7 String First Build Sassafras

[CD1221]

Hey there people. I have been inspired by several great threads on here and learnt a lot, so I figured I might as well give building one a go.

Hopefully this will result in a playable instrument. I will be using local timbers.

anyway, on with the details:

Specs:

7 strings (obviously)

Neck: bolt on Tasmanian Blackwood

Body: Tasmanian Blackwood

Top: Blackhearted Sassafras

Fretboard: Mulga

Scale: 26.22" (the most metal scale)

Bridge: Hipshot fixed

Frets: 24

Body style: semi-original, "borrowed" heavily from several sources - Oni, Myka, blackmachine, ormsby, hufschmid

Pickups: BKP Miracle Man bridge, Duncan SSL-5 neck

Electronics: single push-push volume for pickup selection

All of the parts have been ordered, only half have arrived so far.

Blackwood body:

Sassafras top:

Mulga fretboard:

Plans:

That is the timber done. What I am undecided on, is how to use the top. I originally planned to lay it out like this:

but these two alternatives also look good. Not sure now, opinions are welcome.

The fretboard will basically have no markers, except I am toying with inlaying a styalised version of my initials at the twelfth fret, something like this mockup (of someone else's guitar...I can't remember whose it is.... apologies to the owner).

That will probably do for now. I have a uni exam this week, so I won't get into this for a few days, but the goal is to have it completed mid January.

Edited December 4, 2010 by CD1221

[GermanFafian]

Cool project.

As for the top. I'd go with the third option but that's a personal taste

[CD1221]

After some playing with photoshop, I eded up with the following mock-up:

this will require the filling of a couple ofsolid cracks in the knotthat I will hide under the bridge:

any suggestions on recommended filling material?

in other news:

NSFOTOD (new stuff from over the ocean day)

input jack, bunch of pickguard screw, neck screws, neck screw washers, string ferrules, push-push pots (these babies are long - I will have to watch the overall body depth) and 4+3 Gotoh tuners. Courtesy of Warmoth.

I had a hell of a time locating a compay that would sell a 4+3 set of tuners. so I contacted a manufacturer and after a few initial emails and a phone call to give my visa details....they didn't reply to my follow-up emails... I figured that they were pretty busy and a single international sale for $70 wasn't that high on their list of things to do, so after a few weeks of no response I ordered these non-locking Gotohs from warmoth (They also sell individual locking tuners, but they specifically state that they won't fit baritone strings) ... Only to find 2 days later that the other company had just debited my account for my order... now I have 2 sets of 4+3 tuners. 14 string anyone?

[CD1221]

hey there, minor update today.

The nearly-last parts drops arrived together today:

(grainy late-night phone camera photo...)

sperzels and seymour arrived today, along with a set of strap buttons.

The fret wire turned up late last week, so the only bit left to arrive is the graphtec nut.

nearly finished with the rear deck reburbishment, so I will be kicking this baby off properly in the next week or so. I have already started to map out my templates onto some mdf, so the first job will be to finish those off.

that's all for now, more to come soon.

[CD1221]

Stopped at my brother's house on the way home from work to borrow some toys to use during the build:

2 (!) belt sanders, 1 flat electric sander, 1 electric plane, lots of sandaper, dust mask, a seriously sharp spokeshave thingo and a set of surgically sharp palm carving tools. These last things are terrifyingly sharp.

started work early today, roughed out my mdf templates for the body and headstock on the bandsaw.

got them home and used the sanders to finish them off - first failure of the project.

Now I know why people use spindle sanders. Even though I *thought* I was holding the timber vertical, I clearly didn't, so the template is sanded unevenly and an important section on the top horn has now been undercut. Can't save it. I made the same error on the headstock template.

Nothing to do but rough out new ones, and investigate a better sanding method.

It is not a complete waste - I will use the stuffed body template to create the rear control cavity template.

learning experience #1 - ensure edge sanding happens at right angles.

[Johnny Foreigner]

If you have a drill press, the sanding drums you can get work pretty well for maintaining a 90 degree sand.

[ScottR]

That is a very good set of palm gouges. Be sure to keep them terrifyingly sharp. Believe it or not they are safest that way becasue less effort is required to make your cut. When they get dull you have to push harder which leads to a slip or a cut that comes free of the wood with too much force typically coming to rest in your left hand. Don't let them get dull.

SR

[CD1221]

I went and bought some stuff from the mighty B last night - a bunch of clamps, some tassie oak I plan on practicing the scarf joint and neck shaping on, and some dustproof goggles. No luck finding a drum sander there, unfortunately.

