Jump to content

chops1983

Established Member
  • Posts

    432
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by chops1983

  1. Hey Drak, Thanks for the finishing thoughts. It has crossed my mind to finish that maple in all clear and i could be swayed, got any example pics. I actually got given it a little while ago and stewed over what i was to build with it. Being a flame top it shouldn't really have a pickguard but my thoughts were to finish it like a sunburst jazzmaster pic Don't really know why i just kinda like the look although it would be more amber/brown/black. I would use a regular shaped tortoise tele pick guard though so the top wouldn't have as much covered. How do u think that top would look with a burst as such? Would the uneven colour cause problems? I will build it with the option of no pickguard just in case. I also was gonna contact you on a link to that droptop you bent down thread, wanna read up on it. I know Perry used a slightly different technique on that purple superstrat. I'm sure i read that he routed small groves under the bend area just to help promote flexibility for the top to bend. I would call them relief cuts, we use them at work when we need to bend timber for special purposes, highly effective. Regarding the chambering, i will have to see how it works out. The body weighs currently 1.9kgs but still have to rout p/ups and neck pocket so it will be light....balance could be an issue It was a heavy piece of Makore when i started! Starting weight of 2.95kg after the tele shape was cut, so i may have got a little excited. Regarding tone, well it will be interesting. The other semi ive built has a strip of timber an inch wide running all the way to back of the guitar with a block left for the tailpiece and bridge, it has a great tone for blues and rock n roll and a heap of sustain but its a totally different timber and has humbucking p/ups. When it comes to tele's you are the man though so thanks heaps for the input! Chad.
  2. Great work Rad, i appreciate the detail you go into on your build threads, great to read and learn from. Nice wood BTW Keep the pics coming! Chad.
  3. Really nice,clean professional work nate, I just recently started going through the acoustic section to get a better grip on how building an acoustic is achieved and i noticed you are in there quite a bit. Props to anyone who builds acoustics let alone really good ones, its just a whole other level!!! Chad.
  4. Here's a little trick i use to glue the top to the back. I cut a couple of small pieces of double sided tape and stick to the body at either end of the centre line. Drop the top on lining up the 2 centre lines and press down to the tape. Take it to the drill press and drill a 6mm hole in the neck pocket route and the bridge pickup rout not drilling deeper than the depth of the rout. Remove top and tape and drop in a couple of 6mm dowels. Hopefully its all lined up and there should be no movement,mine was . Cut dowels 2mm short of the top so they don't interfere with the cauls pressing the top against the body. Now when you glue up you can be sure that the top will line up letting you focus on the rest of the procedure. Here you can see ive flush cut the dowel in the p/up rout area and the neck dowel still protruding. Last pic for today. The body clamped and gluing. I used 3 cauls as i only have limited clamps on offer. Beer o'clock! Chad.
  5. and started to cut. Keeping sort of close to the line but not really as i like to clean it up with jewellers files to avoid tearout. All done! Cut the top out on the bandsaw and layed her on top of the body for the first time. Looking like a tele... I decided to seal the inside of the guitar before gluing. Im using tung oil as it's easily applied and drys fairly quick. I marked out where the top and back touch and applied. All done and gives an indication of what the top will be like under some nitro. I wish you could get fluoro green binding...I reckon it rocks! I also decided to not bind the F-hole after Our souls advice. I plan for a pickguard and i went back and had a look at a heap of thinlines and none of them had any. Plus it saves me some time. All ready to glue up............
  6. Moving right along i got the top out of the clamps and gave it a quick belt sanding to flatten her out. About the closest looking piece of timber to tiger fur i reckon. The green in it even sort of comes out in this pic, pity it goes brown after a day or so. Routers may not be my friend but the internet is! I'm loving how a quick google search and a PDF plan to scale of a thinline teles f-hole is just there. No drawing or copying from a pic and enlarging, just print the sucker to scale! So here i printed the bridge pickup hole and f hole out onto an a4 piece of paper. Exacto knifed out the p/up rout and f-hole and used the centre line and rout to position the f-hole ala Fender. Wow, i just said f-hole alot, i kinda feel dirty... Drilled some relief holes for the scroll saw. Haha i wish! ........................
