[Demiurge]

I had been planning to start building my first guitar anyway, and since it's oft-suggested to make a mockup out of cheap woods before destroying a beautiful piece of black limba, etc., the timing of this challenge was perfect.

This is what I have figured out so far for my build:

-Poplar body, sourced from Home Depot. I had wanted to try pine, but the best-sized pieces were cupping already. I got enough poplar for a 1.5" thick body blank for $5. I may cap it with maple.

-Maple neck and fretboard, sourced from Lowe's. It will be baritone- 28 5/8 scale length. Home Depot is good for oak and poplar, but sucks for maple. Lowe's on the other hand, has a great selection- quite a few flat-sawn, flamed pieces in larger sizes AND they have a good selection of laminate-sized pieces. I may throw in some oak lams, although I'm afraid that I'm allergic. I remember once when I was a kid, my dad was burning a bunch of brush that may have been from oak trees. I hung around the fire and my face swelled-up, and I looked like Sloth from The Goonies for a few days.

-Hardware: I'll probably just use tuners from my parts-box. I have an X2N look-alike from an 80's Aria Pro- probably just do one pickup. I intend on spending the entire length of the contest in figuring out what to do for a bridge. I have some good ideas, but making something elegant and still being able to discretely connect the ground wire is the challenge.

-Finish: if the wood looks ugly enough, I'll probably just rattlecan-paint it. I have the idea of cutting-up linoleum tile for a pickguard if the design calls for one. I will make a pickguard out of this if I'm promised to win:


-Design: not quite there yet. I have a design of my own that I might use, but I'm afraid of falling out-of-love with the design if I encounter any challenges here. I have been GAS-ing for a Les Paul Junior and a BC Rich Eagle, which either might be easier. I plan on figuring all that out by the 1st of June.

Ultimately, I want to have some fun. While I want to learn how to do things "the right way," I don't want to be afraid to take some chances that won't threaten my finger-population.

Bridge design found...

This book has been collecting dust on my bookshelf for years:


It has photos of electric guitars from most prominent-name makers from the 40's 'till the present day. I've been thumbing through it for ideas for the past few days. I was browsing it today just for bridge designs and found one forehead-slappingly easy. Of course- Danelectro!


My main concern was making a bridge with a metal base to connect a ground wire to. I really don't have the tools to make something fancy, but I think a design in this spirit is very do-able: a notched metal base to hold the strings and attach the ground, then attach a one-piece saddle (or figure out something adjustable).

[Aysakh]

Sounds good to me That danelectro bridge, while extremely ugly, has given me a good idea for my bridge design, which i'm not sharing

[Holy Katana]

I'm tempted to do one myself, but I don't know if I have all the tools needed.

[Aysakh]

i know i don't have all the tools to properly build a guitar, but that's the point of the build

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by Aysakh

i know i don't have all the tools to properly build a guitar, but that's the point of the build

Absolutely. There's no need to "MacGuyver" anything per se, because there are a lot of things that can be done with hand tools. I have a cheapo electric jigsaw that I'll be using to cut larger shapes, but outside of that, I'll probably be relying entirely on chisels, rasps, drills, and sandpaper. I figure that keeping the power tools to a minimum will slow things down enough to where I can evaluate my progress in slower increments and make sure I understand everything I'm doing along the way.

In the end, the most money I will have spent on this project will have been on the freaking clamps.

Some design ideas. I figure that one of the crucial parts of guitar building is preparation and design, so I hope I'm not making a boring thread by "thinking out loud" here. Once the build starts, I'll edit my initial post to redirect to whichever page the real building starts.

Like I said before, I had a Gibson LP Junior and BC Rich Eagle on my mind:

Coincidence that both pictures are yellow. I want to do bolt-on construction with a slab body with minimal carving. Considering the Eagle, I'm not crazy about the neck joint stability with a bolt-on neck. The body also looks kind long with one pickup. I do like the upper-horn style and the way the lower horn just kind of ends so far outward from the body. The body is like an elongated singlecut where a slice was taken from the upper bout.

I kind of also dig this shape:

Rick 425. Ignore the huuuge pickguard. The upper horn has that similar look as if a cut was taken out of the upper bout of a singlecut. It's a neck-thru, which means that I could either follow the shape as it is and extend the neck past the fretboard and bolt it into the body. I can cover-up the extension with a SMALL pickguard. I could also offset the body, creating an AANJ scenario.

