Newbie To Forum And Fist Guitar Build.

[sdshirtman]

Hello.This is my first post and I'd like to introduce my self here.

I've been thinking of building a guitar for years and finally told myself that I've done enough research and now is the time. I'm not getting any younger.

I have high hopes for the first build but I'm sure I'll screw it up somehow before I'm done. I have some plans I've drawn up in Illustrator and I've gotten as far as glueing up the neck. Its a maple-Walnut stripe-maple-walnut-maple. Its going to be a bolt on since I think that would be best for my first.

I'm on the fence on what I should do for the body. I want to do a double cut in the PRS shape but I'm debating on whether or not to do an arch top or not. Again I'm thinking that a flat top would be best for my first. I'm also debating my choice of body woods. I would like to do a mahogany /maple cap but dont want to spend a bunch of money on a figured cap just to screw it up. So I'd like to ask what you guys think about just using some standard maple for the top. It wouldnt look as nice but would be much more economical. The other option would just be to do a solid mahogany body with maybe some maple or binding.

I have tons of questions but I'll leave this first post simple. If anyone can offer any basic advice to a complete green horn I would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Edited June 23, 2010 by sdshirtman

[Untitled_Project]

Hey, I'm no expert or anything, I just like everything about building guitars! I completed on guitar and finished half of another guitar(it got lost in a move though), and I'm starting a new one very soon.

The one I lost was mah with a figured maple cap. the cap was about .30 inches thick, which is pretty thin. My plan with it was to use it as a cap and simply bevel the edges slightly then add large contouring bevels in certain areas. doing this would have created a large loss of maple, resulting in showing the mahogany underneath. Some people like this but usually its done to a thicker cap....so I was going to add a solid burst to hide the mahogany.

My first guitar has a maple top as well....no figure. I put it on there for the tone. The cap was nothing special so I chose to do a two tone burst. It turned out very nicely.

A good place to get some nicely figured maple is this ebay store, although there are probably a lot better places than this!

http://shop.ebay.ca/fine_woods/m.html?_nkw...om=&_ipg=25

[Tim37]

The bolt on neck is a good idea imho, if ya screw up donw the road on the body the neck is safe. i would stick with a flat top thats one less thing to go wrong also the, There is nothing wrong with a tom but remember you have to do one of two things angle the neck or recess it into the body. i think a recess is fine on a flat top but i dont like them on a carved top (but thats me and my opinion agian) and as far as a cap unless your fairly experenced in wood working i would say wait on that agian there agian is one more thing to screw you up. my best advise keep the first one as simple as possible and focus on makeing a playalble guitar then work your way twards the pretty stuff. if ya look through the in progress section you will find a ton of threads with unfinished guitars where the builder got in over there head and a simple mistake killed the project and then you never hear from them agian because they ended up with a piece of fire wood and gave up on building.

[sdshirtman]

The bolt on neck is a good idea imho, if ya screw up donw the road on the body the neck is safe. i would stick with a flat top thats one less thing to go wrong also the, There is nothing wrong with a tom but remember you have to do one of two things angle the neck or recess it into the body. i think a recess is fine on a flat top but i dont like them on a carved top (but thats me and my opinion agian) and as far as a cap unless your fairly experenced in wood working i would say wait on that agian there agian is one more thing to screw you up. my best advise keep the first one as simple as possible and focus on makeing a playalble guitar then work your way twards the pretty stuff. if ya look through the in progress section you will find a ton of threads with unfinished guitars where the builder got in over there head and a simple mistake killed the project and then you never hear from them agian because they ended up with a piece of fire wood and gave up on building.

Thats kind of what I was thinking. Keep it simple for the fist one. I can already see some mistakes I've made on my neck that will end up costing me time and effort. The problem being that when I made my neck I did a tilt back headstock out of the same piece. Its pretty thick and will have to be taken down quite a bit.

I'll go with your advice and go with a solid mahogany body flat top. I'm thinking it would look nice with the maple binding and finish the thing naturally.

I'll try to get some progress pictures up soon.

Edited June 16, 2010 by sdshirtman

[sdshirtman]

I'm off to a slow start . I've been spending tons of time browsing through this site picking up ideas and techniques. I've also been revising and thinking about my design. I decided to purchase Melvyn Hiscock's book on guitar making to help educate myself. I still think I'm going to keep it simple for the fist project. I purchases some mahogany for the body and also some more maple for the neck.

I've been looking at used tools on craigslist and found some bargains. I found a craftsman table saw for $20 that works good. It needed a new blade but that was cheap enough and now its running great. I also snagged a almost new spindle sander for $30 and a 12" grizzly planer for $75 last week. The installed blades on the planer were dull and had some minor nicks but it also came with a set of just slightly used spares. I found a tutorial on how to make a jig to hold the blades for honing and spent several hours sharpening both sets. I couldnt salvage the installed ones but I got the spare set razor sharp. I spent some time setting up the machine and now its working great.

Here is the planer. Sorry for the terrible iphone pictures.

Here is the jig I made to hone the blades.

I also picked up a 1 3/4 hp router with 1/2 and 1/4 bit capabilities along with a routing table.

Now the bad part is I think I screwed myself on my neck already. Not completely but I created a lot more work for myself. I made a template for the neck and headstock the other day. They came out nicely. I was doing some fiddling around Saturday and traced out the template onto my neck. I made a large sanding block out of a 2x4 that I ran through the planer to flatten out the top of the neck as i'm not doing a scarf joint. I used some 60 grit to start with and got the top of the neck looking nice. Half way through this I started thinking that less wood on the sides would be more conducive to removing material faster so I roughly cut out the neck pattern leaving about 1/8th to 1/2" around the sides. Later on as I was sanding the top of the neck flat it dawned on the that I screwed myself on routing my truss rod channel. I think it can still be done but I'm going to have to make some sort of jig to do it. I'm wondering if I should just stop there and start from scratch after I receive my book and read through it.

I'm thinking more education and planning are in order.

Here is a picture of what I have so far. If anyone has any advice on how to route this neck accurately with out building a complicated jig let me know.

[alteredtunings]

It looks like you are off to a good start. I remember the first electric guitar that I built. It was a tele replica. Then I moved on to PRS styled bodies and semi-hollow carved tops. I think it is a good idea to go with a flat top at first. This will get you used to all the construction and different tools. Here are a few tips on your last post

Truss rod channel:

Don't worry about the channel. It will be easy enough to route in at this point. You will just want to clamp your neck down and put fences down both sides of the neck, so your bit can't stray off course. Then set your bit partially down and make a pass with the router. Then set the bit to the full depth of the channel and make another pass. Nothing to it.

Shaping the Neck:

Personally, I don't like to use a router or anything when I make my necks. I like to do everything by hand. It is really easy to shape a neck by hand and it's a ton of fun. After you have the truss rod glued in place and you have the fretboard glued in place, simply use a course rasp and rough out the shape that you want and bring the sides of the neck in close to the sides of the fretboard. When you use the rasp, run the length of the neck and vary your start and stop points. You don't want to file in one spot too long and create a dip. Then you can take a course file and smooth out the rasp marks and fine tune your shape. Then take a fine file and do the same thing. Then take some fine sand paper, 320 and 600, and "shoe polish" it. Now you have a sweet neck profile.

[sdshirtman]

This build is being continued Here

[FireFly]

Be careful with those "fist" builds. They can be a doozie!