever seen, really, I thought that Neal Moser guitars were unique and extreme, but your is wayyyyyy better imo, it has something, hard to me to explain.

I love how this guitar looks

[technomancer]

Most epic build picstory EVAR

[vansinn]

Very very cool! So many mistakes made, but you recovered more than well.
I'm sure all luthiers would be able to tell many a story about how to recover from mistakes..

I'm not normally to exaggerated shapes, but this one I totally love!
You know what? you should save up the money for a second build, 7- or 8 string of course, and give this one to your beatyful wife - it looks totally as if it was made for her; shapes, balance, color.. I take it from her hand positions she too plays guitar..

[Xaios]

Man, what an awesome build. Major kudos dude, the final product looks freaking amazing.

[leandroab]

dude.. Now I have major GAS .. i want to build my guitar pronto!

[daemon barbeque]

Man ,you are a real artist. That's a very extreme but a very elegant shape.
Your guitar doesn't look like a first guitar.
Thanx for the cool picstory!
Cheers man!

[jsousa]

looks phenominal! honestly the only gripe is that the neck wood under the paint doesnt line up, but other then that, great great work! build another and finish it faster and im sure you'll love it more, like you said. pretty cool shape to top it off as well. how does it sound?