This would make for a nice, vintage vibe, which is what I'm starting to consider.

I'm also going to try to make a vibrato apparatus.

[Demiurge]

Update: Okay, here we go... I've decided on a general body shape.

Now, the hardware is absolutely not to scale, but it's the general idea I was just trying to visualize and get across. And no, I'm not making the body furry: I sketched the idea in pen at work and faxed it to myself, then retraced it in Microsoft Paint. There is usually an inverse proportion between level of inspiration and the quality of tools to express it.

I've decided to do a bolt-in neck to accommodate upper-fret access and keep that upper contour from the Rickenbacker that inspired this design. I departed from the Rick design in that I elongated the body, squeezed-in the waist, and gave the lower bout a more "modern" quasi-LP look.

The forearm carve is optional at this point. I'm not looking for crazy whammy-bar action, so I'm going to try to do a Vibrola-esque setup where the strings will run across a maple pad over a hinge attached to a bar, so when you pull up, the pad will raise and affect the pitch. The tailpiece will be wood, and I'll attach a metal pad to the underside to ground the strings. The output jack will be closer to the butt-end of the guitar so the routing won't look ridiculous.

For a finish, I'm thinking of doing gunmetal grey, and the pickguard will be made from a leftover linoleum tile from my kitchen floor, which is a textured and marbleized light blue.

But ultimately, talk is cheap.

Getting my workspace ready. I'll be doing most of the work in the 2nd bedroom of my condo. Look at all the fucking space! I'll try not to get any wood glue in the elliptical trainer. I must say, though, the Black & Decker Workmate thing is awesome for tight spaces.

It's poplar. Bought all of it for $5, thanks to the kid at Home Depot who didn't feel like ringing up the large board. The big board is 4 feet long, 11 1/2in wide, and 3/4in thick. The small piece is 3ft and 1 1/2in width square, which will be cut to add width to the blank. The wood itself survived quite a few unusually-humid days, so I'm feeling like the only thing that can ruin this project is me.

Of course, it's all going to glue up to be 1 1/2in thick and roughly 14 1/2in wide. I'm not too comfortable with that thin of a body, so I'll likely put a maple cap on this. I can't wait to start working!

Update: Okay, just bought some maple for a cap. It will be 3 pieces, but I'm painting it anyway... I think.

[Demiurge]

Okay, we're doing this.

Got my iPod ready:


Got my clamps:


Got my glue and glue application system:


I have my 4ft board of poplar, which I am cutting down the middle and will then sandwich:


Marking off my cut, using a piece of purpleheart as a straightedge for some color in this shot:


Literally, the first time I've used a saw to cut a piece of wood in over 10 years:


It took only a few minutes to saw through the entire piece, or half of Electric Wizard's "Funeropolis" as I was listening to it.


Liberal use of Titebond. Stuff says that it sets in 24 hours, but it firms much-much sooner than that. Absolutely no time to hesitate between application and fitting. Plan all glue joints ahead of time. At least here, nothing complicated.


All clamped-up. The saying is that you can never have enough clamps, but I hope I used enough clamps. I clamped-down that piece of bocote diagonally to try to apply some downward force on the center of the wood. It's good to clamp tightly, but not so much that the wood is damaged (poplar is very soft) or warped, thus compromising the glue joint.


Once this dries, I still have the sides of the body blank to glue up. So far, first gluing experience went well. Poplar is much easier to work than what I was expecting. Then again, my only woodwork experience in the past was chiseling a neck pocket into a mahogany/paduouk body, which I have yet to put into service.

My budget so far:
$5 poplar
$2 titebond
$15 maple (5 board feet) for body cap and "hardware"
$30 additional clamps
-Every other tool so far or that I anticipate using, I have, except for maybe a spokeshave, surform, and additional bits for my drill I may want to use, but I'm confident I will be within budget.

And for some non-wood extra-curricular. I've been planning for a pickguard. I have a bunch of these left over from reflooring my kitchen:

Kind of a grayish-blue marble thing going on. I drew on a rough outline of the pickguard:


We'll see if that pans out.

[hairychris]

Please coat the whole thing in this:



That'd make my year!

[Aysakh]

looks great so far, i really need to get started on mine

[Demiurge]

Just a quick note/confession: I started prepwork a couple days before June 1st so I could keep up on the progress pics at a satisfactory pace. That said, I'm not taking my chances with glue joints, I am keeping them clamped for the appropriate set times.

