First Build, Slow Progress, Lots Of Improvisation

[Hey]

I've been working on my first build. I'm much more of a player than anyone who aspirations to build a lot of guitars; I thought that building one would deepen my relationship with the instrument. I have access to some power tools, like a bandsaw and a drill press, but since I'll only build one for now, I didn't want to go crazy with too many tools. I don't really have any prior woodworking experience, and I'm sure that many people here would say that I shouldn't jump into a project like this, but I've recently seen some other people in real life jump into even more complicated projects, and it's encouraging. I don't know if I'm really "jumping in", anyway. I might not be starting by making wooden furniture, but I have read three books on guitar building and try to carefully think over every step. I've also been inspired by some of the posts at this board on topics like router sleds to come up with my own solutions for things as they came up.

I decided to try a 7 string, semi-hollow. That would be make my first homemade guitar unique for me.

To come up with the body, I just doodled around for a while, until I came up with something acceptable. I drew it 1/4 scale:

It's big, but I wanted to have a lot of volume for the chambers for a good acoustic sound. I also noticed when I was drawing that that most guitars (eg., Stratocasters) get really tapered at the top, at the horns, and I thought maybe it'd look good to not have it get quite so "pinched".

Then I scanned it into the computer, blew it up to the required size, printed it out on six sheets of paper, taped it together, and traced it out onto a larger piece of paper. I used that to make a template with 1/4" plywood. I don't have a picture of the finished template yet; I'll try to get one later. I decided to sand the thing to shape by hand. And that experience taught me that I don't want to sand something like that to shape by hand again. I was stuck with sanding the concave parts by hand, but I eventually cheated and sanded the convex parts (the bottom, the tops of the horns) with a belt sander. After that, I bought a cylinder for sanding with a drill press (I don't remember its exact name).

Just like the body will be big, it will be thick, too. I bought the wood for the bottom half of the guitar (mahogany). I decided to try to make the blank for the top half. Instead of just having it be a thing top, the top is nominally 1" thick. I'll extend the chambers into the top, again for maximum acoustic volume. In order to make the neck playable at the high frets, I'm planning on have the body recessed around the neck join.

Here's my goofy (but effective!) jig for planning the side edges of wood:

It occurs to me that I could have had the router run alongside the edge of the wood rather than over it, and use some sort of edge guide or fence to keep it straight. Oh, well. As it was, the critical thing was getting the four legs exactly equal in length and having the tops and bottoms perfectly parallel. I glued some MDF together into a block, used a mill to chop of the tops and bottoms perfectly flat, and cut it into four pieces.

After that, I could get my body wood glued up:

I had been working on some homemade pickup prototypes, and I had some progress there, but nothing fully completely.

Lately, I've been working on the neck, and the scarf join offered another chance at improvisation.

I marked the neck:

and bandsawed it. To get the surface plane, I decided to use my prior jig again!

At the base of the wood, where I clamped it, I used two offcuts, one from the neck one, and one from a practice run on scrap, to get the face of the wood for the join parallel to the rails.

Then I ran the router over it to get a good surface:

I cut the wood closer to size for the neck, and glued the headstock on. I used some advice from the forum to use an offcut to keep the clamps perpendicular to the join. I decided not to, however, use the advice to use a screw to keep the headstock in place and prevent it from slipping. I figured if the headstock piece was large enough, even if it slipped a little, I'd still have plenty of room left for the head.

I then removed most of the excess wood, again using a router sled, but this time one with rails just above the base, with no legs.

I still could remove a little more, and get the top surface really plane, but I'm just about ready to route the channels for the truss rod.

Edited May 3, 2008 by Hey

[Hey]

My original idea for this build was to have one pickup, where each string had its own individual pairs of humbucking coils. I still like that idea, but knowing that I have to make FOURTEEN of those things (and the last few I tried had coil breaks) made me start to get frustrated.

I think I will continue with that idea, but so I have at least SOME pickup I'll always be able to use until that project is done, I decided to add another pickup. This one will have a coil for all the strings.

I am a ways in:

The base is plywood. I figured that would be easier to shape and use than normal flatwork material. I've finished some of the coils for the other pickup projects, so I know a couple of things. First, yes, you can solder a pickup that's made of plywood without the plywood catching fire. You can pot it, too.

