Christmas Score

[avengers63]

My wife actually listens to me! I figured whenever I started droning on about guitars she nodded & acted like she was paying attention. Boy was I wrong. She hunted on eBay and not only found me a body & neck, but a Kramer quad-rail humbucker and tuning pegs as well. Wow.

A little research told me this was an inexpensive travel guitar. The body is plywood, but the neck is fairly straight. One side of the f/b is thicker than the other, but it's the same along the entire length of the neck, so at least it'll be uniformly uneven.

My plan is already in place. This'll have the pickup she got me and one volume knob. As it already has the bushings in place for a wrap-around bridge, that's what I'll get. I'll get a thin piece of diamondplate to use as a large pickguard and moun the p/u, pot, & jack in it. I'll cover the headstock in diamondplate as well. The body is gerring sanded down to bare wood and painted yellow.

This is going to be VERY useful in many ways. I can learn how to finish a body from bare wood up before finishing the tele I'm working on. Better to screw up a cheap plywood body than a "real" one. Later, when I get some equipment, I'll use this body to make a template from. I'll make my first body as a replacement for this. Again, better to learn on something small & simple. It'll be something inexpensive like maple or alder.

I'll keep y'all posted on the process and learning curve.

[Stewey]

Lucky you on the score, despite all my guitar talk the closest i got was the guitar hero game for playstation.

I've always thought quad rails look best on yellow guitars so i'll be keen to see what this looks like.

Sounds like a good project to learn on, good luck with it.

[avengers63]

I remarried in March and moved into her house. There is such a slow learning curve with what we do and do not have. I always seem to find out that we have something I need right after I don't need it anymore. I grabbed the 60-grit & the block and sanded off all the old paint & primer tonight. Right as I was done with the flat front & back, my wife came in and told me we have a 6" square orbital sander.

Oh well. Now I know what a pain it is to take it off by hand. In any event, it's all off now. Tomorrow night I can sand it down to 220.

The old bushings were still in the body. Without a "proper" tool to remove them, I had to improvise. I screwed the posts in most of the way, got a hammer & a small block of scrap wood, and pried them right out. I was a bit surprised at how easily they came out. I hope they stay in well when I put them back.

Here's a pre-emptive strike question. Exactly how necessary is grain filler? If sanding sealer is used, is filler necessary, or are they separate processes?

[IPA or death]

If it's a porous wood like ash, fill the grain. This is one of my biggest rpblems with finishing a guitar. I stink at grain filling and the finish shows it.

If this guitar already had a finish on it, chances are it was filled too. But it will be easy to see open pores, and if you have any, fill 'em.

Belleville is the birthplace of Jeff Tweedy, singer for my favorite band ever; Wilco. Early Wilco, more specifically .

[avengers63]

Belleville is the birthplace of Jeff Tweedy, singer for my favorite band ever; Wilco. Early Wilco, more specifically .

I'm happy for him that he was able to escape.

Actually, it's not a bad place to live. It's fairly quiet, but not country by any means. We're only about 10 minutes from St Louis, so major shows that come through are accessable, as well as having a great sports community with the Cardnials, Rams, & Blues, and 2 minor league teams. This area has a long history of music history as well. We're incredibly diverse with that around here.

[avengers63]

The weekend was productive for me. I opted not to use any body filler as this is a practice, learning project. I was more concerned with the process than the final result. Well, I'm a doofus. The entire point of the exercise is to achieve the final result through doing the dang process! As a result of my laziness, there are a couple of places on the sides that have little gaps that should have been filled in.

That'll learn me!

I sanded the paint & primer off, as well as the clear finish on the neck. After that, I taped off the headstock, nut, & fretboard. I decided that I'm NOT going to cover the whole headstock with diamondplate afterall. I'll instead have a large plate going up between the keys.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...andedtapeda.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...sandedbodya.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...sandedbodyb.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...2tapedneckb.jpg

The light spots on the sides of the body aren't places where I missed anything, they're just odd colorings in the side of the plywood.

