Fourth Project.

[Blackdog]

This 4th project is for myself. It's sort of a plainer looking build compared with the last one. Possibly the last solidbody for a while too, as I want to start exploring with big chambers-semihollow things in the future.

Last time I went to the Amsterdamse Fijn Hout I bought me a reasonably nice plank of Korina for 45 euros and I HAD to do something with that. After some careful measurements I could cut a two piece body blank and a long piece that I made into a laminated neck blank.

I wanted to try a laminated neck at this point so the 50mm wide piece of korina was split in half. I prepped a 19mm thick centerpiece from some indian rosewood I had around. The grain of the Korina pieces was essentially at 45°, so I reversed one of the pieces, laminated the whole thing and cut the neck blank from that. It is a rather simple laminate but I think is good enough for my first attempt.

For the body I am trying a "new" shape. I know, there's nothing really new around, and certainly this one is way too close to a known design to qualify, but at least it's new to me : It is an offset LP-DC inspired contour of sorts.

The specs:

Solidbody Korina, doublecut, carved top with a rosewood binding.

Laminated Korina-RW-Korina neck, 13° tilt back headstock, my usual shape (offset)

Maple bound rosewood fretboard. 22 frets, 25" scale. Possibly just one inlay at the 12th fret. Hotrod and twin CF rods.

Unbound rosewood headplate.

A P-90 for the neck slot and a humbucker for the bridge. Vol, Vol, Tone, 3-way toggle.

Aluminum wraparound bridge and Sperzel tuners.

To round off the woody look I think I'll cut a rosewood P90 cover and humbucker ring. Rosewood knobs too.

Possibly finished in glossy nitro. Amberish as a Korina guitar should be.

Here's the body and the neck blank already cut:

Hard to show the offset of the body without a full frontal pic, but this one comes a little closer.

[Geo]

Very cool, I love the LP double cut shape. And I'll cut you some slack since you have a P-90 in this one.

[Blackdog]

Very cool, I love the LP double cut shape. And I'll cut you some slack since you have a P-90 in this one.

Hey, that's unfair !!

I put no less than 3 P90s in my first build alone !!!

Counting these two new ones it's 4 P90s vs. 5 'buckers, pretty fair distribution I would think.

(Besides, the Paula doesn't really count: It's Blackdog Jr.'s guitar)

[Geo]

Very cool, I love the LP double cut shape. And I'll cut you some slack since you have a P-90 in this one.

Hey, that's unfair !!

I put no less than 3 P90s in my first build alone !!!

Counting these two new ones it's 4 P90s vs. 5 'buckers, pretty fair distribution I would think.

Well all right, but you need at least one more P-90 to bring the balance back.

All right, I'll stop with the stupid jokes.

[Blackdog]

Very cool, I love the LP double cut shape. And I'll cut you some slack since you have a P-90 in this one.

Hey, that's unfair !!

I put no less than 3 P90s in my first build alone !!!

Counting these two new ones it's 4 P90s vs. 5 'buckers, pretty fair distribution I would think.

Well all right, but you need at least one more P-90 to bring the balance back.

All right, I'll stop with the stupid jokes.

The meaning of all this is very clear... To make you happy I'll have to keep building... Oh Well...

[Blackdog]

Look mom !! I grew ears !!!!

Planed and ready to accept the headplate.

So I was planing the rosewood I had for the headplates. An offcut piece from my previous indian RW neck and a couple of scrap pieces I picked up almost a year ago. These were very rough and even had paint residue all over... And when they went through the safeTplaner a rich, reddish grain appeared at the other side, and the unmistakeable scent of roses... Brazilian RW !!

Have a look, here with the IRW piece in the middle:

So now that I'll be using these as headplates I guess it would be cool to use BRW for the fingerboard too. If I can get my hands on some...

[eddiewarlock]

Look mom !! I grew ears !!!!

Planed and ready to accept the headplate.

So I was planing the rosewood I had for the headplates. An offcut piece from my previous indian RW neck and a couple of scrap pieces I picked up almost a year ago. These were very rough and even had paint residue all over... And when they went through the safeTplaner a rich, reddish grain appeared at the other side, and the unmistakeable scent of roses... Brazilian RW !!