The thick top of that pickup is just there to hold the coil in place as I wrap it. It's only attached to the tops of the magnets with Elmer's glue, and since the glue doesn't bond so well to the magnets, it's easy to remove. I'll remove it around the time I pot it. That will lock the coils in place, even without the top.

I think to make this pickup humbucking, I might just wrap the second coil around wooden dowels instead of magnets, so it'll buck hum but still have more of a single coil sound.

Since that pickup might not be the most attractive thing in the world, I'll probably put it under a wooden pickup cover, maybe something like this:

[Geo]

Personally, I would adjust the shape of the body, as it's pretty "horn-heavy" and the taper at the butt end (past the bridge) is pretty sharp. That's mostly an aesthetic thing, though it may contribute to balance problems depending on how hollow you make it.

My suggestion... 1) tighten the waist 2) take the waist up including both horns and shrink it down

I think you'll have to carve the top pretty thin for it to have much affect on the sound.

I'm not sure about the "humbucker" with one coil wrapped around wood. The second coil will probably have minimal affect on the tone of the pickup, because there are no magnets in it to magnetize the strings directly above it. But I am not sure if it will buck hum? I never thought of something like that, so I am trying to think through how a humbucker works and how this might work.

You may end up with a weaker signal, since the two coils will be in series (more DCR, thinking from that angle) but there is only one coil's amount of "string input".

um... improvising... works good in jam sessions, not so well in guitarbuilding, in my experience!

Any way, looks like you're on track. Good luck.

Edited May 8, 2008 by Geo

[Hey]

Well, when I started drawing the body, I started with a drawing of a Stratocaster, and with each new draft, widened the horns and made the bottom rounder. So, I think if I tightened everything above the waist, that would just get me back to being more like a Stratocaster.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time playing with pickups, and while I'm not even done with that, I at least know enough about them to plan where they'll fit. So, that let me design the chambers.

I made a working template out of my master template, drew the chambers on them, and started hollowing it out:

I will use that template for both the top and bottom halves, so I'll probably need to use wooden dowels to help line them up for gluing.

[Hey]

Finished the chamber template:

So, I have an electronics cavity, and two acoustic chambers, which will be joined by another route which I'll make a separate template for.

Then I'll need to make the sound hole template.

And that's it! With that, I should be able to get the body routed and glued together. I hope to get that done before next week.

Here's a possible sketch for a sound hole. Just a simple "swoosh" like I've seen on some Rickenbackers:

[killemall8]

i haddnt seen this before.

in that first post, where you said you bandsawed the scarf, why the heck is it jet black? is the blade like completly flat? no cut in the world should look like that.

[Hey]

Honestly, I don't know. Not only am I new to this, it is not my personal bandsaw, and it's quite likely they don't equip it with high quality blades. But I didn't worry about it too much since the entire rough, black surface was removed.

[killemall8]

but still, wow. that is almost unbeliveable how badly what was burned. looks like it was cut with a flat no tooth blade. it just messes with my head on how bad that looked. good to know you got rid of it though.

[Geo]

Maybe it was a new blade with some kind of black paint on it? I've had that with hacksaw blades, where they're painted blue and the paint comes off on the first few cuts, probably cuz it's cheap crap!

[Hey]

No, killemall8's intuition was right. Its scorch marks. I thought it might have been because I was cutting through so much wood, and at a weird angle, but it's really just because our bandsaw sucks.

Anyway, I made some progress, but I greatly underestimated how much time this would all take if I thought I could have finished up the body before this week. On the plus side, I got a new camera for better pictures!

My jig for planing wood:

Part way through planing the mahogany bottom. I think it turned out nice:

The planed maple top:

It's obvious that it's three pieces, because of the grain and color change. Maybe when it's stained it won't look so blatant. But I think I did a decent job with the glue lines.

In fact, this is a close of the right glue line. My fingernail is exactly on the join:

The color change, where you might guess the join is, is a little to the right of the join!

I try to plan ahead, but I'm always surprised by somethings. I did not take into account that the drill press would not be able to reach the center line for drilling the dowel holes.