The next step was to primer the thing. I used nearly a full can of Krylon primer.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...imeredbodyb.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...rimeredneck.jpg

I did it in about 8 light coats and let it dry overnight. I basically kept coming back until I couldn't see any wood coming through. When I came back to it to give it a light "smoothing sanding" with some 220 grit, I saw a glaring mistake. When I was taking the paint off the curved sides, I had sanded some grooves into them. They almost look like planing ripples. While I'm not going to go back and re-so the sides, I'll definately remember this in the future. This makes two lessones learned.

Next was the paint.

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...aintedbodya.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...aintedbodyc.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...aintedneckb.jpg

Like the primer coat, I used nearly a full can of Krylon. Tonight, I'll give it a light sanding with some 220 and get to the poly. I'm not going to poly the neck becayse I like a really snooth, slick feel. I'll be tung oiling it instead. I plan on being fairly liberal with the oil, then buffing it a bit with some 00000 steel wool.

Sometime this week, my diamondplate will come in. Then I get to play with the brand new Dremel XPR400 I got for Christmas. We'll see just how good the cutting wheel is when I take it to the 0.024" diamondplate! (hhmmmmm... cutting metal with power tools. There's some man stuff!)

[avengers63]

Progress yesterday! I'm really glad I'm going through this process as a learning tool. So many things are learned by doing stuff wrong...

After the paint was dry, I did a dry-run test assembly. Lesson 3: do this BEFORE putting any type of finish on it. The holes for the neck plate didn't line up with the holes that were already there. Annoying, but... lesson learned. So I gotta drill out the holes.

I read about drilling against a block of scrap to avoid tearout. I also read about not drilling through the paint & finish to avoid burning the stuff. So... I mark the holes, clamp the body to some scrap, and drill through the neck pocket to the back of the body. There was some tearout anyway. It turns out that the back isn't completely level. Grrrr... Now I need to fill in the holes with some filler and hope it doesn't screw up the paint. Had I thought about it a little more, I would have drilled from the back. It's going to be covered with the plate anyway, so WHO CARES if the paint get's a little burned. Lesson 4: When you screw something up, don't be in a hurry to fix it. Think about it a bit.

But wait, there's more. I saw many pics of drilling the bodies. All had a "cushion" piece of scrap between the clamp & the body. No problem! I have plenty of thin scrap. When I took the clamp off, grain marks from the scrap and been embossed into the paint. Lesson 5: If ya gotta drill yer junk after ya paint/finish it, cushion the wood cushioners with a piece of felt or sumpthin. And make dang sure it's really dry!

OK, the grain marks got gently sanded with some 350 grit and retouched. Now I get to try and put some poly on it. I don't want to use a spray can, and I don't have a spray gun, so I'll be using some wipe-on. Here's hoping...

There was some good results, though. The headstock taping went exactly as it was supposed to! There was a perfect line around the headstock. When I slowly peeled the tape off, I had an x-acto with me in case I neded to cut the paint, but it was un-necessary. A little careful sanding with some 350 grit smppthed the paint ridge. Hopefully, the poly will build up & seal the ridge do it won't chip or peel.

Every pic I took was a little washed out. The clean line isn't readily apparent in the pics, but go figure: it's yellow on maple. Not much contrast. I'm just happy that ONE thing went right at this stage.

[Dean]

Your doing a really nice job,that is a cool guitar.Are you going to do any art on the paint?That's a perfict body to trick out a little.IMO

[avengers63]

Thanks. I'm learning a lot, although it's the hard way. I'm not planning on doing anything fancy on it. I AM going to make a large diamondplate pickguard and truss rod cover, though.

Maybe in the future, I'll experiment with doing inlay work on the neck. You know... continue to abuse it's "learner" status.

[fryovanni]

Your bringing back a LOT of memories for me . I think the most important thing I learned was how important it is to get things bang on before you try to finish the job. When I was first giving it a go I thought you could fill things or smooth over ruff stuff, which 99% of the time is more work than getting the base just right. I have found that is true with just about everything I do, be it ruff cutting a neck, body, leveling a fretboard before fretting, routing for binding the list could go on.... Keep up the good work.

Peace,Rich

[digi2t]

1 comment, and 2 questions;

First. Really cool looking little guitar. It's blowin' me away.