First gluing is complete, but I need to clean things up before I glue on the sides:


Measure twice, cut once... somehow I am unable to divide 48" by 2- one half of the sandwich is bigger than the other, but that will be an offcut anyway. My second rookie mistake realization came quickly thereafter, when I was content, looking at all that wood glue spilling out of the sides of the first gluing, thinking, "I'm awesome- I made sure I used enough!" What I didn't think was, "maybe I should clean that up a bit." So I have some solid glue goops to remove.


No big deal, though, just used my box cutter and my block plane (not shown):


It was really for the best, though. As you may be shocked to believe, the raw boards from Home Depot are not dimensionally perfect, so there was some "joining" work necessary to get the side pieces to fit together with the core.

Clamps are on:


I got out a pencil and did very rough sketch of the body shape. Then I did some rough plotting of where stuff will go. For placeholders, I just have a random Guitar Fetish fixed bridge in place of the one I'll actually make and use. The pickup I'm using is there, although I'm not sold on the dual blades going with the vintage look. The neck is a 30.25" baritone neck I bought off of eBay a century ago, so I placed the hardware relative to that scale length. I'm doing 28.625" on mine, so final placements will vary.



And here's my maple:


No guilt in covering it up, as the flame is unremarkable (enhanced w/alcohol):

[Raoul Duke]

Originally Posted by hairychris

Please coat the whole thing in this:



That'd make my year!

This

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by Raoul Duke

This

I promise you, if this build devolves into a completely unmitigated disaster, I will do a faux-grass carpet finish.

We'll see.

Since I'm going to be putting a maple cap on the body, I figured there are a couple things I can do to the poplar portion of the body that will save time in the long run.

Instead of gluing the top, then routing-out (and by routing, I mean having a lovely afternoon with my drill w/forsner bit) a control cavity, I could just punch-through the poplar now.

Please note that I had traced the body for the mockup I previous posted on what will actually be the back of the guitar. The side that will be glued-up has some defects on it. So I'm drilling-through what looks like the wrong side with my spade bit.


It's not really leaving things too clean on the other side, though, but I'm not terribly worried at this point since this side is not going to be seen.

My design calls for a single 500k volume pot, and a I have Gibson longshaft pot just for the job. It's a big pot, but I really don't need that much space for electronics. I initially wanted to hog out a large cavity, but decided it was unnecessary. I drilled-out 4 connecting holes with my spade bit and chiseled-out the remaining wood.

I did have a slight problem... this is the gluing-face of the body:


My heavy-handed chiseling ripped-up two pieces on the gluing-face, which I wouldn't worry about, except that some of the damage moves into the waist-carve area.

That's why there is glue:

I'm not worried about the smaller tearout, for which I've already forgiven myself. I placed the volume pot next to the roughed-out cavity- I have plenty of space after I clean it up.

Some rasping, just for now- I'll revisit with my dremel later.


Some planing, to even things out:


I did a darker-line tracing of the body shape on the correct face of the wood:


I still have a lot to do on the poplar portion of the body. I need to remove all the glue gunk and debris from the glue joints. I also want to make a channel for the pickup wires from where the pickup cavity will be to the control cavity. Maybe I'll do the same for the ground wire if I finalize my bridge design soon enough.

I also glued-up the maple:

I dry-fitted the maple a trillion times and it came out even and perfect. I glue it up and they're slightly uneven. I will certainly have to redo it.

I realize that I need to slow things down and make sure that the body and cap glue together perfectly. With a big block o' wood, it's easy to be inaccurate and reckless, but once I start removing wood, gluing wood, and carving wood, there are going to be cases where Titebond won't save me.

****************
Lessons learned so far:
-When purchasing lumber, always find the kid working the register who appears to care the least about their job... and identifying and measuring the unmarked plank you brought them. It's the "meh" discount!
-Clamp-down wood when you saw it.
-Take some time away from admiring that well-executed glue joint and clean-up the run-off.
-When boring a hole through wood, drill a small pilot hole through the center, then use you larger bit and bore through halfway, entering from each side. That will help to prevent tear-out.
-Obviously, I knew the above and still did what I did. The moral of the story is to know what you're going to do and still do it, even if in the heat of the moment you're hankering to just wing-it with something else.

