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IT CAME IN!!! The sheet of Formica in Aqua Boomerang I ordered 2 weeks ago came in today. I'm REALLY excited now.

wide.jpg

just a sample pic, not a scan of the actual sheet.

OK, so here's the plan....

I have a template I made a few months ago in anticipation of being able to do this. It's a trimmed down version of the Danelectro "bowtie" shape. (Not-so-)Coincidentally, I just so happen to have a Dano neck on hand. Hmmmmm. I also have some Gretsch pups on hand. Hmmmmm. Is it possible that I got them specifically with this in mind?

I ordered a bunch of parts today - enough to make this guitar and to make another at the same time. One is for me, the other is going on consignment at a local shop.

I'll be making three bodies concurrently - one for me, one for the commission ax, and one for eBay.

formicatele.png

artist's rendition - not an actual guitar

STATS:

Ash body, possibly hollowed out a bit. Not positive yet.

Gretsch pups on mine, Artec/GFS Gretsch clones on the consignment

white pickguard - top routed body - p/g mounted electronics

3-position switch

concentric vol/tone

neckplate, not ferrules

white minding on top & bottom

And the whole dang thing - front, back, & sides - is covered in Formica.

bowtie.gif

not as cool as what I'm going to make

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Those HAVE to sound weird. I'd love to plunk arounf on one for a while. I love funky stuff like that.

Here's what's happening:

1st body rough cut

1 blank gluing

1 blank waiting to glue

All parts have been ordered.

I chose parts that can be bought again repeatedly in case it sells and the store wants another. I'd be able to repeat the product accurately and inexpensively.

I'm giving Eden a try for a neck. I heard some bad reviews early on, but they've turned heavily positive since then. All I'm hoping for is that it's playable. If not, I'm out $38.

I was shopping around for a neck & pups the other day. I knew going into it that I was going to give Eden a shot, so that search was fairly easy. The neck I decided on is maple/maple w/ dot markers. As a bonus, it's already finished. I figure if the neck is OK but the finish is shoddy, I can re-finish it. If it's good, then I'm ahead of the curve. It didn't cost more than the unfinished necks, so why not.

Anyway, I found the one I wanted with a BIN of $30 or best offer. With nothing to lose, I made an offer of $20, which was accepted. COOL! Now it's time to look for the pups.

Since I'm putting Gretsch pups in mine, I wanted the other to have similar ones, so I looked at GFS. Picking out the ones I thought were similar, I went looking for that model from other sellers. We all know they're all made by Artec, so in theory they shouldn't be too hard to find, and cheaper than GFS. Unsurprisingly, I found them quickly. Better yet, they were from the same seller as the neck. Combined shipping! The BIN was $18 each or best offer. Again, with nothing to lose, I made an offer of $12 each. Offer accepted!

So, I have a finished neck and two pups on the way for $68 shipped. Buying the pups from Guitar Fetish, they'd be $35-$39 each, plus shipping. This is both pups, a neck, and shipping for LESS than just 2 pups from them. Gotta love it.

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Those HAVE to sound weird. I'd love to plunk arounf on one for a while. I love funky stuff like that.

they do have a piece of wood in the core, maple i believe. I played some at a guitar show a few years ago and took some photos

theshow025.jpg

theshow024.jpg

they played well and sounded good as far as i could tell - obviously its hard to get a really good idea of the sound at a guitar show. he uses the same high end custom made pickups i do so these are not done on the cheap

for yours i would consider doing it like a thinline guitar, wood back, hollowed out with formica top... or possibly danelectro style with a wooden frame and formica front and back

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They're held together with lag bolts! That's ridiculous!!! :D I love 'em and I've never seen them until this thread.

The whole thing will be covered in formica. There will be white binding on the top & back to hide the ugly edges.

My original thought was to have the body be little more than a 1/2" frame with the formica acting as acoustic soundboards Maybe a solid core, maybe not.I don't think I'll be doing that on these first runs, though. The body is a bit small - the blank is 12x16. I'm concerned that if I loose too much weight from the body that it won't balance. With a full-sized body, I don't think it'd be much of a problem.

The hogged out body with a top isn't a bad idea. But like the frame, I'd be concerned about weight.

Any thoughts?

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is it Aqua Boomerang on both sides? or are the sheets thin and you are going to maike it like an acoustic?

