First ever build, 60's Strat

[SIMpleONe89]

Is it going to be wide enough for the body? 

[steve1556]

I know I know, I messed up very badly! Turns out my dad is awful at woodwork so maybe it's in the genes!

I've put the wood together, and it's just about ok to fit all the body template on it. I'll double check after its been planed as buying a new body blank is not something I ideally want to do.

My tip, don't use an electric planer with the cutting blade set to maximum. I'll post an update tomorrow on if the wood can be salvaged for the body or not. Fingers crossed!

[steve1556]

Well, it's my birthday today and I've received some great news with the wood (even though I was expecting it not to have worked). After I got back from having it planed yesterday, I put glue on it and clamped it up, but I had an issue where the clamps would keep falling over when moving the wood or trying to tighten them, so I was worries it wasn't going to glue OK. I'm in the process of working out a clamp holder that will hold the clamps near upright for the next time I do a body. I also bought 2 more clamps (cheaper, but I actually prefer them) to help apply some more pressure. I've just taken it back to the guy who planed it, and he ran it through his thickness machine and it now looks amazing. The only issue is that the machine is great for taking 5-10mm off at a time, but has a very slight chatter when doing 1mm, so I just need to sand the body completely flat as you can feel the small bumps but not really see them. The body is down to 43mm, which I've worked out should still leave me plenty of room. I think it would have been 44mm if the clamps didnt keep falling over when trying to tighten them up and the body was completely flat on one side.

I've also picked up a sharpening pad and lapping oil to sharpen my router bits with. The bits that came with my dads router could easily cut my finger, where as my bits feel blunt, so I'll sharpen them before attempting to route anything.

Also, the guy that planed the body, has a lot of scrap wood that he just burns, especially in the winter to keep the workshop warm, and he had 3 off cuts of mahogany that were due to be scrapped, so he gave them to me. the length of them isn't quite long enough for a Strat body, so not sure how it will work with gluing them, etc. But he said he could get me a piece of ash big enough for 3-4 bodies for around £30 (just above cost price), which was nice of him, especially when this body blank was £47 with postage, and that was the cheapest I had found by a considerable amount.

Anyway, onto the pictures. I don't I will get much done on it today, but I would like to try to finish up the 3mm template today or tomorrow.

During and after the clamping (one of the clamps I could get upright for love nor money).

After the planing had been done, this is the end result.

This is the stuff I'm going to use to sharpen the router bits.

And finally this is the mahogany that he gave me, The template is the 6mm one that I messed up at the beginning of the thread.

[Prostheta]

Well happy birthday Steve!

That body blank looks a million times better. That's a glue joint you can be confident about. Shame the bits of wood a smidge too short, but they're usable nonetheless!

[steve1556]

Cheers, I'm going to celebrate it by going for a run tonight with my running club in the hope of trying to clear this cold out of my sinuses! It's a complete rock and roll lifestyle haha!

I'm really pleased with how the wood turned out. I was a little bit tempted to leave it as it's my first build, but I really wanted to do it properly and I'm extremely glad I did, especially with how it's turned out. My friend is off over the weekend so I'm hoping to meet up with him and use his bandsaw to cut the body out.

When you say they are still usable even though they are a bit too short, how could I still use them? I'm assuming that I can't have them so the grain goes up/down the body rather then across it. I was thinking maybe a thinline Tele (had one on my wishlist for years), with a flame/quilted maple top and twisted Tele pickups.

[SIMpleONe89]

That looks much better! Hope this goes well. 

I haven't tried this but maybe for the short mahogany you could cut off a scrap from the same piece and just glue on the horns. But you may need to do a heavy stain or solid colour because the grains won't match. I have a short spare body blank that isn't long enough and I may just try that, or do a smaller guitar. 

[Prostheta]

End grain weakness can't be avoided. You might as well use screws in that instance. Tele?

[steve1556]

I've been thinking of maybe doing a thinline Tele build, with a nice walnut top. Won't be for a while though, so I'll keep the wood somewhere safe.

Finally managed to get some progress on the build! Went to my friends house (the one I got the Jim Root Tele from), fitted the new blade to his bandsaw and rough cut the body out! I couldn't get fully inside the lower horn because the other horn was hitting the post so I need to finish that up with a jigsaw. I was planning on using the template router bit for the edge of the body, as I don't have access to a oscillating sander (I'll get one for future builds at some point), so I was thinking rather then risking tearing out a chunk of the body, would one of those mouse sanders work well for it?

I cut the body while I was in my work uniform as I went to my friends before work, so that didn't go down well especially when I'm wearing dark trousers. I kept a fair bit of the sawdust for repairs if needed, and also found out that my friend has a router table, which may come in handy.