[Andrew_B]

interesting shape you have there... lol

just a suggestion.....
you may want to cut the top and bottom before you glue them together (unless you have done it already)
reason be, you will most likely not be able to sand both sides of a large blank flat enough to mate nicely when glued....
by cutting them both to shape you can put clamps around the edges....
just means you will have a tighter glue joint around the edges,
where as if you were to glue the blanks together than cut the shape out you may find theres large gaps in the glue joint around the edges of your body
if that makes sense....

you should have used a hole saw or spade bit for that cavity by the way

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by Andrew_B

interesting shape you have there... lol

just a suggestion.....
you may want to cut the top and bottom before you glue them together (unless you have done it already)
reason be, you will most likely not be able to sand both sides of a large blank flat enough to mate nicely when glued....
by cutting them both to shape you can put clamps around the edges....
just means you will have a tighter glue joint around the edges,
where as if you were to glue the blanks together than cut the shape out you may find theres large gaps in the glue joint around the edges of your body
if that makes sense....

you should have used a hole saw or spade bit for that cavity by the way

I'm with you on cutting before gluing. I've started cutting out the body- pics to follow.

And I did use a spade bit for the cavity, but I was just testing out my forsner bit first.

[Fred]

Nice man, looking forward to seeing how this pans out!

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by Fred

Nice man, looking forward to seeing how this pans out!

Thanks for the feedback!

Right now I'm taking a little break from the manual work on the project. I have a nasty respiratory infection where bending over the workbench automatically triggers coughing fits. I also won a $50 Lowe's gift card that I'm waiting to come in to keep my cash outlay down.

So far I have over half of the poplar core jigsawed out. Luckily, I have been able to avoid any huge mistakes with the jigsaw blade drift. I haven't fixed my maple top glue-up fiasco, but I'm reconsidering using a .75in cap on top of a 1.5in I already have- way too thick for a slab body perhaps.

I have some experiments lined up as well. I will post them later if they're either notable successes or hilarious failures.

I'm also really stoked to see everyone else getting their projects started. Conceptually, I feel beaten already, but my goal is to make guitar that I'll want to keep and play and I'm pretty sure I can achieve that if I take my time and not do anything stupid.

[Panterica]

hilarious fuck ups are cool, but awesome dyi axeness is cooler

[cadenhead]

Originally Posted by Demiurge

That is going to be awesome. What color are you going to paint the body?

[Demiurge]

At this point, I think black or a dark blue/gray would set off nicely with that pickguard. The tiling is a lot lighter and bluer than how it shows up in the picture. I'm not married to any ideas right now finish-wise until I experiment with an idea I'm having. Hilarious fuckings-up may ensure.

[cadenhead]

Originally Posted by Demiurge

At this point, I think black or a dark blue/gray would set off nicely with that pickguard. The tiling is a lot lighter and bluer than how it shows up in the picture. I'm not married to any ideas right now finish-wise until I experiment with an idea I'm having. Hilarious fuckings-up may ensure.

DIY black is what I calls it. A nice glossy black would probably look nifty. I'm sure it will turn out pretty cool either way.

I hope you are having as much fun with this as I am.

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by cadenhead

I hope you are having as much fun with this as I am.

I definitely am. I've been messing around with doing a build for a very long time, but for some reason, I could never quite get over this weird, mental block with coordinating the materials and design and making that first cut. It was always more thinking than doing- a good habit, just taken too far. (Of course, I think now I just have less qualms about messing up on $5 in poplar than a $75+ "body blank.")

[cadenhead]

Very true. I started building a guitar in high school. It ended up having a design flaw and I basically wasted all that money on wood.

[Demiurge]

Update:

My weeks-long respiratory illness has finally cleared-up AND I received a $50 Lowe's gift card. Time to get more supplies.


Maple and Oak for the neck. The pieces are long enough to provide "wings" for the headstock as well.


Fingerboard wood... but wait... 2 woods? A $7 experimental attempt at a Conklin-esque "melted fingerboard" to come this week.


$10 for a 24X24 sheet of aluminum- thin enough that I believe I have the tools to cut it effectively. Just tryin' something...

[cadenhead]

Are you going to use that aluminum for a top?

[Demiurge]

Originally Posted by cadenhead

Are you going to use that aluminum for a top?

I'm going to try to. It's cheap, and it appears to be workable enough to where it's worth a shot.