I'm thinking I missed your intended question. I was hearing "are you putting the stuff on both sides of the guitar", but I'm pretty sure I missed it. :D

The formica is only printed on one side. The other resembles brown hardboard, but it's a LOT stiffer. The sheets ARE quite thin. Thicker than veneer, but not by much - maybe 1mm at most, possibly less. But it's VERY stiff. You could easily make a true semi-acoustic out of it. I bet it'd sound weird, too. But isn't that part of the point?

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I'd worry about the strength of the formica if it wasn't backed by wood - the stuff I've worked with cracks and breaks very easily before it's attached to a substrate. If you went for hollow chambers with the formica as the only top, I'd be at least put braces or keep it to smaller multiple chambers. But you may have a different type of material than I'm used to working with.

Very cool though - I'm looking forward to seeing this project!

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They're held together with lag bolts! That's ridiculous!!! :D I love 'em and I've never seen them until this thread.

The whole thing will be covered in formica. There will be white binding on the top & back to hide the ugly edges.

My original thought was to have the body be little more than a 1/2" frame with the formica acting as acoustic soundboards Maybe a solid core, maybe not.I don't think I'll be doing that on these first runs, though. The body is a bit small - the blank is 12x16. I'm concerned that if I loose too much weight from the body that it won't balance. With a full-sized body, I don't think it'd be much of a problem.

The hogged out body with a top isn't a bad idea. But like the frame, I'd be concerned about weight.

Any thoughts?

YOu answered it with this post. I had a very old Danelectro that was formica and it was completely hollow and around the edges was a white tape or some sort of cloth glued around the edges to hide the fact that the formica was actually two piece glued to edges. I had a reissue U2 Danelectro that was painted chip board but that was after their resurgence in the late 90's

I was recently thinking of doing the same thing with a build and toyed with using solid Corian and even priced a formica top at home depot but I guess I just let the idea get away from me. I loved the old Dano's and those guitars got me into the best Alt country band ever! Southern Culture on the skids.

The tele is cool looking but i'd like to see you keep it real and go seriously silvertone or Dano with this build just for that retro feeling! Oh, and build an amp case too! YOu gotta have a tube amp in a case if you got a dano!

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It's gonna be a Dano shape, just smaller. Depending on how these go, I'm toying with the idea of doing a couple other shapes and seeing how they sell. The basic Strat, Tele, maybe PRS or a 335. Who knows. Right now, all that's just ideas and "what if's".

Don't worry guys... there'll be some actual progress pics before too long.

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PROGRESS!!!!

I got all three bodies cut, template routed, and with a neck pocket. The formica sheets have all been cut to size to glue on as well. It worked out pretty nicely. The sheet is 48"-49" wide, and the circumference of the body is just under 48". I can just cut off a slice from the end and have a piece long enough to go all the way around the sides with just the right amount of waste.

wip01.jpg

And there is PLENTY of formica left. :D

wip02.jpg

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I got some formica glued onto the front & back of a body last night. Now I have a legitimate excuse to go buy a laminate trimmer. :D

wip03.jpg

wip04.jpg

I'll be using a heat gun to soften the strips and mold them around the curves. I did some test bits last night to try and make it through the learning curve. It's a short trip from "soft enough to bend" to "yellowed & slightly burned" to "melted". And that's what cutoffs are for.

I wonder how the binding bit I got from Stew-Mac is going to cut the formica. I dearly hope it cuts it instead of chipping & tearing it. More test bits to come.

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Maybe leave the strips in some hot water?

That's a thought. The backing would probably dissolve, but again, that's what scraps are for.

Thinking about it for a second, hot water probably isn't hot enough to get the plastic formica to bend. Consider that this is countertop material, designed to stand up to things like boiling hot coffee being spilled on it. Thanks for the thought, though.

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I'd give a try though - boiling hot coffee isn't going to stay boiling for very long once it's removed from a heat source, and the heat from the liquid is going to be dispersed into the air and through the countertop. Placing a piece of this into boiling water is going to keep it at that temperature.

At Home Depot the other day I saw a heat gun with a digital readout and adjustment on it - perhaps something like that will help to get the stuff hot enough to bend without melting.

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Actually, looks like you were right - after a quick googling, sounds like it's designed to bend at about 163 degrees C. Although I may be looking at another material. What grade do you have? I know there's thicker and thinner grades, the thinner ones being designed to bend easier.

Also found this document online. Sounds like it's geared a bit more towards professional installers, but it might give you some ideas.