Have a look, here with the IRW piece in the middle:

So now that I'll be using these as headplates I guess it would be cool to use BRW for the fingerboard too. If I can get my hands on some...

How nice! But IRW doesn't smell of roses does it? cuz the pieces i've cutted/sanded, whatever smelled like anything but a rose...

[wohzah]

I have to agree with Geo that is a really cool body shape, great choice!

[Geo]

Yes blackdog, keep building, your style rocks! And congrats on the rosewood. Just today I was in a department chairman's office for my job and saw an old box with solid rosewood panels! Aaaaah....

[Hector]

to me, Indian rosewood smells like cat piss.

lol.

nice one blackdog! keep up the clean work.

Edited May 20, 2008 by Hector

[Xanthus]

to me, Indian rosewood smells like cat piss.

lol.

nice one blackdog! keep up the clean work.

In other fields, a cat piss scent is a good thing hahaha

Always enjoyable to watch your builds, Blackdog

[Blackdog]

Thanks for the comments.

IRW doesn't smell like roses. It's a rather unpleasant smell, but not as extreme as cat piss to me... However the feel of the almost unfinished IRW neck is fantastic. I'll make me another full IRW neck in the future for sure.

Anyway, the BRW smell is something else. It really smells like roses. At least these pieces are a lot oilier than the IRW I have too.

In any case the BRW dust made me sneeze a lot more than the IRW did. Maybe I'm allergic to Brazilian !!!! Oh no, please !!!

Regarding the shape I'll see tonight if I can export a "concept jpg" out of the Corel file of the body design. I also want to see if I can widen the heastock a little bit. I would like to show as much of the brazilian headplate as possible.

[Mattia]

You sure it's not Cocobolo? Looks quite orange...

[komodo]

You sure it's not Cocobolo? Looks quite orange...

Ya that left one is definitely Cocobolo. It makes me sneeze like all get out, and has a distinct smell as well.

[Blackdog]

Hmmmm, so you think it could be Dalbergia Retusa instead of Dalbergia Nigra... It's definitely not Dalbergia Latifolia, let me tell you...

Well, you might indeed be right. This is what it looked like after some more thinning, here side by side with what I believe to be a cocobolo piece (Dalbergia specialists, please confirm).

It certainly looks like the same wood to me...

Which means that I would probably use that piece for the fingerboard then.

I used the other side of the rosewood thing for facing the headstock, as it looked a lot browner, but sand dust of this wood is indeed quite orange, and if I sand it a little more it'll start looking like the offcut in the picture.

Some progress pictures are in order, so this is the already shaped headstock.

And just to illustrate where I'm going with this build, this is a "concept" drawing out of the Corel file I used for the templates.

[Dean]

to me, Indian rosewood smells like cat piss.

lol.

nice one blackdog! keep up the clean work.

Hey Hector ,you using a real cat to test the smell.

[Blackdog]

I guess it's time to update this old thread with some progress pictures.

The body now has the rear cavity routed and the korina cover has been cut.

I also routed the lip around the body edge, and the binding channel.

I can't really continue with the recurve and angling of the top until the body binding is done.

A lot more was done to the fretboard. From the original slab of cocobolo I cut and thicknessed some strips to be later used for the body binding. Then slotted, cut to shape and used the fretboard to cut the sides of the neck. Then radiused. I also though that this neck would look better with the unbound fretboard. So for contrast, the side dots are made of bronze.

In the end I decided not to use CF rods in this neck. Should be stable enough with the laminations, we'll see.

Now the fretboard has been glued on the neck and quite a few carving sessions later the neck is about 90% finished:

The carving of the neck still needs more work and the heel cut to length. I'm still unsure if I'll stick with 24 frets or cut it down to 22.

So this is the current status of this build. But being that my other build has to be finished by the end of the year, I'll have to assign priorities properly. So this one will advance rather slowly from now on, as time is always limited.

Thanks for reading.

[Blackdog]

Hi fellow wood torturers !

Long time no post ! But I believe this build thread deserves a formal closure…

You were warned, I said very clearly in the previous post that it would advance rather slowly…

I can't believe it's been five years !