  7. After taking into consideration Scott and guitar2005's thoughts this morning i decided to layout the template and see what i was working with. It's basically 2mm which needs to come off the butt of the guitar. So i decided to go for it! But to be safe i did it on the belt sander. Here's how much came off and the result. You can just see a bit of a scratch where the tearout was. I can live with that as i will be final block sanding before finishing. So thanks lads for the input. The first pic showing how much i had to take off you will notice the tearout had vanished, thats because i filled it with some automotive fibreglass filler yesterday for a paint finish. Anyway its totally disappeared now.
  8. Looks great John. What did you use to finish it? Looks quite dark.
  9. No need for a robosander. You need to cut closer to the line so that the router works less and another trick is to simply take out 1/4" at a time on end grain. I would definitely keep that as a clear body. Personally, I would sand that out on the belt sander. There's no way anyone could tell if you do it well. That, or just re-route with the template moved up a bit. +1 Also, it should be pointed out that this has been a very nice instruction on template building. SR Thanks for the input guys, very much appreciated! Ill see what i can do today, but it really doesn't bother me for a soild colour anyway. I'm not too worried about the way i was routing, small section's running with the grain and always feeding into the bit and on end grain, very slow light passes. But, if you knock a piece of timber into a router bit spinning at 22000rpm this will always be the result. Hence the comment on the robosander. On another note, i need to order the trussrods and i wanna know whats the best style trussrod for a tele neck between the slotted head 2 way hotrod which gets adjusted at the heal or using the 4mm allen nut hotrod, adjusted from the headstock? It would have to be fitted so the active rod is directly under the fretboard meaning to tighten it or loosen it, is opposite to normal. So what im basically asking is, is it a PITA to adjust the slotted head trussrod from the heal? Chad.
  10. Next up i marked the area for hollowing out. And hogged it all out with a forstner bit. Trim the hills with a sharp chisel. Attach the template and routed it out on the router table. All done. As i was lifting the body off to check the progress i just nicked the side of the bridge area d'oh! The Router and me today weren't best friends Oh well there's always tomorrow with the alder!!! Chad.
  11. Ok,so this morning i got the makore body blank out of the clamps and did some level sanding with the belt sander. Just a quick pass at 45degrees to the grain in both directions then with the grain to take out the sanding marks. Laid out the template and marked the shape. Rough cut on the bandsaw with a blunt blade...so it took a little while longer. Then smoothed out any rough areas on the spindle sander. I then double sided taped the template to the body and proceeded to mark which way i could route the body so im always going with the grain and feeding into the router bit. Coming up to the home stretch and a hand slip later, the body caught the bit and took a massive chunk out of the end grain. I'm really lucky it wasn't my fingers though! Just a quick loss of concentration is all it took. I was bummed as i wanted to keep the makore natural with a clear nitro finish. If i was making this guitar for someone else i would start from scratch, but im just going to fill it and give it a solid colour so its no biggie! Otherwise i was real happy with no tearout anywhere else. Im definately gonna look into a robosander for profiling guitars though, i reckon it would just take the stress out!
  12. Hollow body template i just grabbed some thicker MDF, i think 16mm and made a duplicate body template. I got my little ruler and a piece of plastic taped to it at the 12mm mark and marked around the perimeter of the guitar. Left enough material in the middle for p/up cavities and bridge and used a plastic lid off a metho bottle to leave some extra timber where the Jack and strap pins screw in and cut out the middle leaving a mm or two to finish to the line with the spindle sander. This is where i thought about changing the speed, changed the belts to the fastest setting and the spindle sander worked like a charm! The internal routings may change all depending on weight i may have to take some more material away in between the pickups but we'll see.I still have to make a thicker template for the control routes and i will be incorporating the neck pocket rout into this one aswell. Got the Makore body blank glued up last night will glue the alder today and tops tomorrow! Chad.
  13. Hey Scott! Thanks mate, i really hope it wont take as long... although i am looking into a 3 month construction contract up the north of West Oz building workers quarters on a mine site. Tough conditions but great money. If that comes through i may have to leave these lying, but being Tele's there's no fancy carving or inlay work like that last build so im hoping they go fairly smoothly. Time will tell! Body template photocopied so i have a master plan and a couple i can cut up. Glued to MDF. Draw an outline on your MDF then brush watered down PVA 60/40 mix in favour of the PVA onto the MDF. Saves the paper distorting and you can really press out all the bubbles. My setup for shaping the body outline is this belt sander clamped to the bench with a couple of offcuts to raise up the piece so its running in the middle of the belt. Belt sander is square to the bench and i use the drill press spindle sander for the tighter stuff. Correct radius holes drilled for p/up and control cavity corners and then jigsaw out and cleaned up with the spindle and flush router bit for any straight lines. Master body template finished.
