Tundra_Man

Walnut Memorial Strat It's been a few years since I've submitted a GOTM candidate. It's been a few years since I've completed a guitar, for that matter. Life sometimes gets in the way. In any event, here's an instrument I (finally) just finished last weekend. This one is my 15th instrument. In February of 2012 my father passed away. Before he passed, he gave me some special wood. This wood was from a walnut tree that grew on the family farm where my father was raised. He grew up playing in this tree. Later when the tree had reached the end of its life, my father cut the tree down. When he passed away, at his request I built him a cremation urn from this tree to hold his ashes. After the urn was finished, I had a bunch of the scrap pieces and off-cuts left over. None of them alone were large enough to be very useful. However given the nature of where the wood originated, I didn't want to just throw them in the scrap bucket or the burn pile. So I concocted an idea: I would take the little pieces of scrap and glue them together into larger pieces. From those larger pieces I could plane and joint stock in sizes useable enough to build a guitar. This guitar would be my tribute to my father. Rather than just an heirloom object that would sit on a shelf somewhere, this could be something I could use in a way that would be a fitting tribute to my dad's legacy. In addition to the wood being special, I decided to take my memorial instrument one step further. Under the pickguard there is a compartment that holds some of my father's ashes. It's a way to keep a little bit of my dad near me. You may find this touching or you may find this creepy. I haven't fully decided myself which it is. But it felt like something I needed to do, so it is what it is. I started building this guitar in late February of 2012. A few months later at the beginning of May 2012, my mom also passed away. For a variety of reasons the guitar project ended up getting placed on a shelf for about four years. A couple months ago I decided it was time to pull it out of the closet and finish it. I did a full documentation of my build on my web site: Building The Walnut Memorial Strat. There's also some pages on my site covering the build of the above mentioned cremation urn, in case you're interested in seeing that as well. Here's an overview of the specs: Neck Type: Bolt-on Neck Wood: Walnut from the scraps of my dad's cremation urn. Truss Rod: Dual action Neck Reinforcement: Two carbon fiber rods Headstock: Fender-esque flat style (non-angled) Tuners: Sperzel style locking Nut: Bone Body Wood: Walnut from the scraps of my dad's cremation urn. Body Features: Standard Strat shape, forearm contour, rear belly cutaway. Fretboard: Cocobolo, 10" radius Scale Length: 25.5" Pickups: GFS Premium Vintage Alnico Controls: One volume, two tone, five way pickup switch. Hardware: Chrome Finish: Gloss nitrocellulose lacquer Weight: Ten pound range (guesstimate). Not unbearable, but not a lightweight either.

It's useful for about anything. I've even seen bubinga fingerboards. I've done a bubinga topped bass. It is a very dense and heavy wood, so a solid bubinga body would be a backbreaker.

I agree that the difference in grain orientation in the picture isn't enough to cause issues. In the original post Robert mentions the possibility of going as far as orienting the grain completely perpendicular. This extreme type of cross grain glue-up was what that to which I was referring. And gluing up cross grain doesn't mean that you will have a problem. It just means that the wood expansion could be sufficient to cause problems. I doubt the neck would completely let go, but the wood in that area could crack. If the instrument is never subject to extreme changes in humidity, it may be fine. I'd rather not risk it, however. Tjensen, go to an auction and find an old table-top with a breadboard edge glued cross-grained on the end. Odds are that the stress of expansion and contraction over the years has caused either the joint to fail, or the wood to crack to relieve the tension.

Outside of the asthetic reasons, if you're building a set-necked guitar you want the grain orientation to align for stability reasons. When gluing wood, you want to always avoid cross-grain glue ups. Wood expands and contracts across (perpendicular to) the grain. By aligning the grain, the neck and the body will for the most part expand and contract together. If you orient the grain of the body at a 90 degree angle, you run the risk that the neck joint could eventually fail as the two pieces of wood move in different directions. If you're doing a bolt-on neck, the risk is lower as the wood has more ability to slip around in the pocket.

Actually, that guitar was finished with Tru-Oil. That area of the back was a little rough yet when I shot the pictures. I had to go back and address a few small areas on that guitar after the finish had fully cured. That area right below the heel on the back was one of them. When I shoot laquer, I do wet sand to remove any orange peel. And I let the finish cure for at least two weeks.

What the heck, I might as well throw my latest into the pot... I've never been a big fan of Flying V guitars, but for some reason about six months ago I got a hankering to build one. I had to wait until I finished up a couple others that I had in the works before I could start on this project, though. I think I'm starting to get a little faster, as this guitar only took about six weeks from start to finish, not counting design time which I did while visiting my in-laws over the holidays. The specs on the guitar are as follows: Body: Body wings made from cherry, maple and bookmatched walnut front and back, classic "V" shape, tune-o-matic bridge, string-through design, Dunlop strap locks. Neck: Neck-through design, curly maple, cherry and walnut laminates, ebony fretboard, mother-of-pearl "T" inlay at 12th fret, Gotoh tuners, graphite nut, dual-action truss rod. Electronics: Seymour Duncan Custom-Custom in the bridge, and Jazz in the neck, volume control, 5 way "P" style super switch (gives same pickup combinations as a PRS), strat-style output jack plate on rear. Finish: Tru-Oil

I believe the late John Entwistle played Alembic basses, IIRC.

There's a picture in Melvyn Hiscock's book (in the "Assembling Component Parts" chapter IIRC) of a guitar being rubbed down with Brasso. Never tried it, but it sounds interesting.

I've owned both. The drill press isn't too bad, especially for the money. I still use mine after nearly 5 years although I am considering upgrading to a floor model just for size reasons. I have no qualms with the Ryobi's runout, power, adjustments, etc. And it fell out of the back of my truck while I was moving and suffered no damage, so IMHO it's pretty reliable. Run as fast as you can from that bandsaw. Mine excelled at cutting curves, but not the curves I wanted to cut. Followed a line like someone twice the legal limit. Different blades didn't improve it much. I never realized how bad that bandsaw was until I got a good one. Hope this helps!