Tonight I dragged the sander out to re-do the routing templates, pondered how I would sand it nicely perpendicular without a drum sander and table, and had a macgyver moment.

Allow me to present the world's finest vertical sanding alignment table:

And, it worked amazingly well:

new clamps + piece of mdf sheet + marshall valvestate 8240 + protective beach towel cover = success!

Finished off a few rough bits here and there, hand sanded with a sanding block and some sandpaper wrapped around a small piece of PVC to get into the top cut and we are done.

Really happy with the result.

Then I drew out the template for the neck single coil. Both pickup routes are drawn out, will head over to my dad's in a few days to drill them out on the pedastal drill and thickness the neck and body blanks.

[pauliemc]

When they get dull you have to push harder which leads to a slip or a cut that comes free of the wood with too much force typically coming to rest in your left hand.

SR

Or if your really lucky it ends up in your thigh.

Dont ask.

Just keep them sharp

[pauliemc]

While your making temolates. Remember - align your bridge & pickup routs to the neck AFTER the neck is installed. No need to glue or bolt it in place, but just have it ready to be secured before you mark out the pups & bridge.

Alignment issues are a bitch to fix if you get them wrong.

[Cam]

Looking great so far. Love the choice of woods. I've got a plank of Tassie Blackwood here for a body and neck and I've been eyeing off some Sassafras veneer for a while so I'm excited to see how yours turns out.

[CD1221]

I had grand plans today - glue the top and move on to the neck build.

That all changed when I unclamped the body blanks. I did a perfectly ordinary job of clamping them down and both the top and the back have glued with a fair cup, or bow in them, around 2-3 mm each. My phone camera was hard to align, but this is the general idea. It looked much worse in real life:

The solution, after much consideration was to assemble the body-flattening-router-jig 3000:

The body passes under the rails, which the router sits on. I stole this from idea from someone on the sevenstring.org board that did a much better job (with aluminium, I think - Scherzo ??). Props to whoever it was, it saved my backside today.

so, passed the blanks through and got this:

then I made this:

added some sand paper and a bunch of effort, and got these:

not sure how much total thickness I lost, that will have to wait a few days. My original plan of a push-push volume pot may have to revert to a vol pot plus switch. fingers crossed there is still enough timber there.

The total sanding took a while. hardwood is like, really, really hard. I haven't worked with anything other than pine or mdf before, so it was a revelation. I got up to 180 grit on the back and top and now they both feel like glass. ridiculous.

so, after the several hours of hand sanding, I gathered the clamps and glue for a little get-together:

I tred really hard to keep the two pieces in alignment, but it was not to be. The top and bottom joins were in perfect alignment after the first 4 clamps were added, so I didn't check them again. after all the clamps were tight and I had been looking at it for about 10 minutes I noticed they had moved a little, 2-3mm. I doubt anyone will notice the back being ever so slightly out of kilter, but I will know it is there.

So that is where I left it, arms sore and fingers shredded from the low grit paper.

Hopefully this gluing experience works out better than the last one.

lessons today:

double, triple, quadruple check everything.

stuff ups can be saved with a bit of engineering.

hardwood is HARD.

[CD1221]

I unclamped the body today and was really happy with the result. The body has ended up at 38mm overall thickness, so I can still use the push-pushv volume pot, very happy about that.

nothing left to do but reveal the body, so I got the trusy template out and drew the outline onto the top. Then I hit the pedestal drill, drilled a stack of holes and sawed the excess away:

end result:

I measured thrice and screwed the template onto the body.

set up the router table with the new template-following bit and started routing.

part way around, I got some small tearout.

This was approximately the spot I was going to put the jack for the lead anyway, so not a terrible problem.

this is the terrible problem:

Really bloody nasty tear-out on the top horn. The longest bit torn away was about 10mm long, so I am really going to have to come up with something clever to work around this one.

I think if I pull the end of the horn back a little, and extend the neck heel carve into the horn I can minimise the total damage.

routers are freakin scary, it all happened real quick.

This has convinced me to not route my headstock, but to use my template as a guide for drilling and marking, then sanding to final shape.

Overall, even though I had a fairly major setback here, I am real excited about finishing this one. It is starting to look like an actual guitar.

Given the router crash earlier in the afternoon, I decided to stop work on the body and do a few other things. I squared off my two fretboards:

I think I am leaning towards the top, darker one now.

I also used a piece of the leftover sassafras body blank and split it to make a bookmatched headstock plate. I just need to thickness and rough sand them.

