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'tis The Season


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My four year old daughter has been asking me for months to build her a guitar. My 2 year old son always asks to go down to the basement and "play guitars and picks". So for their big gifts this Christmas, I will be building them guitars. Specs are:

- PRS Custom body style

- Poplar body with dyed curly anigre veneer top

- Maple Neck (bolt on)

- Monkey Pod fretboards (21 frets)

- 21" scale length

- Epiphone humbuckers (from the parts bin)

The thought here was to make smaller guitars to fit them, but big enough that they can play them for several years. Needless to say, they will have better guitars than most kids their age for the next 5-10 years.

I started making the master templates tonight, almost totally completed. By tomorrow night I should have all the working templates done and ready to rock. Then it will be prep stock and get rocking. I'll hopefully keep this updated with pictures, as it is sure to be a lot of fun. I'm downright giddy about how cool these things are going to be. The best part is I have enough materials for three of them (child #3 is on the way, but I'll take good care of the other one until she's old enough to play in three years or so:)).

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Well, the MDF templates are all done and ready to rock. I'll start prepping stock tomorrow or the day after, but to get you guys thinking small, here are a few photos. First one is a shot of all the templates. Second is a mockup and third, just to give you an idea of how small these will be, the body template is laid on top of a standard-sized strat template.

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I was going to build a little guitar for my daughter but a lad at work just come up to me and said "your that lad who messes with guitars" and handed me a brand new little 3/4 size strat copy. He said his kids asked for it for Christmas and by August had not even taken it out of the box.

there you go.

PS my daughter picked it up once and no longer wants to know.

Thats kid for you.

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Luckily, even if the kids don't stay that into it, these will be great as travel guitars or whatever. But I anticipate that they'll stay interested for some time. Tonight should be stock prep, fretboards, etc. I'll try to get some pics after the night's work is done.

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I started in on the actual woodworking today. In the photo below, you can see the rough lumber. The large board is poplar and should yield three bodies. The smaller blonde board is maple for the necks, then there is also the monkey pod for the fretboards and the curly anigre veneer for the tops. After planing, the bodies will be almost 1.5" on the nose without veneer. Fretboards have been slotted and I have laid out how the necks will come out of the maple. I split the poplar down the center to plane it (only a 10" planer), so tomorrow will be gluing up the body blanks and scarfing the neck blanks.

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Well, made some more progress over the last few days. I had some pictures of gluing up the body blanks, but you guys know what that looks like. Tonight I got the bodies routed to shape and routed the neck pockets. As you will see, one of them is a lefty. That is because my 4 year old is a lefty and I did some very discreet detective work to see which way she prefers playing the guitar; I had her play both ways and she much preferred left handed she said. Check 'em out, they're looking really good (ignore the fly on the lower one):

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The one thing you don't see, however, is what happened when I was routing the back of one of the bodies:

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Oh well, that will likely come out mostly with the roundover and the rest will come out with some rear carving that will look as if I planned it that way. Here's the control cavity (not to final depth yet, it'll get that a little later):

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Edited by Ripthorn
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I'm thinking either a big back roundover or doing a little "scoop". I've done that on other builds and like the aesthetics of it. We'll have to play it by ear when it comes to dealing with it, but I don't think it will be a problem.

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Well, made some more progress. I got the neck humbucker routes done on both, drilled the control holes, routed the control cavities to proper depth, and put the roundover on the backs. Unfortunately, the tearout didn't get taken care of with the roundover, so I will have to be a little more aggressive in getting rid of it, but I still think I can get rid of it without making it look unnatural. I have my ideas for tummy cuts marked, let me know what you think about them. I still need to tweak them a little, I think, but feedback is welcome. Anyway, since all you really care about are the pics, here we go:

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Edited by Ripthorn
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  • 2 weeks later...

Making some more progress. Necks are coming along well. You will notice that the headstocks are not done to final shape. I plan to do that with the OSS that I will be buying shortly. Here's a quick front and back mockup at this stage. Then I started carving the maple neck. I have found that my favorite part of building guitars is carving the neck. It's the most physical work, but also the most personal and most rewarding. In the final two photos, you can see a comparison of the carve made with my usual rasp (on the top) and my new Iwasaki rasp (on the bottom). The Iwasaki leaves an incredibly smooth surface for a file/rasp, cuts fast, and requires much less pressure. Anyway, it's good to see them finally coming along.

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Edited by Ripthorn
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I haven't been updating this as well as I initially hoped, but progress has been coming along. Veneer has been applied and trimmed, necks have been carved and fretboards radiused and sanded to 150. I still need to do the last tuning on the necks, carve volutes, shape headstocks and drill for tuner holes along with fretboard markers. I also need to do the top roundover on the bodies and sand. Getting closer. And yes, I realize the figuring on the veneer runs at an angle to the centerline. I don't think the kids will mind.

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and if the kids do mind, just tell them it's made that way so the stripes are vertical when you hold it properly!( at least on the righty or if they like a head down attitude on the lefty )

and if that doesn't work... send the righty to me... that'll fix it

very nice

Edited by LightninMike
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  • 3 weeks later...

I would have posted updates earlier, but after taking some pictures, the camera batteries died and I was lazy getting more. After that, I was doing the tummy cuts on these and my index finger got up close and personal with my angle grinder, which put my typing in the category of "Do it only if I must". But, I must say that I was able to make some great progress thanks to a friend of mine called ROSS:

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With this I was able to shape headstocks and sand edges, which allowed me to do the top roundover:

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I also used purely hand tools (chisels, gouge, and scraper) to shape the volutes, of which I am proud:

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I have since installed threaded inserts in the necks and sanded the necks to 100 grit. I need to install fretboard markers before I do too much else (still need to buy them). I also need to get the dye for the tops, so progress on these might be a little slow for the next week or two.

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  • 1 month later...

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