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Actually, looks like you were right - after a quick googling, sounds like it's designed to bend at about 163 degrees C. Although I may be looking at another material. What grade do you have? I know there's thicker and thinner grades, the thinner ones being designed to bend easier.

I honestly have no idea what grade it is. I didn't even know there WERE different grades. The dude at Home Depot told me about the heat gun trick to bend it, so I started experimenting.

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I was going to suggest that there were going to be significant problems with the side bending on just about any shape. There are probably some special tools and design considerations to doing table tops and such...

However...since you are planning a binding and the guitar is (unlike the originals of this type) a quality solid wood...I think that if you were to finish the sides clear with a white binding and the laminex top would perhaps look even better and make the improved quality more apparent...

There may well be problems with chipping though and cutting the binding...I imagine that this stuff will be murder on the cutters...

I do kind of like the pattern and 50's diner aesthetic...but I would have preferred the original telecaster incarnation of the project over the dano thing...

good luck...

pete

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i think it needs some sort of 50's diner chrome edging strip

Thanks for the link. I couldn't agree more. The edging would really complete the look. I really with it were a possibility for me. But...

I did some heavy-duty looking into it a while back. The price is a little high, but I'm a cheapskate sometimes, so take that with a grain of salt. The real problem as I see it is cutting & shaping. I don't have anything to cut the edging, nor the means to bend it. :D

But it ain't over 'till it's over. I still have a thought ot two, like chrome car moldings.

Here's a mock-up of the one I'll be keeping. I loves me some Gretch puppies!

wip07.jpg

body close up

I bent all three sides last night as well. Right now, they're just taped on so they would cool down in place. It's surprisingly easy to bend. Tape the first spot in place, then point the heat gun at the corner while you're applying some light pressure. You can feel it when it starts to give. Just continnue around the corner when the bend sits flush with the curve. Tape it in place and go on to the next curve. It actually only takes 10-15 seconds to bend each corner. The only tricky part is that it gets REALLY hot! You need to hold it pretty close so you get the angle right and have adequate pressure, but if you get too close, you burn the prints off your fingers.

wip05.jpg

My sister was in town this week, so I showed off this project to her. She thought black binding would look best, but it's her other suggestion that struck me mute. Remember that OMG pink that was used in the 50's? Like a bright Pepto-Bismol pink? She said to paint the neck that color. :D Sure, it'd be period appropriate, but.... dang.

Edited by avengers63
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Looking damn good!

As far as burning your fingerprints off, when I'm heat bending stuff, I usually wear leather gloves.

For cutting that aluminum molding, a regular hacksaw would work, and a dremel would help where you needed to notch the tang to make the bend around tighter radiuses.

I've worked with similar products, and they bend fairly easily by hand, being aluminum, but if I were going to go that route, I'd bend it with padded bar clamps, using cauls on the outside as needed, bending it around a form. I'd probably make the form out of three pieces of MDF/ply - the center one undersized, so you end up with a large slot, basically giving you an oversized slot for the tang. You could probably bend it as you install it, but I've seen metal t-moldings bent like that spring back if the teeth on the tang don't hold as tight as they should.

That said, as cool as that stuff looks, I'd be hesitant to use it on a guitar - I just think it'd be uncomfortable.

So you just got this stuff at Home Depot? How much did the sheet end up costing you? I'd love to try my hand at something like this...

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So you just got this stuff at Home Depot? How much did the sheet end up costing you? I'd love to try my hand at something like this...

+/- $56 for a 4'x8' sheet. I have no idea if the price varies for each pattern.

In the near future, I WILL be trying this out on a strat and seeing how it sells.

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My new toy, and the heat gun I used to bend the sides. Don't laugh! 1) It's my wife's, and she uses it for scrapbooking stuff. 2) It saved me from having to go buy one. I like getting tools as much as you do, but if I don't have to spend the money, I'd rather not.

newtoys.jpg

I glued some cutoff formica onto some scrap pine last night. When I got home, I tested the binding bit.

test block

wip09.jpg

As you can see, the results were... less than stellar. Going fast caused more chipping than going slow, but both had it. Remembering the shop tips about tape reducing tearout when using the band saw & scroll saw, I figured "why not" and wrapped the end of it in packing tape.

cut with packing tape

This was MUCH better. Now, I need to do this all over again to prove to me that the results can be repeated.

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