I ended up cutting notches and got that part done.

It might have seemed an obvious thing to do, but I wanted to keep as much wood as possible to give the router a place to sit when I route the chambers.

The notch at the bottom that you can see (and that's black) was cut with the bandsaw. The other one I cut with the jigsaw. The jigsaw actually worked better (and didn't scorch the wood). I don't know what I'll do when it's time to rough cut the body shape.

[j. pierce]

Might be time to get a new blade. Or perhaps you're using one with a fine set and the teeth are gunked up? Or I don't know - maybe it's even on backwards - I can't think I've ever seen a bandsaw scorch wood that badly...

[Hey]

I got the bandsaw blade changed. It did have literally no teeth left at all. One thing different about it compared to what some people are used to here is that it's used for cutting metal a lot. Still, I asked a machinist what could have caused it to wear so badly. He said that some people try to use it to cut way too fast. So, I'll try not to make that mistake.

I got the chambers in the top cut out with a Forstner bit.

And the soundhole, too, but I'm not completely happy with how it was routed, so I'll sand it a little by hand after making that chamber a little deeper (so the wood will be thinner)

[Hey]

I finished the chambers in the top, rough cut it, and routed it to shape with the template.

I'll have my work cut out for me cleaning up the top.

[Hey]

When I looked at that picture, I noticed that the waist on the bass side had an unnatural straight part, and the sound hole didn't look quite right, either.

I tried to make them a little more curvy.

Hopefully, I'll be able to start on the bottom tomorrow.

[Geo]

This body shape is growing on me. I think the soundhole really makes it work. One suggestion... increase the length of the soundhole (and allow it to taper to a narrower point) towards the butt of the guitar. Curve the increased length around, following the shape of the butt.

Just my suggestion, it looks great either way.

[Hey]

Thanks for the comments. I think I might agree, the sound hole might look a little better if it was a little longer and a little more tapered. However, there is a reason it is what it is. I originally used a 1/2" diameter bit, and it wouldn't fit very far into the soundhole template at all, and it didn't look very good. Then I got a 3/8" bit, so that's what the taper is now. At the very least, it looks a lot better than it did with the 1/2" bit.

I'm not even sure how I'd change it now. I have a 1/8" bit that I could try to use freehand, but I'm sure I'd screw it up like that.

[Hey]

I hollowed out the mahogany bottom...

And glued the two halves together!

I'm not sure how well this will work, but my plan is to use the top half as a template to route the bottom half to shape.

[dpm99]

I think I'm impressed with the books you read as much as anything else.....

[Xanthus]

I think I'm impressed with the books you read as much as anything else.....

Heheheh, same. My roommate would be proud.

[Daniel Sorbera]

Quantum Mechanics aint exactly light reading.

[Geo]

I'm not sure how well this will work, but my plan is to use the top half as a template to route the bottom half to shape.

That will work... but... my router bit wasn't long enough, so I routed the body (using the top as a template) before gluing the top on. The bit will only reach so far, so you want to then remove the top and keep routing, using the routed portion of the body as your new template. I hope that makes sense... good luck.

[Hey]

What I was planning was similar but a little different (especially since the top is glued and can't be removed any more).

I was planning on first having the top up, and use a pattern bit with the follower bearing on top. I would use that to shape as much of the bottom as possible.

After that, I planned on flipping it over, and using a pattern bit with the follower bearing on the bottom, and using the part of the bottom that had been shaped as a template.

[carousel182]

^ Thats fine, I'm pretty sure thats a normal thing to do. I do it all the time.

[Hey]

Boy, I haven't posted in a while.

The main thing that was giving me trouble was the truss rod channel. I was planning on using an edge guide to route it, but then I learned that my router doesn't work with an edge guide. So, my next plan was to route freehand, and clean it up with sandpaper.

That's how I started, and I think it theoretically would work if that's what you had to do. However, I started using a mill, and it works much, much better. It fits the truss rod just about perfectly in terms of width...

However, it needs to be made just slightly deeper:

I also got a pickup coil wound in the meantime.

[Kenny]

great progress man

i wish i had an anvil...