  14. Man, that last guitar i built has such a clarity to it when its played acoustically and this piece of teak rings like a bell! I think its not commonly used because it is supposed to be oily and not good to glue. No probs so far... i think it should be sweet. The grain on it is wild! You think the pearloid will compete...? Well, maybe i won't bind the f-hole or it will get a b/w/b pickguard to pick up the grain in the top. hmmmmm.... I know Drak has done these drop tops and i will go and study these threads so i know how its done. It will definately get a more rounded cutaway though. I was just planning to buy some pre slotted boards from stewmac so was thinking i would get a neck blank aswell. Some birdseye would be cool. Money,money,money.... i dont got any(Abba playing)haha Off to bed now will post up the body templates pics tomorrow. Chad.
  15. This made it real easy to check the nut and 21st fret widths with some vernier calipers. 21st fret width off plan= 55.5mm To shape the headstock i used the straight edge and router and these little barrel sanding thingo's that turn your drill press into a spindle sander! Made it super quick and easy compared to my hand files and sanding blocks i usually use! You want your drill press set on its highest speed, i found this out much later when i was making the semi hollow template. All shaped time to check it off the plan Needed some tweaking but the neck templates all done
  16. Ok so this is the first time i've built a copy guitar. Allways kinda wanted to keep it original but if i could own 2 guitars in my life its a tele and a 335, so im gonna build my way up to it(pardon the pun). So i printed off some detailed accurate plans off the tele forum. I had to painstakingly print out the plans a4 and sticky tape them together checking measurements along the way and making sure all lines were straight. Voila! Next up i photocopied the head stock and butt of the neck and drew the neck to correct spec on some 9mm MDF to mark a template. I kept the marked template attached to the larger piece of MDF but cut close to the line with my jigsaw so i could route a straight line down either side of the neck with a flush cutting bit guiding along some 5mm hardened glass we had left over from building our house. After going over many straight edges i have they were clearly not straight, this piece of glass came up trumps!
  17. They look great Restor!!! Did the necks get straight clear or is it tinted lacquer? Chad.
  18. Well after a bit of a break from building it's time to make some dust! I was lucky enough to be given a bookmatched flamed maple top and some alder from a cousin who has recently become a father, so i decided that because i can't afford to buy a Tele i would just bite the bullet and build one. Why build one when i can build two right? Ive still got some burmese teak left over from my last build and enough Makore to make a 2 piece body blank for it. So, the plan is to make a teak and makore semi hollow with a white bound top edge and bound f-hole, im thinking a natural finish and a pearloid pickguard is gonna dress this one up... and a Alder and flame maple drop top Tele with a belly cut and im gonna have a crack at bending that maple top so it has a arm contour like a strat(should be interesting!). Finish for this one, im thinking like a jazzmaster with the amber/brown/black edge front and back and depending on the flamed top it may get a tortoise pickguard. Both guitars are getting maple necks and maple fretboards with black dot inlays. Still need another maple neck blank and two maple fretboards. As usual i don't have any money to spend on these as the wife and i are going on another adventure mid year to europe and all our funds are going straight in the bank for the trip. But i just got to build, you all know what i mean... Some pics... Timber so far Bookmatched teak 7mm thick, makore is 38mm to make the needed 45mm for a tele. Flame maple, not the prettiest piece but it was free!!! Got the timber all dressed at the local joinery today, the young fella there i know was kind enough to stay back after hours and mill it up with me! What a legend! allright time to begin!
  19. One of my favourite Les Pauls to date Osorio!!! Did you ever re enter it in GOTM? Chad.
  20. Haha i like the heater movie Doug. Felt like i was watching a movie!Nice work!
  21. Dude, for the price you paid for these, they are great looking guitars! A 335 is basically the guitar i aspire to owning one day(a ridgy dig Gibson though) but these are really making me think for settling for a cheapie until i can afford one! Keep the pics coming mate.... Chad.
  22. Nice work guys. For first builds they are both looking great. Take your time and enjoy the process as you are both doing and they will turn out great! Chad.
  23. Really nice clean work Simo! I like the way you've matched the grain on the back. All the best for the comp. Chad.
  24. Hey Crow, you need one of these Wooden Mallet for your carving. More weight behind the head so u don't have to hit as hard! Looking Good! Chad.
×
×
  • Create New...