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Build#6: Hollow Singlecut


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Well, the building itch got me again... It all started in Chicago. I was visiting relatives and bought a set of Seymour Duncan P-Rails just because they were so cheap (half the price compared to Sweden...). I didn't really have any use for them at the time but I figured they would be cool to have just in case...

Later I went to a Swedish guitar show and bought a Graphtech Resomax wraparound bridge. Liked the way it looked... I definitely didn't have any use for that on any of my guitars. I guess I had to build one for this stuff then...

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I found some mahogany and birch lying around and made a neck blank out of it. It wasn't long enough on it's own to make a neck from so I cut off a piece and scarfed it on for a headstock.

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After that the combination of late night whisky and credit card in hand resulted in buying this:

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I bought a mahogany body blank from a fellow Swedish builder, no pics of that though. Forgot about that... And an ebony fretboard.

Here's a pic of the neck. I've routed the truss rod channel and here I'm shaping the headstock. I haven't routed the straight lines on the neck yet:

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Body (still not hollowed out) and neck together:

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Here's another pic of the body. I cut it out on the band saw and shaped it with sanding drums in an electric drill on a stand. The pic shows how I drill out most of the wood with a Forstner bit:

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I then routed out the cavities at a shallow depth. I did this for two reasons: I routed it freehand so I only took out enough to be able to sand the inner edges smooth and then use them as a guide for the router bit. I also didn't want to go too deep since I was going to put contours on the back of the body. You can see that I'm leaving wood where the bridge is going to sit, I'm going to remove some wood between the neck and bridge later on when I figure out how to mount the pickups.

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Gluing the maple top:

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Shaping the back of the body. First I rounded the edges with the router:

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Out came my trusty Morakniv (classic Swedish allround use knife), files and sandpaper. Here I'm carving the bellycut with the knife. I already shaped the other side of the waist to make it comfortable for the leg:

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Sanded smooth:

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And finally some shaping of the cutaway:

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That's about as far as I have gotten right now...

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  • 2 weeks later...

That looks like it going to be sweet.

Thanks!

Got some minor stuff done this weekend. Sawing the ebony pickguard with my hi-tech saw:

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Here's the rough shape, I'll cut out for the pickups later. It will have ivoroid binding just like the body and neck will:

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I've been thinking about sawing out some kind of pattern in the pickguard. It might look cool either with holes right through it or with a contrasting wood glued to the back. Here's a test to see what it could look like:

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And I glued an ebony heelcap to the neck:

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>>mattharris75, elvock

I'll think about it for a while. I'm not going to do it until I'm done shaping it for pickups etc.

>>Anthony

If I hadn't already glued the headplate to the head I might have done that too... I'm using ebony for the electronics back cover, I'll do that one the same way if I decide to do it to the pickguard.

I went to the same guitar show as I visited when I bought the wraparound bridge last year... Time moves fast. This year I bought a set of insanely expensive Gotoh tuners for what I believe was half the ordinary price.

Drilled for the tuners, made the truss rod access hole, thinned down the headstock a bit:

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Backside:

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>>AxAxSxS

Thanks!

>>sunday_luthier

Thank you! I think less is more as well, I think this holey design might be a bit too much but it does depend on what colour is behind the guard too. Too much contrast might be too much of an eyecatcher.

>>ScottR

Thanks! Have you used the tuners before?

Got some stuff done. The always nervewrecking headstock binding channel route had to be done. Ebony, end grain and very little space to rest the router on... A recipe for tearout. Anyway, it went well.

Routing the sides first, saving the worst for last...:

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The result, has to be cleaned up a bit of course:

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Time for a headstock inlay. We've had a full moon recently, got inspired by that. Drew the patterns on paper, glued the paper to the pearl pieces, glued the pearl pieces to some scrap wood.

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And this is what it looks like. The logo will be cleaned up. Some other day...

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I forgot to test it together with the truss rod cover I made. I think it will be too much with both logo, wolf and cover, especially when there will be binding as well. Here's a couple of ways to do the headstock:

huvudtest.jpg

huvudtest2.jpg

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Really big fan of the pierced truss rod cover. How does the inlay look with the wolf at the tip, and then the name going up the headstock like you have it in that last photo?

Chris

Glad you like it! It won't stay like that though, I'm going to glue it to a piece of mahogany later on. I'm going to have the maple the same colour as the maple top and the mahogany the same colour as the rest of the mahogany on the guitar. Haven't decided on any colours at all yet though...

Here's how your suggestion looks:

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I still think it's too much going on at the same time, and another problem is that the three pieces aren't on the same distance from each other. I'd prefer that the middle piece (whichever order you put them in) would be more centered. Now it looks unbalanced. The wolf loses, it goes somewhere else.

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>>corsa2

Thanks! That's like the pic in the post before yours right? I think it looks cluttered.

>>ScottR

Good to hear that they are good tuners! The wolf at the twelfth fret would look good. Unfortunately the piece is either too big or too small depending on how you see it. It's too big to fit in the 12th fret area but too small to continue into the 11th and13th frets. The only option then is to cut it flat to make it fit the 12th fret area. That kind of takes away from the roundness of the moon... Someone on another forum suggested that it could be put on a truss rod cover. I'm making an ebony cover to try it out, I think it has to be ebony to give enough contrast.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Got the headstock binding done. Heat and bend binding to the correct shape:

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Brush with acetone and then... TAPE! LOTS AND LOTS OF TAPE!

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The reason for only putting on one piece at a time is that I wanted to do miter joints since I'm using grained ivoroid binding. Don't want any visible joints right?

Here's the result:

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I'm having trouble deciding what to use for a 12th fret inlay. I was going to do my usual "dot star" logo but I don't want to repeat myself too much. I did a test with some flame maple:

inlaytestcopy.jpg

The inlay (and truss rod cover if I use the maple one) could be dyed the same color as the maple top. Here's a test, the colors are a bit intense but you get the idea:

inlaytest2copy.jpg

>>pauliemc

Thanks a lot! Yours would be clean too if you had to build in your kitchen... Otherwise the missus won't be too happy.

>>Levi79

Thanks!

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