Two. What shade of yellow is that? Is it Krylon as well?

Three. Does your wife have a sister?

Looks great dude,

Cheers

[avengers63]

First. Really cool looking little guitar. It's blowin' me away.

Two. What shade of yellow is that? Is it Krylon as well?

Three. Does your wife have a sister?

First, Thanks! I'm really looking forward to doing it in "real" wood this Spring.

Two, it's Krylon interior-exterior Sun Gloss Yellow (1806)

Three, nope and ya can't have her!

[avengers63]

I want some opinions here. As I noted already, I'll be making some stuff out of diamondplate. The truss rod cover is a given, as is the pup ring and control cover. What I'm debating in my head is the pickguard. I'm having some trouble coming up with a design I like. My big internal struggle is that I'm not confident that I can match the contour line along the bottom of the body. I'm flip-flopping with rounded vs. sharp corners, linear vs. curved, massive vs. minimal.

Any thoughts?

FWIW: I taped a piece of paper to the body & headstock & made a rubbing along the edges & holes with a pencil. I then made a bunch of copies at work & have been drawing various shapes on it.

[digi2t]

It seems that you have your heart set on diamondplate, but may I throw another idea at you? How about a carbon fiber look? Yellow and black always seem to look pretty groovy in my book. By the looks of it, if you take a carbon fat strat pickguard (HSS), you might have enough material there to make something up. If you can get your hands on any strat pickguard, you could see if there is enough material there to do it. You can find the carbon stuff on Ebay, including truss covers.

As for the shape, have you tried copying the the swoop of the top of the headstock on the neck end of the pickguard, and then coming around to follow the contours of the body? Might work. Place the body on a piece of construction paper, and trace it. Then cut it out and transfer the curves you need to the pickguard. I've used this technique before. It helps you stay true to the existing contours. The entire guitar is pretty curvy, so I would tend to stay away from anything linear. That's my 2 bits.

Cheers

[WezV]

i like the carbon fibre on bright yellow idea. and i think the pickguard would look best following the bottom edge - show us the drawings though

[avengers63]

Thanks for the input. I'll post some drawings tonight. They might be a little jacked-up - I don't have my scanner hooked up yet (or even unpacked).

I gave serious thought to black hardware & p/g on the yellow body. The only thing that stopped me was that when my wife got this whole thing for me, the tuning keys were chrome. With that in mind, I'm really locked into chrome. The bridge, knob, screws, neckplate, and sheet of diamondplate I have are all chrome, so there's really no going back at this point. My 11 year-old said that it'll remind her of a bulldozer: bright yellow & diamondplate.

If I go with a large p/g, I like the idea of carving out some kind of design or wording right under the strings. I'd paint the area under the hole black so it'd show through nicely. Maybe I'll go for it when I make the "real" body in the spring.

I'll definately keep the carbon fiber in mind for a future project, though. I never even considered a colored p/g that wasn't plastic. THIS is why we rookies so desperately need your input.

[WezV]

I'll definately keep the carbon fiber in mind for a future project, though. I never even considered a colored p/g that wasn't plastic.

i have never considered carbon fibre as anything other than patterned black till i saw this

http://www.gusguitars.com/img_disp.php?ima...amp;model_id=16

http://www.gusguitars.com/product.php?model_id=16

Might have to try doing some colored cf plates

[avengers63]

i have never considered carbon fibre as anything other than patterned black till i saw this

http://www.gusguitars.com/img_disp.php?ima...amp;model_id=16

http://www.gusguitars.com/product.php?model_id=16

Is there a technical reason the bridge & pups are recessed, or do you think it's purely for looks?

Either way.... dude!

[WezV]

well its there own bridge design so i dont really know. I guess these are quite sleek instruments to play and the strings being closer to the body may help that feeling. Not had chance to play one yet. I am hoping GUS will be at the london guitar show this year so i can have a go then.. or i might have to just pop along to harrods hwere this guitar is now... if they let me in the door!!

[Dean]

Thanks for the input. I'll post some drawings tonight. They might be a little jacked-up - I don't have my scanner hooked up yet (or even unpacked).