Apologies for the crapola photos, I keep forgetting to pack an actual camera. My phone camera is really sub par.

more to come.

[jimmy g]

I blew out my top horn on a white limba body a few weeks ago. Not quite as deep as yours, but still really bad. You might have already thought of this... I matched the grain with some body offcuts, cut the damaged part off (parallel to the grain) and glued a new piece on. Rough cut to shape, then rout the template again. Endgrain is hard to rout. Careful of how aggressively you feed the body.

[Linny]

I don't even bother trying routing the end grain anymore, i switch to the robo sander to do those parts. If i had a large spiral bit i might try it, but i just don't think it is worth the trouble.

[CD1221]

Started on the neck today.

Assembled this little jig to cut the scarf angle on a drop saw:

used a length of tassie oak as a test run:

and then ran the blackwood through:

[CD1221]

Satisfied at the start, I tackled my nemesis - the router, but was victorious today. rounded over the body and did a bit of sanding (and also remembered to use an actual camera).

I managed to overcome the tear-out. Took about 5 mm off the top horn, sanded it a bit and was fairly happy with the outcome.

if the carving I plan to do leaves it obvious, I have saved some sanding dust from the back that I can use with some epoxy to fill it.

While sanding I noticed a really freaky coincidence, the grain on the top and back actually follow each other quite well. Here is the bottom:

and here is the top:

really bizarre.

here is the mis-alignment of the body pieces, it isn't that bad really.

body ready to have neck and pickup routes:

[Buter]

While sanding I noticed a really freaky coincidence, the grain on the top and back actually follow each other quite well

Should read - 'before sanding I spent just over an hour matching up the grain patterns on the top and bottom pieces'

here is the mis-alignment of the body pieces, it isn't that bad really

Should really say - 'Here I have offset the top join and the body join by about 3.5mm to avoid sympathetic resonation and increase sustain'. We love to increase sustain.

No pressure, but I think that this is going to be a very nice guitar when you're done, so don't screw it up!

Cheers

Buter

[CD1221]

No pressure, but I think that this is going to be a very nice guitar when you're done, so don't screw it up!

Cheers

Buter

hehe, thanks for that. I have a mild panic attack pretty much every step of the way. The only woodworking I have done before is helping my brother in law build decking on my house, and set of cupboards in the garage. Definitely nothing requiring this level of attention or precision, so I go slow, slow, slow.

Update: started the neck today.

I finished the cuts on the test piece and the blackwood and set them up for glueing.

unfortunately the clamping arrangement I used for the longer length didn't hold and the joint slipped:

Very happy I decided to do a trial run.

Modified/improved the jig and glued the blackwood.

From what I can tell, nothing moved this time. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

[CD1221]

Small update today. Yesterday, in between painting our spare room, I managed to get the following done.

Firstly I unclamped the scarf joint and was very happy with it. It moved maybe 0.5mm.

So, newly scarfed neck in hand, I headed over to my dad's and set up the following piece of jiggery to route the truss channel.

I ran my test piece through first, was pleased with the result and ended up with this:

Oh, I also sanded back the sassafras for the headstock plate (seriously poor photo ahead....)

that's all for now.

[tjiscooler]

This is coming along very nice! I really like the look of the wood, and im a big fan of 7s too.

[CD1221]

Being back at work certainly slows building down...

Last week I cut out some mop for my fretboard inlay and tonight I had some spare time, so I dremelled the fretboard and glued the inlay in.

Crazy jigsaw puzzle to try and assemble, really tests out the manual dexterity.

A couple of spots were routed out a bit wide, but from arms length it is not really noticeable. Hopefully the glue + sanding dust combo will hide it further.

That's all for now.

[WezV]

thats pretty good - as long as you use matching rosewood dust from the offcuts it will hide the slightly wider bits really well

[JonnyPM]

Looks great so far. I'm always interested in seeing first builds. Amazed at how good they turn out from people with not a lot of woodworking experience.

JonnyPM

[CD1221]

Well, I finally got back to this. Spent some time at a mate's house on Tuesday night to cut the fret slots and radius the board.

The fret slotting went really well and the radiusing/sanding has brought it up like glass.

But...

Something funky happened when I glued the mop inlay in and as I sanded some of the lower mop pieces vanished before my eyes.

here is a crappy Phone photo of what happened:

Really annoyed. the rest of the fretboard looks superb, shiny and smooth like glass.

My plan is to re-cut some replacement mop and re-do the sections that have vanished. If anyone has done this before, I am all ears. tips and hints greatly appreciated.

I am sure this will be recoverable, but it is damn frustrating.