Also, those 2 extra clamps I got for the body, I really like them, but one of them is ruined. The locking pin for the sliding part has pushed back far enough to bend the metal, it's still usable as long as the body blanks aren't too big to go in the gap.

Onto the pictures! First the buggered clamp.....

[SIMpleONe89]

Looking good. How big is that band saw? Are you going to build a neck too? 

[steve1556]

10 hours ago, SIMpleONe89 said:

Looking good. How big is that band saw? Are you going to build a neck too? 

Cheers. I was worried as it's the first time I've ever used a bandsaw, so I'm really pleased with how it turned out. It's not a big one, I would say hobby/small garaged sized, but it did the job perfectly well.

Yep, the plan is to build the neck as well. I'm going for a 1 piece maple neck and a bubinga fingerboard. As it's my first attempt I want to keep it fairly simple. I'm planning a few builds for the future, some of them will most likely have 5 piece necks, mainly to see if I can do it, and the other is because I really like the look of them.

[Prostheta]

The main things to watch out for on those bandsaws is stressing the guide bearing mounts. Those tend to be cheap sintered powder metal which will crack under pressure. The frame isn't strong enough to hold high blade tension so wandering and non-vertical cutting is an issue. Take it slow with thicker workpieces and if possible sectionalise your work. It more or less looks like that's what you've done anyway, so good show!

That body looks a night and day's difference from how it was originally jointed. It's just a real shame that the sash clamp was just poorly made.

That's an easy fix though, and an "upgrade". Measure the "throw" of the clamp (distance from unscrewed to screwed) and drill a series of holes through the side of the clamp a little shorter than that distance. A steel pin through there provides a physical stop. That's how stronger sash clamps are made up, however that looks like the bar is made of aluminium....? I would straight out complain to the company you bought it from. That's just poor design.

[steve1556]

6 hours ago, Prostheta said:

The main things to watch out for on those bandsaws is stressing the guide bearing mounts. Those tend to be cheap sintered powder metal which will crack under pressure. The frame isn't strong enough to hold high blade tension so wandering and non-vertical cutting is an issue. Take it slow with thicker workpieces and if possible sectionalise your work. It more or less looks like that's what you've done anyway, so good show!

That body looks a night and day's difference from how it was originally jointed. It's just a real shame that the sash clamp was just poorly made.

That's an easy fix though, and an "upgrade". Measure the "throw" of the clamp (distance from unscrewed to screwed) and drill a series of holes through the side of the clamp a little shorter than that distance. A steel pin through there provides a physical stop. That's how stronger sash clamps are made up, however that looks like the bar is made of aluminium....? I would straight out complain to the company you bought it from. That's just poor design.

The bandsaw blade for this particular model is very thin, so I was trying to feed the wood in slowly, and for the corners I did notice the blade wandered a a tiny bit sometimes, so I kept making relief cuts which helped massively. As I've never used a bandsaw before, I watched some videos on YouTube to try and minimise any newbie mistakes on it.

The other sash clamp is perfectly fine and didn't fail, but this one did for some reason. I did them up as hard as a possibly could to get as much force on the wood as possible. You're correct in that the clamp is aluminium, I'm going back to the shop today to get some drum sander rolls to use with the drill press to do the edge of the body, so I'm going to take that clamp back as well. I'll modify them with what you said next time I use them.

This is a link to the clamp that failed Clamp

Edited May 25, 2016 by steve1556

[Prostheta]

Aluminium is just WAY too soft. @2.5itim will confirm that it's a poor choice for a clamp that can create over 1000lbs of force. All of that force will be held by that one tab. No way is that going to do the job. I'd take the other one in whilst you're at it and tell that that there is a fundamental design flaw and the other will fail in the same way.

Upgrade to the forged steel ones.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/forge-steel-sash-clamp-24/29861

Those are the real deal.

[Prostheta]

Maybe a bit of a shitty light thread, but nonetheless they should deliver the goods for a long time.

They're not too far off these monsters. Fundamentally the same kind of idea just scaled. Those sash clamps are way too light duty for anything beyond putting a Subway together.

[2.5itim]

I'm really surprised that they would even consider making a clamp bar out of aluminum, I have seen some aluminum take quite the abuse but with something like this kind of pressure these are seeing it's just a poor choice on there part. I would definitely spend the extra $4 and get the steel ones. 

I mean all of my clamps are steel, and I can still put enough force on them to get them to bend. Aluminum just doesn't have the tensile strength to take this much pressure unless it's  7075-t6 which I'm sure by the price of the clamp that it is not, my guess is it would be 6061 at best which means it has a 40,000psi tops and it being square tubing instead of solid isn't helping in this case, if we were talking about steel on the low end before forging we are already looking at 58,000-65,000psi before forging so it may be much more than that. Sorry for the long rant but in short, I would go with the steel for a couple dollars more. 

