First Build....

[Blackdog]

What a great forum you have here, guys !!! I’ve learned tons browsing through your posts and tutorials during the past weeks !!!

So this is my first build ever. In the past I have put together the usual Strat from ready-made parts, and I work on my own guitars in terms of customizing and some mods (like converting an SG Standard from HBs to P90s).

For the first time I have an attic, not too big, but suitable for a light workshop, so I decided to give a go to this dream I’ve had for a long time.

The Project: I recently bought a McCarty and have rediscovered my love for PRS guitars. Since I’m building in the attic, I thought it was only fitting to build a Paul Tribute guitar.

The Specs: One piece mahogany body, carved top. (No maple cap this time)

3 P90s (because I have some), some simple control scheme like vol, tone, rotary or vol, tone w/push-pull, 3-way toggle.

Fender scale set-neck, maple with rosewood FB, straight string pull headstock design.

Wilkinson/Fishman tremolo (because I have one in the drawer) or wrap-around fixed.

The mission statement: I want to make a guitar of top quality and finish, doing things in the proper way. Since I will have to do with normal hand- and power-tools in the available space, I'll have to work out solutions to problems using imagination and the valuable help of forums like this one (so much collective inspiration here). I will be solving the problems as they appear along the way, only making compromises when the solution becomes impractical within the available resources.

I decided that being this my very first build I would start with making the body and buying the neck unfinished from a local luthier (Vox-Humana in NL). They will shape it, attach the truss rod and the fretboard, radius it and do the fret work. I will do the headstock shaping, veneering and drilling, final sanding, inlay work and fitting to the body.

So I spec’ed the neck to them and bought a piece of 2 inches thick honduras mahogany “almost” wide enough for the project. I’m missing maybe half an inch of wood for the widest part, so I plan to just glue a small piece (about an inch cut from the same board) to the proper place before rough-cutting the shape. Once carved and sanded it will be a one-piece body for all practical purposes.

Since I was going to do so many things for the first time, I decided to build a proto-flight model (a term we use in the spacecraft business), that is a prototype, but with good enough materials to fly if necessary. This means that I’ll be learning the different techniques on the prototype, but if I don’t make any un-recoverable mistake at any given step, the prototype will “also” become a guitar.

So I went visiting some lumber places and bought a rough board of mahogany, more than wide enough for very little $. After two days of sanding I found a very nice tightly and straight grained, perfectly quarter sawn piece of wood. It ended up being 43mm thick. This pretty much precludes the use of a tremolo, so as a first compromise for this prototype I’ll use a wrap-around hardtail and save the tremolo for the other piece of mahogany. This is the proto body blank after sanding.

I’ve got some pictures of all the process, if someone is interested in seeing anything in particular, just ask.

In a descriptive way:

I traced the McCarty body on cardboard as a first approach. With that I rough-cut the body shape.

I built two templates out of 12mm MDF. I shaped them with a sanding accessory and the press-drill, and adjusted them well to the shape of the original.

One of the templates was used to fine shape the body with successive passes of a top-bearing straight-cutting routing bit.

On the other template I carefully cut the 3 P90s and the rear cavity openings.

I removed as much wood as possible from the proper places of the body by drilling, and then with the template in place I routed the control cavity (for an initial depth, it will need to be routed deeper once the top is carved), and the pickups pockets.

So this is what it looks like so far.

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_015.jpg

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_017.jpg

The mistakes so far:

Some marks on the sides of the body, from uneven routing, etc. Not too deep, they should disappear nicely by sanding.

The marks you see on the top are from the screwdriver I had to use to pry off the template from the body. I used some two-sided tape that was extremely efficient… Next time I’ll just screw the template down to the body in cleverly chosen places (where wood will be removed). Anyway, these marks will go away in dust as soon as I start carving the top.

Routing one of the pickup cavities the bearing on the bit slightly crawled on top of the template at one point, leaving a small round notch on the side. I will try filling the notch with the epoxy I use for the inlays, mixed with mahogany dust I collected when sanding the board, for the proper color, and then sand down to shape. Hopefully it will end up good.

So no show stoppers so far.

I have already started to test the carving strategy on some of the mahogany cut-offs. So far, the steps I’ll probably be using are:

Route a straight lip around the body (leaving the final thickness of the body at the edges).

Use the sanding attachment on the hand drill to remove wood and approximate the shape of the carving.

Shape the carving with the French-curve and straight scrapers, in the old fashioned way.

And of course, hours of therapeutic sanding………

I’m really satisfied with the results so far. If the carving goes well the prototype will be a viable guitar, so maybe I’ll even give a try to making a neck…..

Thanks for reading.