I gave serious thought to black hardware & p/g on the yellow body. The only thing that stopped me was that when my wife got this whole thing for me, the tuning keys were chrome. With that in mind, I'm really locked into chrome. The bridge, knob, screws, neckplate, and sheet of diamondplate I have are all chrome, so there's really no going back at this point. My 11 year-old said that it'll remind her of a bulldozer: bright yellow & diamondplate.

If I go with a large p/g, I like the idea of carving out some kind of design or wording right under the strings. I'd paint the area under the hole black so it'd show through nicely. Maybe I'll go for it when I make the "real" body in the spring.

I'll definately keep the carbon fiber in mind for a future project, though. I never even considered a colored p/g that wasn't plastic. THIS is why we rookies so desperately need your input.

Maybe have your 11 year old ,put her hand prints in black on the back of the guitar .Kinda stager them like the hollywood walk kinda thing.I don't know why ,but every time I look at that guitar I like it more and more.I guess sometimes simple is just cool.

[dash]

you could always copy the original pickguard, athough a little unimaginative!

cheers

darren

[avengers63]

I saw that a while ago, but thanks. I didn't want to go with anything resembling the original, but I'm afraid I may need to make a hard choice pretty soon. I don't own or have access to the proper power tool (band saw?) to cut the diamondplate, so I have to improvise with what I have on hand: a dremel, hacksaw, and metal files. So far, thinga aren't looking so hot.

I made the template for the truss rod cover and TRIED to cut it out this weekend. The edges were... less than good. Despite their claims, the cutting bits I bought for my new dremel just aren't up to making an even controled cut on 0.024" aluminum. It's pretty wobbly in fact. On the good side, it's a little bigger than what I actually wanted. I'm gonna try and file it into shape in the next few days. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'm scouting suppliers for a piece of black or mirrored plastic pickguard blanks. If I stubmle accross black carbon fiber, I'll price them too.

The finish is almost done being applied. It's coming along nicely. I got the wood finishing book in Saturday, and I've been tearing through it. I'm pretty eager to get to it!

[IPA or death]

Have you tried to contact a metal shop to see if they would cut the diamond plate for you?

Great progress on the guitar btw. Keep up the good work.

[avengers63]

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...6neckplateb.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff15/av...6neckplatec.jpg

Progress on the diamondplate!

Coping saws are great. It just takes forever on metal, but they work nicely. I trimmed up the jaged edges & mis-shapes of what I had tried to cut with the dremel. Then I went to work with a big metal file. I LOOSELY assembled the tuners so I could make sure everything fit right. After I snapped off some pics, I took it all apart so everything can finish curing. All said, I was fiddleing with it for about 2 hours.

I'm not looking forward to the time necessary to do the pickguard. I ordered a chrome pup ring yesterday (along with some other small items), so at least THAT will be right & easy. If all of this metal diamondplate becomes too much of a chore, I found some thick plastic DP at Home Depot. Of course, if I'd have found it 2 weeks ago....

[avengers63]

I cut out the large pickguard last night with the coping saw. It worked really well. I took the big file to the edges and smoothed out all the rough edges. When I laid it on the body to line up everything and see where it needed to be tweaked....

Well, it appears that I'm not quite as bright as I like to think I am. Apparently, I can't tell the difference between back & front. I fully expected to make some mistakes in this thing. I didn't expect so many. Some learning curve, huh. Oh well. Lessons learned the hard way are slowly forgotten.

I made the dang thing backwards. Totally, completely, and quite stupidly, I did it backwards. I laughed my butt off when I saw what I did. A few years ago, I'd have been steaming about the lost time doing it wrong. Now, all I can do is laugh at an obvious mistake I shouldn't have made. My wife thought it was pretty dang silly too. We both had a good laugh.

On the good side, it lines up pretty well. A little minor alterations and it'll be what I want. I'll just need some minor shaping with the file. It's a good thing I got about 3-4 times the amount of diamondplate I needed.

I guess now I'll have to make a lefty body to sell as well as a righty body for me. I can't let the pickguard go to waste, now can I?

Lesson 6: Make sure that your template is on the product the right way. It's a LOT easier to re-align & re-draw than to re-cut.