[Prostheta]

Man, that's the stuff right there. This is entirely why I think running the numbers on clamping pressure truly illustrates when and/or where we run short sometimes. I have an old punchy Casio calc on hand at all times to run rough numbers. Even if it's an order estimation (check "Fermi Problem" on Wikipedia, it'll change your life) you can get an idea whether you're in the ballpark, the carpark or even the same country.

[2.5itim]

I agree pros, personally I am the kind of person that wants to know every single thing about what it is I'm working with. When I started metal working many moons ago my "master" I guess you would call him gave me 2 books, one really old machinist handbook and one really old structural engineering handbook, they have came in handy thru my career and I even still find myself looking at them for different types of things. I will probably be buried with them lol. 

As for where and how this clamp broke, take a look at the pictures above, all of that pressure that you are applying is being forced into that little 1/8" X 1" x 1"? spot where the clamp itself pushes against on the bar. It's just a bad design of you ask me. 

Edited May 25, 2016 by 2.5itim

[steve1556]

Thank you for the replies, and even more so for explaining the clamps. I forgot to take them with me as I was in a bit of a rush as I had a few other bits to do when I went out, I'll get them changed over for the 24" forged still clamps in the next day or 2, and for a big chain they are extremely helpful. I've already got 3 of the 36" forge steel clamps, so hopefully with all 5 on the next body that will be enough clamping pressure. TBH, the clamp that failed, I really liked it as it's very lightweight and easy to use, but if it's a poor design for the use (the little holding tab), then they are both definitely going.

Prostheta - my clamps don't have the big bar along the base like yours do and they kept falling over while trying to clamp the wood. I'm going to create a little holding jig for them when I do the next project. and I'll be checking out the fermi problem as like 2.5timi said above, I also like to learn as much as I can about stuff that I'm doing.

Popped into Screwfix earlier even though I forgot to take the clamps with me, and picked up some forstner drill bits for the cavities, and the drum sanders for the body edge. I chose this option as I didn't want to risk a tear out when using a router bit. The plan is to use them with my drill press, and I'm hoping to be able to do it in the next few days.

[Prostheta]

Avoiding tearout is one thing, however I think that in the longer run it is a good idea to take on routing as a skill....if you avoid it because of the danger of tearout, you don't gain the skills to overcome it. Obviously learn when you're not working on a critical workpiece! Sanding drums will work, however you might go through a lot of sleeves. I'd also recommend some way of securing the bottom of the drum against the drill table; the Jacobs chuck will fall straight as soon as you apply reasonable sideload. A cheap bearing and a couple of washers under the drum will do the trick. 

[SIMpleONe89]

Routing is fun! I haven't lost any fingers yet! Hahaha. 

[steve1556]

18 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Avoiding tearout is one thing, however I think that in the longer run it is a good idea to take on routing as a skill....if you avoid it because of the danger of tearout, you don't gain the skills to overcome it. Obviously learn when you're not working on a critical workpiece! Sanding drums will work, however you might go through a lot of sleeves. I'd also recommend some way of securing the bottom of the drum against the drill table; the Jacobs chuck will fall straight as soon as you apply reasonable sideload. A cheap bearing and a couple of washers under the drum will do the trick. 

[steve1556]

Don't know what happened to the last post, I think it's likely to do with my browser (Opera) as i couldn't add any text under the quote. 

I didn't think about the sanding drum issues like that. I was planning on using the router for the cavities that need doing, but now I'm thinking to use it around the edge, as like you say, there is no need to be scared of it and I need to learn at some point. The issue is that I've never used a router before, and I really don't want to mess the body up (at least with the cavities they are hidden under the scratch plate). I think what I'll do is finish up the templates, then practice routing the cavities on some scrap wood before I try on the body, and I'll route the outside of the body after I've had some practice, probably won't be at that stage until next weekend maybe. 

Simpleone - hope you haven't jinxed it!

For the body, I was planing on doing it in candy red, but I'l an absolute sucker for flame and quilted maple tops, and now I'm leaning towards a red flame maple top with a black style sunburst around the outside.

[2.5itim]

Don't be worried about routers, I use them all the time and can't say that I've ever had tear out. Just pay attention to your cutting direction and depth of your cut and you will be fine. 

[Andyjr1515]

I've just caught up with this thread.  Good progress up the very steep learning curve, @steve1556  Your body blank join is soooooooo much better than my first few ever were...great stuff

 

[steve1556]

2.5itim - I'm just worried that as I've spent a fair bit of time on the body so far, that I'm going to completely and utterly mess it up with a router!

Andy - Thanks! I'm really pleased with how it's joined together, and really glad I took the advice from Pros to redo the joint. I completely messed up the planing but found a guy that did the planing for me, which helped massively and is the only way that I created a decent join.