ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 My next build has been cooking in my head for several months now. I knew it was going to be a double cut and I wanted to put a single F-hole in it like a tele thinline. Other than that I didn't know much about it. I knew I didn't want to make a replica of any existing commercial guitar. I mentally kicked around all kinds of designs, from radical to traditional and from offset to symmetrical. Turns out I like fairly traditional shapes. My plan was to make a quilted maple carved top.....I know, it's overdone, but everyone should have one and they look so cool. Red and black is to be the color scheme. I wanted an ebony fretboard and HS cap and I planned to use more of my granite crate jatoba for the neck. RAD is making me some humbuckers, PAFs with some blues engine characteristics. The hardware will be chrome and black. I found a nice billet of maple and set up my table saw to bookmatch it. Then I got my first little surprise. I had a set of perfectly bookmatched splits. I think the carve will get past them. In case it doesn't I took steps to turn them into a feature. I dyed the interior of each split black and filled them with thick CA. They should look like black flames in a top that is red with a black burst. If it ends up sucking, I will rip the maple top back off and go with plan B. I'd rather put this ziricote on a black limba body, but I'll use it here if I have to. I picked up a nice piece of Spanish Cedar for the body. Has anyone else used this wood? It apparently is traditionally used for necks for classical and Spanish guitars. It is neither cedar nor grows in Spain, but is in the mahogany family. It is a little plain and soft, but I got this piece because it was light and resonant. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 Very rough cut jatoba for the neck. It's free and very stiff and helps create some excellent midtones....extremely good conductor of sound. Squared up....at least everywhere it counts. It took a lot of passes on the jointer to get this cleaned up. Unassembled guitar. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Our Souls inc. Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 Bout time you whipped up another guitar. Far be it from me to give YOU design advice, but I think a more 'even' F hole shape would compliment the build better. Love the epoxy 'save' too . you may find more surprises when you carve, but you know that. Will be watchin this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 You could be right about the F-hole shape. I've got several rolling around in my head, this is just one I sketched out. I'll make a number of shapes out of black paper and try them out before I actually cut anything. It won't be traditional, but it may very well be reminiscent of traditional. Or not. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Our Souls inc. Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 I like the idea of doing your initials ,like you did on the back of #3. Then it would be an S hole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 I have quite a bit of Spanish Cedar stabilizing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauliemc Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 SR Looks playable already ! Cool to see another thread from the Scott man. As for spanish cedar, I love the stuff. Iv used it on a lot of les paul type things with beechwood tops. Im all out now & looking for some more, buts its a bit of a bitch to get here sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 It´s great to come back and see a new guitar from you, Scott. Spanish Cedar is grown here in Mexico, but I think it´s mostly for exporting. Last I remember researching on it, it´s a wood related to mahogany, not actually cedar. I´ve known woodworkers tell me it´s their favorite because of the smell when it´s being worked on. I hope the top you have works out, and the ziricote promises of another guitar, cool! Well hello Joe! I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to hear from you again. I had understood it had a cedar smell to it but can't say that I noticed it......until I sanded on it a bit. Then it smelled very nice, a mellow cedar mixed with cinnamon. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 I have quite a bit of Spanish Cedar stabilizing. Any plans for it cooking up in that fertile mind of yours? SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 (edited) Looks playable already ! Cool to see another thread from the Scott man. As for spanish cedar, I love the stuff. Iv used it on a lot of les paul type things with beechwood tops. Im all out now & looking for some more, buts its a bit of a bitch to get here sometimes. Well, it still needs a set-up and maybe a new set of strings. The Spanish cedar I have has a nice mellow warm ring to it when tapped. That's what I expect it to add to the tonal flavor when strung up. SR Edited February 20, 2012 by ScottR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 It´s great to come back and see a new guitar from you, Scott. Spanish Cedar is grown here in Mexico, but I think it´s mostly for exporting. Last I remember researching on it, it´s a wood related to mahogany, not actually cedar. I´ve known woodworkers tell me it´s their favorite because of the smell when it´s being worked on. I hope the top you have works out, and the ziricote promises of another guitar, cool! Well hello Joe! I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to hear from you again. I had understood it had a cedar smell to it but can't say that I noticed it......until I sanded on it a bit. Then it smelled very nice, a mellow cedar mixed with cinnamon. SR I used some last year and I'll never use it again. It worked wonderfully, but the smell was absolutely unbearable to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 It's funny how differently smells affect people. I found it very pleasant. My absolute favorite so far is bocote. Dill pickles! It seems so out of place coming from sanded wood; it's a surprise even when you know it's coming. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted February 20, 2012 Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 Any plans for it cooking up in that fertile mind of yours? By "fertile" you mean full of manure? I usually try to let the wood tell me what it wants...some pieces were best cut into strips and laminated with some other woods into neck blanks,but I have quite a bit that doesn't want to speak to me yet.It will get comfy and open up sooner or later,but right now I am thinking of "back" wood for super thin guitars with tops of other stuff.It really has the proper grain for thin LP studios Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2012 (edited) Wood does speak doesn't it. I usually hear more from my carving stock--that pecan log was growling long before it became ol' bear. By "fertile" you mean full of manure? Well, I'm often amazed by what grows in there.....but if that is what it is growing in, who am I to argue? Actually, I was just about to push the button, and noticed it was misspelled. I had left the "t" out. That probably wouldn't have been too far off the mark either. SR Edited February 20, 2012 by ScottR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted February 21, 2012 Report Share Posted February 21, 2012 I am not sure that "grows" is the proper term..."Ferments" seems more appropriate... I only recently(last summer) got the cedar,but years ago I picked up a buttload of White Limba that I still have not completed anything out of,and I see a white Explorer/V pair coming soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted February 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted February 27, 2012 I was sooooooo loking forward to getting back to woodworking this weekend, and I did. Only it was a beautiful and dry weekend...and chores were calling. so for the bulk of the time this was the wood I worked. And did I work....I 'm sore in places I didn't know I had places. I did get some work done on this build finally. I got my fret board planed and then rough surfaced in prep for glue up. Here's the handle I made for safe planing on the jointer. It's sitting on a sheet of half in white acrylic that was left over from a job at work. I'm thinking of using this and the other sheets I got for making templates. It's not clear, but then neither is MDF. I sliced off a couple of thin pieces of the ebony drop from the fretboard and glued them up for a headstock cap. I need my trussrod before I can do too much more on the neck. I got my parts from StewMac in 3 days and my order from LMII two days later, but my trussrods from Allied aren't due to arrive till the middle of next week. So I cut the body out and am cleaning up the edges. This Spanish Cedar does work easily, but I can tell I'm going to have to be careful with it. It dents easily. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 My trussrods from Allied came in so I measured out and cut my trussrod channel. I fought ebony all weekend. The headstock cap glue up cupped badly. You kind of expect that or something similar so I glued up pieces that were about 3/16" thick. That left me room to flatten it out after taking it out of the clamps. The cupping was so bad that the glue joint failed under the pressure of sanding. I glued it up again with medium CA and continued leveling the piece. I set up a piece of half inch acrylic on top of my iron table and glue sand paper to it to use for my surfacing agent....a poor man's thickness sander as it were. The stupid thing broke one more time but I finally got it where it wanted it. BTW a plane make a great sanding block for truing up surfaces for clean joints. I drilled some hole in the waste area to hold the plate in place during glue up. I decided to use toothpicks for guides so they wouldn't interfere with the cauls. Silly me. They sheared right off from the clamp pressure and angles. One of the great things about T-88 epoxy is its long open time. I was able to drill out the toothpicks and replace them with brads and clip the ends to the proper length, and a little more glue and reclamp. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 I used the off-cut from the headstock angle for a caul. Part of the reason the original glue up slipped is I checked and found that I did not cut as much angle as I thought. I thought I had 15 degrees and it was about 11. So I re-cut the angle and trued it up but that left the off-cut at a slightly different angle which made the whole thing want to slide....and shear the toothpicks. the brads fixed that. Edit: I have since learned that using the offcut on the bottom will give parallel faces for the clamps to push against, which is a much better method of clamping.-SR I picked up some clamps with a Y-foot which I think I like. I moved on to slot my fretboard while the HS cap glue up was curing. I glued it up at noon and was hoping I could take it out of the clamps and glue up the fretboard tonight. Two things worked against that. By 6:00 the T-88 was stiff but still a little tacky to the touch. It may have been fine to unclamp, but during the slotting of the fretboard, the ebony cupped too, just the like the HS cap did. I could go back to the sanding surface and re-flatten it....and may still, but first I'm having a go at un-cupping it. I soaked it in hot water and then clamped it between two 1" thick pieces of acrylic. You can see the curve here before adding pressure. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 A very interesting by-product of clamping a wet fretboard between 1" thick pieces of clear acrylic is you can see what the clamp location does in terms of uniform or not uniform pressure. Those clamps were cranked as high as I wanted to get them. I had a little daylight left....and I was not going to be gluing up my fretboard after all.....so I surfaced the top a little-to 120 grit and rubbed in some mineral spirits to see what I might expect out of the quilt. I still am pretty sure the carve will get below these splits, which means the quilt will change too. Not bad....there may be a little seafloor in it, but we'll see....later. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avengers63 Posted March 5, 2012 Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 That ebony is just possessed. Welcome to the club! RAD had the Hand Of Doom and I have the Deco LP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 That ebony is just possessed. Welcome to the club! RAD had the Hand Of Doom and I have the Deco LP. That's exactly what I thought! I took both of those guitars name's in vain......uh, quite a few times today. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muzz Posted March 5, 2012 Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 Gorgeous colour in the body and neck timber too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pauliemc Posted March 5, 2012 Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 Cool Y clamps. I made myself up some with a T shaped foot years ago. Loaned them to a friend & never saw them again Where dod you find those funky lookin things ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScottR Posted March 5, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 Cool Y clamps. I made myself up some with a T shaped foot years ago. Loaned them to a friend & never saw them again Where dod you find those funky lookin things ? Yours were apparently good enough to keep. I got mine at Lowes. SR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted March 5, 2012 Report Share Posted March 5, 2012 That ebony is just possessed. Welcome to the club! RAD had the Hand Of Doom and I have the Deco LP. That's exactly what I thought! I took both of those guitars name's in vain......uh, quite a few times today. SR Now that is funny.... not funny ha ha but funny. I am assuming that the ebony was not dry enough. Which reminds me I need to get a moisture meter.... Good luck with cursed wood you are going to need it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.