Edited October 4, 2007 by Blackdog
One pic per post!

[Mattia]

Looking good!

(and do I know you by a different monicker over on gitaarnet.nl's forums or not? If not, come join us, tis fun. And Dutch.)

Personally, I can't reccomend an angle grinder with a flap sanding disk enough for roughing out a carve. Fine-tuning with scrapers of various shapes is great for refinining the exact shape, and getting things exactly where you want them to be, but hand-carving (even with a finger plane, done that before) an entire top gets tiring, fast. Although....might be fine for mahogany, which is much more pleasant to carve (honduran more so than African, be it Khaya or Sipo, although it's not like you're likely to notice major tonal differences...I tend to save Hondo for necks, where it's carveability and stability is of key importance, particularly given all the import restrictions in place...)

[Blackdog]

Looking good!

(and do I know you by a different monicker over on gitaarnet.nl's forums or not? If not, come join us, tis fun. And Dutch.)

Personally, I can't reccomend an angle grinder with a flap sanding disk enough for roughing out a carve. Fine-tuning with scrapers of various shapes is great for refinining the exact shape, and getting things exactly where you want them to be, but hand-carving (even with a finger plane, done that before) an entire top gets tiring, fast. Although....might be fine for mahogany, which is much more pleasant to carve (honduran more so than African, be it Khaya or Sipo, although it's not like you're likely to notice major tonal differences...I tend to save Hondo for necks, where it's carveability and stability is of key importance, particularly given all the import restrictions in place...)

I'm not in the gitaarnet.nl forums, because unfortunately, I do not speak Dutch yet... So I don't think you know me. I'm from Argentina and now live in Leiden.

I saw the flap sanding disk at the local Gamma before and thought that it might be the ticket, when I saw your pick of the inner sanding of the top in the other thread I said to myself: "That's it !!!" Anyway, I'm trying to use a flap sanding cillinder attachment, which is somewhat silmilar concept and should do pretty much the same. I don't have a grinder (yet), but I believe what I'm trying to use might still work well. If it doesnt, well... Another visit to Gamma for a grinder.

I also saw the factory tour pics of the Hamer factory. And they just use the same 3 steps: lip, grinder, scrapers.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Mattia]

Ah, cool, no probs

There are vids of the Hamer Factory tour on Youtube, if you're interested (was kind of fun to see, since I've been carving this way for a while now, before I saw Hamer's shop tour vids). As for grinders: a really cheap one will be more than adequate if all you want to use it for is carving wooden tops. No need for a fancy expensive one, as long as it, y'know, spins.

Get ear protectors and wear some padded gloves if possible, though (absorb the vibrations as much as possible, extended vibration not so good for you).

[Blackdog]

Get ear protectors and wear some padded gloves if possible, though (absorb the vibrations as much as possible, extended vibration not so good for you).

It may hinder my guitar playing abilities, you reckon ??

GOOD !! At least I'll have a good excuse for my poor playing !!!

[Inisheer]

I’ve got some pictures of all the process, if someone is interested in seeing anything in particular, just ask.

Show us any pictures you have! I enjoy looking at pictures of the process just as much, if not more, as pictures of a completed guitar. You never know when one of the pictures will help someone. For my next project I am planning on building a PRS style guitar, so I will be watching your progress for any info. Keep up the good work.

[GregP]

I really like what I'm seeing!

For a while I got sick of PRS-style guitars. Now, I'm coming around to them again. Non-figured top helps win me over, because at the same time I got sick of PRS, I got sick of flamed and quilted maple.

Excellent clean work despite the few slip-ups, and I already have confidence that you're going to have a great first build. (knock on wood to avoid jinx)

Greg

[Blackdog]

Thanks for the positive feedback !! I'm also very enthusiastic about this project and how it's coming along.

So some of you want to see pics of all the steps, here we go then.

The Blank after sanding. I'm so happy it doesn't look like that anymore...

After Rough Cut, the weight reduction was already encouraging...

My wife adjusting the templates against the real thing.

And now sanding the edges. She's been helping on the project all along. She's sometimes more enthusiastic than myself. Notice that both templates are screwed to each other and shaped at the same time.

One of the templates was used to make the fine cut of the body shape using a top bearing router bit in several steps.

The other template was set apart for cuting the pickups and control cavities.

I've already shown the routed cavities, here's the top and the back of the body.

Yesterday we finished the first step in the top carving process: Routed the lip at the edge of the body. It now looks like this:

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_018.jpg

Next step is sanding off the marks at the sides. My wife will surely help. She's really good with the sanding jig.

After that it's going to be top shaping time....

