fretman_2

Here's my entry for March.. This is a guitar that I designed that's inspired by a September 1959 article in Mechanix Illustrated entitled 'How to Make an Electric Guitar'. I call it the MI59DC for double cut. I did a little modification of the basic body shape, and designed my own snake head inspired 21 fret 25" scale neck. The top is an interesting piece of flame maple chosen more for it's uniqueness than the mirror quality of the pattern. The finish is nitrocellulos lacquer tinted with ColorTone Vintage Amber. Both body and neck are maple. I used my CNC machine to do the 2D machining on both body and neck, then shaped the neck profile by hand. Neckplate, control plate, and pickup rings are CNC'd 6061 aluminum with my own engraving designs. The engraving is a sun, moon and stars theme. Other details...GFS Alnico Pro humbuckers, 6061 aluminum nut, Ernie Ball #10 strings, hardtail bridge, open back Wilkinson style tuners, heel adjust truss rod (you can tell I cut my teeth building Tele's). I built this guitar for myself. Close up of the engraving on the control plate... Closeup of the engraving on the pickup rings... Closeup of the engraving on the neck plate... Shot of the entire guitar... Closer up view of the body... Thanks and hope you enjoy the pics of the guitar.

This is the MI59 and is based based on a September 1959 article from Mechanix Illustrated entitled "How To Make An Electric Guitar." To get the outline of the guitar ready for CNC, I brought a JPG of the outline into Inkscape and used the Trace Bitmap feature to turn the photo into a vector drawing. From there I scaled up the drawings to the dimensions I wanted, and cleaned up the few errors from the trace. This is the first build using my home built CNC machine. I produced two body templates, one for the outline and one for neck, control and pickup pockets. I also directly CNC'd the outline of the neck and peck drilled the tuner holes. Everything else was done by hand. The guitar body is red oak and black walnut and the two piece neck is red oak. Body and neck finish is satin wipe-on poly. Some particulars... 25" scale neck with medium jumbo frets Side position markers only Bison bone nut Open back tuners Tele type controls Guitar Fetish humbucker sized P90's I have a double cut version of this guitar in the works. Here's a short video of the new owner trying out a well know riff... MI59 Demo.mp4

My entry in January's contest is a custom black walnut semi hollow T style guitar...with a bit of a special story. This guitar was crafted for a young man, a youth minister, with black walnut from a tree that had been felled in his grandfathers back yard. This stash of black walnut had been sitting in a barn for at least 30 years...maybe more and I was approached about building a guitar from it. I was allowed to keep the rest of the wood for any future builds. My aim was to show off as much of the grain of this beautiful wood as possible,..so there would be no pick guard. Also, because it's a semi hollow, I could book match the top for extra beauty. I had recently gotten into CNC and I wanted to try my hand at doing some engraving. I set about designing patterns for the control and neck plates and settled on the designs you see in the photos. The neck plate design is especially meaningful to him. I also used the CNC machine to cut the templates used to build this guitar. Most of this guitar is the standard T style flavor with the exception of the dual rail humbucker in the bridge. I added that to give him a broader choice of tones in the music he creates. I know that when he plays this in church, it carry so much extra meaning into the music he's making. It was very satisfying to hand the guitar off to him.. Some features of this guitar... Neck 25.5" scale, 21 medium-jumbo frets Maple neck blank Rosewood fretboard Polymer clay position markers Heel adjust two way trussrod Aluminum nut Finish satin wipe-on poly Body Black walnut Semi hollow Book matched top Finish satin wipe-on poly Aluminum control and neck plates Custom designed "f' hole Wilkinson compenstated Tele bridge Guitar Fetish Lil Puncher humbucker bridge pup, Guitar Fetish single coil neck pup

"SatinSapele" I've probably built about 5 or 6 guitars...mostly Tele's...mostly for friends and family members. This one's for myself and represents my take on one of my favorite guitars. It's a little bit of this and that. My garage is my workshop and I have to do a lot of the fabricating outside. I'd like to advance to the point where I can sell one or two every now and then. Otherwise I'd keep them all!! This guitar was built to be a rocking workhorse. Simple slab sided body and bolt on snake head style neck. It's heavy at nearly 10 pounds but I couldn't bring myself to carve into this beautiful piece of wood to do any weight reduction. The finish on the neck and body is Minwax wipe-on satin polyurethane with no grain fill. I wanted to keep the character of the wood intact. Here are some specs... Body - Sapele Neck - Oak/Rosewood Pickguard - Frosted ABS plastic Tuners - Wilkinson open back Waverly style Scale - 25", 21 jumbo frets Strings - Ernie Ball 10's Bridge - LPJR Style Intonated Wrap Around Volume - 250K Audio Tone - 500K Log Nut - Corian Pickup - GFS Classic II Humbucker ...and the pictures...

Thanks for the constructive criticism...the glue line was a concern...LOL. The finish is a very mirror glossy though...i was at a loss as how to capture it. All of the other entries are fantastic guitars. I'm just happy to be amongst you!

Hello everyone! This is "Black Snake"... A few of the specs... Two piece 21 fret red oak snakehead neck D neck profile Bone nut Dunlop 6100 frets Custom snakeskin pickguard Black nitro lacquer finish Wilkinson compensated three saddle bridge Guitar Fetish Lil Puncher Hot Lead dual rail pups Body construction is composite MDF/pine. She sounds and plays like a dream...drives an amp hard, but cuts through the mix. This is not your fathers T!

Thanks David!!!!!

Here are some shots of my newly finished Pinecaster. This is my first scratch built Tele style guitar. It's my second scratch built 6 string. Here are the specs: - Poplar neck with red oak fretboard, finished in Tru Oil - GFS Lil Puncher Modern Vintage dual rail pups - Les Paul selector switch - Pine 2X4 and Lowes round pine table top - All black hardware (excepting the white selector switch tip) - RIT transparent scarlet dye, finished with shellac, then lacquer - Aluminum nut - Dunlop Jumbo frets Pretty standard otherwise. The neck is very chunky, but the action is superb. It plays and sounds fantastic.

My last two Tele style necks have been poplar blanks with red oak fretboards finished with Tru Oil. They're real players and beautiful. The red oak compliments the poplar nicely.

Wow...what's the scale???

wow...thanks very much!!!