For quite some time I thought I would never finish this one… The two pieces, as seen in the previous pictures, remained gathering dust with the rest of my wood stash.

I moved on and built other things, many of which were posted here.

The LP replicas I recently worked on were a great experience, and I wanted to apply back some of the lessons learned to my own designs. The most important thing I wanted to achieve was improved consistency.

That is why the first thing I did was to produce a well detailed plan of my design. Working out dimensions and angles for the plan almost felt like designing the guitar all over again.

Another thing I found quite useful with the LP builds was the clever use of "topographic" routing templates for the top carve. Short of using a copy-carver, this is probably the best way to ensure a good consistency of the general carve shape.

It took some good hours on CorelDraw to come up with a set of 9 templates for the carving I was after. Softer than before, with a wider recurve, but still more dramatic than the usual LP carve.

From the improved plans, I also made several new templates.

Then I needed to try the new templates on something, and this long forgotten build was the perfect test bed.

Resurrection time !

I kept it simple, true to the original spirit of the build. So no fancy figured maple tops or complex inlays. Just a honest workingman's Blackdog doublecut, with 22 frets, simple dot inlays, wraparound TP and dual P90s.

I used a simple top binding (tortoiseshell) for the first time in one of my designs and, to further steer away from the original PRS influence, I'm loosing the deep scoop of the treble horn/cutaway. I'm liking the results very much.

Several other things were reworked, mostly on the neck as it was more advanced: the profile, volute and heel, the recessed TRC. The body was far less advanced, so the only rework needed was a new magnet held control cover.

Apart of the template driven top carve, the control dishes were also done using a different approach, and the inside of the control cavity is the product of a new set of templates. All in the spirit of improved consistency.

The guitar was just assembled this past weekend.

She ended up a cute little guitar, and I'm really happy I finished her.

After 5 years, I can close this thread with the very first pictures of sweet Corinne.

[Mr Natural]

Welcome back Luis. This looks great - and I am glad you went with 2 P90s!- love'em.

Any plans for future builds? I still say your ES355 build and at least one of the les paul builds need to be pinned in this forum- those were excellent build threads. Hoping you will be building more soon.

[ScottR]

Welcome back Luis. This looks great - and I am glad you went with 2 P90s!- love'em.

Any plans for future builds? I still say your ES355 build and at least one of the les paul builds need to be pinned in this forum- those were excellent build threads. Hoping you will be building more soon.

What he said.

What do I say? Man, you build some of the cleanest, classiest looking guitars around.

I'm very much looking forward to the next one.

SR

[Blackdog]

Sorry, double post !

[Blackdog]

Thank you guys, really appreciated !

I'm pretty happy with the way the original carve translated into the templates (and into the new carve). It's just what I wanted to achieve, slightly softer belly and a wider recurve. Some pictures with an older sister from 2009 to illustrate.

As for the future plans, I do have some. I think I learned enough from the replicas already, and "commercially" (as in other than just for friends) it's a territory I'd rather avoid. I prefer to make guitars that are judged by how well they play and sound rather than how well they could pass for something else… So I want to focus on the Blackdog models for now.

I still have to work on the plans for the singlecut version, and I'm already working on the design of the carving templates for a hollow doublecut:

Same shape and size as this one, but hollow with a carved top and back (ouside and inside), and possibly a single f-hole. This one could well be next.

I have also plans for a slightly bigger-bodied hollow double cut, but that's a bit on hold now. One thing that holds me is that I have not been able to find a suitable hard case for something CS-336 sized.

I also intend to start winding my own pickups pretty soon.

Of course there can always be cases of "what's the story with this or that model", purely from a player's point of view. Last time it happened, earlier this year, it was with the Tele. I couldn't bring myself to "buy" one, so I just had to build this:

Not quite a replica, but only a few nods to modernity: a two way rod, 22 frets and a 10" radius board. Other than that, as much a Blackguard as possible: one pice ash body, maple-on-maple fat "V" neck and classic hardware and electronics.

But like I said, only intended to school myself.

[ScottR]

I prefer to make guitars that are judged by how well they play and sound rather than how well they could pass for something else… So I want to focus on the Blackdog models for now.

Not to mention how nice they look. I wholeheartedly endorse this philosophy.

SR