Slip-ups to report: When cutting with the router, when you lift the finger off the switch, ALWAYS WAIT for the bit to stop spinning before moving the machine. I didn't do it twice and ended up with two small gouges on the flat part of the lip. I could route the lip all around just a millimeter deeper to erase them, but that can be even more dangerous, they'll hopefully go away with sanding.

Let's see how it continues. So far I'm enjoying it a lot. Will keep you posted.

Thanks again for the interest and support.

Edited February 21, 2008 by Blackdog

[Blackdog]

Well, not much progress to report.

By friday we sanded the sides (more sanding still needed, though), and run a routing bit to round the back edge of the body. Incredible visual difference once it's rounded.

We tried the idea of the flap-sanding cillinder on the hand drill (as seen on the sanding jig). While it works, I discovered two things.

First, it's very hard to control. Hence Mattia was right, I needed a grinder and a flap-sanding disc. I already bought me both.

Second, the amount of sanding dust becomes uncontrollable very quickly.

Remember, I'm working in the attic. And you also keep "normal" things in an attic. Like shoe boxes, off-season clothes, odd stuff. So I can't really continue until I install some kind of dust confinement work area.

I'll spend most of the week cleaning the current mess and installing some dust control system. Hopefully the top carving will restart next weekend. (sigh)

I post this for the readers that might be considering building in non-conventional places. I remember reading a recent post about someone wanting to build guitars in an appartment. Well, maybe it's like wanting to build submarines in the bathtube. You simply can't.

And I'll stop typing now because I'm covering the keyboard with mahogany dust.... Hey !!! Now that I look around everything looks reddish brown !!

I'll be back.

Edited August 12, 2007 by Blackdog

[Mattia]

Oh, you can build anywhere. I spent most of my time building in my tiny student room (yes, mostly outside on the rooftop terrace, and relying on Dutch weather makes things a major pain). Where there's a will, there's a way, but it's certainly not ideal. I still only carve tops outdoors, with a full face respirator against the dust, because it makes a fantastically messy mess, one that I can't see being very controllable short of a truly enormous dust collectr, a downdraft table, and some extra fans to blow more dust towards another collection unit. Or something. But the ease and speed make it totally worth it.

[Blackdog]

Oh, you can build anywhere. I spent most of my time building in my tiny student room (yes, mostly outside on the rooftop terrace, and relying on Dutch weather makes things a major pain). Where there's a will, there's a way, but it's certainly not ideal. I still only carve tops outdoors, with a full face respirator against the dust, because it makes a fantastically messy mess, one that I can't see being very controllable short of a truly enormous dust collectr, a downdraft table, and some extra fans to blow more dust towards another collection unit. Or something. But the ease and speed make it totally worth it.

I know what you mean. I don't quite understand your comment on the Dutch weather, though... With the fantastic summer we're enjoying.

My point was that I can't go on covering EVERYTHING with brown dust. I'm looking at some basic isolation techniques to cover with dust only SOME THINGS...

But there's a will indeed, and I'm already working on a way, rather low tech too. Basically dividing the attic into an storage section and a messy shop section with some heavy plastic curtains. Next weekend is top carving time.

[Geo]

Looks good... it's awesome that you can work on that with your wife. If I could find a girl who likes to build guitars...

Where I live, summer makes the attic hot and humid all the time, while in winter it's freezing cold. Maybe your house has better insulation etc.... but you might want to be careful storing wood up there. I definitely wouldn't store guitar wood in my attic.

Keep up the good work!

[Vinny]

Great work Blackdog, I look foward to seeing this one come together. -Vinny

[Blackdog]

Looks good... it's awesome that you can work on that with your wife. If I could find a girl who likes to build guitars...

Thanks for the encouraging words.

My wife is a very hands-on kind of girl (no easy jokes here, pls!) She's an engineer, like myself, and she does stained glass (tiffany and lead) and glass mosaics as a hobby. And she's really good at it.

She's also very supportive with my hobbies and interests. We were discussing the other day not only the second build (obviously something has to be done with the "official" body blank), but even a potential third !!!

First I have to carve the top of this first build... And if the result meets my expectations we'll see...

Crisis Control Report: we finished cleaning (within reason) the previous mess. The design of the "dust confinement system" is ready, and by friday it should be implemented. I'm looking forward to breaking-in that new grinder I bought. It's still shiny and clean and that's completely unacceptable !!!

[Blackdog]

OK, after a couple of days spent in dust-proofing the part of the attic I call the workshop, today was the first session of top carving.

I had the lip routed all around the body, and I marked on it the central part of the top that needs to remain basically flat. This flat part is at an angle to the back of the body in LPs and PRS. But for this build I decided from the very beginning to keep it parallel to the back. Other designs do it this way and the carving ends up equally svelte.

The major wood removal technique was the angle grinder with a flap-sanding disk. This method, recommended by Mattia, works really well. After that is french-curve, straight scrapers and infinite patience...

But after the first session things are literally starting to take shape. And it's also fun !!!

I'm calling it a day, this build is looking really promising. It's still very rough, a lot of work still to be done on the horns, but I'm very satisfied with the results so far:

BTW, the dust proofing, consisting in some drapes of clear plastic separating the shop from the storage, made quite a difference !!!

Edited October 4, 2007 by Blackdog

[Blackdog]

Second day of work on the top and the carving is basically done. We used every imaginable tool on this, from the angle grinder, to the scrapers, to files and of course tons of sanding paper !!

I'm so happy with the progress of this build !!! This might be the first, but definitely not the last !!!

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...g_017/G_023.jpg

http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...g_017/G_025.jpg

Tomorrow I'll work with the deepening of the control cavity, now I know the slope of the top. Maybe I'll also drill the wire channels and the bigger hole for the side mounted jack.

At this point I'm not sure if I will carve the belly-countour on the back, it's already a thin guitar as it is. We'll see.

Edited October 4, 2007 by Blackdog

[Blackdog]

Ok, I think it is time for an update...

This is where I stand at the moment:

Another view of the top carving...

And another...

The carving of the horns was too tall, I carved them down quite a bit. The visual difference is huge, much more balanced look. Next build will definitely have an angled top surface to compensate this.

The control cavity was deepened to the final values, the control layout is going to be vol, tone, rotary. The jack hole has been drilled on the side.

BTW: Has anybody found a clever way of doing the "dishing" of the control holes on the top like on the PRS ??

The back has been slightly contoured like shown here:

The control cover is actually a walnut veneer on 3 mm thick plywood. I like how it looks and it's quite rigid. I have bought some mahogany veneer, so I might change it to mahogany for a more consistent look. The back of the cover will be covered with some shielding material anyway, hiding the plywood in the process. Maybe next time I'll go with an all-proper-wood cover....

The body is basically finished, so not much I can do on this one until the comissioned neck arrives....

Maybe it's time to start with build number 2.....

Edited October 4, 2007 by Blackdog

[Mickguard]

so not much I can do on this one until the comissioned neck arrives....

Sure there is...get started building your own neck. You thought carving the body was fun? It's nothing compared to carving the neck. Try it, you'll see.

[Xanthus]

You can try a router bit to dish out the control holes. It might give you the rough idea of what you're looking for.

[CrazyManAndy]

You can try a router bit to dish out the control holes. It might give you the rough idea of what you're looking for.

Yep.

http://www.exit45.com/ttnp/RecessedKnobs

CMA

[GregP]

Or, after all the work you've already done by hand-- you can continue with the hand work. Scraper and sandpaper will do what you want done, I would think.

[Blackdog]

Or, after all the work you've already done by hand-- you can continue with the hand work. Scraper and sandpaper will do what you want done, I would think.

Precisely: After all the work I've done by hand I would really appreciate the convenience of an AC-powered solution... I've just ordered the router bit.

[Blackdog]

so not much I can do on this one until the comissioned neck arrives....

Sure there is...get started building your own neck. You thought carving the body was fun? It's nothing compared to carving the neck. Try it, you'll see.

You say I should start doing some work on these ?

As I said before, I comissioned the neck for this first build, so technically speaking, this would not be Build #1, but Build #2

And so it should be on a different thread, shouldn't it ?

Edited October 4, 2007 by Blackdog

[AprilEthereal777]

I really like this build Blackdog. A lot of class to that shape.

I wanted to share something with you and other readers though about the cove bit method for the recessed control holes. I have used this method twice before, once with great success and once with a TRAGEDY!! I used a brand new cove bit and it caused an immense amount of 'chatter' and vibration when cutting into the wood. The first time I did it, the wood I was using was strong enough to hold together and it came out really well. The second time I did it though, the cove bit TORE A MASSIVE CHUNK OUT OF MY TOP!!! I was also only taking out 1mm or so at a time.

The build could only be saved by totally re engineering my top carve so that I carved out the whole missing section......it ended up looking ok but I am yet to try this method again after the horrible shock I got. You can only imagine how my beautifully carved top looked with a massive 2"+ chunk ripped off the top

Any way, I still like this method as far as ease and accuracy go, but perhaps test on some well secured offcuts of the body first to make sure of smooth sailing ahead.

Best of luck with the rest of the build

[RGman]

I use a large ball shaped die grinder...no tear out.