Project: Aquilae 50 (Strandberg influence)

[JouniK]

Hi,

This is my first attempt/journey into guitar building.

Before starting the build it took about 3-4 months investigating what steps needed, where to purchase parts/woods, reading how-to articles online and most difficult thing was finding a facilitiy to do all the wood work and finishing. Plans have been changed quite a lot during the project when issues came up. Issues were facility/budget/time -related.

Name: Aquilae 50. Infuenced by the color scheme that I wanted the body to have.

Here is the specs for my build:

• Shape: Headless 6-string. Heavily influenced by ergonomic design by Ola Strandberg (Boden model)
• Body woods: Poplar Burl -top (15mm, bookmatched 2 piece) + European Alder (2 piece)
• Scale: 25,5inch, 22 frets
• Neck: Bolt-On Flaxwood Hybrid with jumbo nickel frets (pre-manufactured without filled fretboard dots) (Wood fiber composite -material)
• Fretboard dot inlay color: Black, Side dots: Orange (luminous)
• Hipshot 6 String Guitar Headless Fixed -bridge (tuning machines) + traditional headpiece
• Pickups: Fishman Fluence Tosin Abasi -set
• Pickup Selector: 5-way Schaller Megaswitch
• 1 volume -pot

Here is where it all began:

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[JouniK]

First time at the workshop that I found from the neighbouring town. Hourly charged workshop where I could find all the power and hand -tools for the project...or so I thought.

First off was planing the body blanks and joints. Then gluing the body pieces and blanks together.

Chopping off the head from the pre-manufactured neck and drilling side dots:

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[JouniK]

I did not have any model drawings or templates and I wanted to do a bit of my own design. First thing was that I wanted a light weight and ergonomic design to reduce stress to my shoulders when playing hours or sit the guitar tightly on my lap when trying to records something. I knew that Ola Strandberg design has all these features already figured out and it looked very pleasing comparing to other manufacture models out there.

So I searched online a picture from Strandberg Masvidalien Cosmo -Boden model and started sketching the full size body design to a piece of paper. Made several designs and tried to figure out how they would sit on my lap or standing up. What changes I wanted to make to look better. Is it just me or do you guys do this kind of thing or not? 

This is the design I came up with. Had to cut a piece to the bottom horn cause the blanks were a bit too small:

...and this is how it turned out when routed the pickup cavities and neck pocket. This was also a first time I used a router. Had to a few test runs with router to test the fit of the neck pocket. I routed out the neck pocket before I cutted the body shape. I figure that doing it in this order it would easier to have the template secured in-place.

Turned out that the neck pocket was spot on:

Next up cutting a recess behind the bridge/tuning machine. I originally designed that this recess could give protection to the bridge when positioning guitar in a "more" classical way. If that makes sense. But here is the first thing I messed things up. I did not make proper template for this and the thing that happened was that the template was not big enough for the router and the router flipped a bit. I should have made the recess before cutting the body shape. This led me removing the recess all together from my design.

The next thing about templates. I bought online a premade template for the pickups. Fitting pickups to these were ok and tight which led me believe that pickups would sit nicely in the cavities. No no no. A bit anxiously routed the pickup cavities only to find that the router bit was too large to route the corners correctly. I found out the workshop did not have small enough router bit with a bearing to route the corners of the cavity. So the instructor came up a plan to carve cavity corners with a chisel to fit the pickups. Nerves were blown when carving the corner bigger the chisel chipped a piece off from corner where I did not want.

I managed to correct by gluing the chipped piece back. This was the time I threw the chisels away and started routing again cavities again. Now slightly moving the template to the side. This helped but the chisel marks were still noticable. This time I also started looking the pickup mouting. It found out that the pickups had screw threads in them. So now I can make pickup rings of my own and hide the mistakes under them. Hurray! 

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[ScottR]

Good stuff so far. I'm interested in your feed back on that neck once you are able to play it.

Carry on.

SR

[JouniK]

24 minutes ago, ScottR said:

Good stuff so far. I'm interested in your feed back on that neck once you are able to play it.

Carry on.

SR

I have been anxious to play this thing from the start. I played one Flaxwood model at a trade fair and liked it. One speciality is that this material is not affected by moisture or temperature changes. Of course one thing was that the company sells these necks separately and already fretted.

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[Bizman62]

13 minutes ago, JouniK said:

this material is not affected by moisture or temperature changes

It's not affected by moisture but definitely by temperature. At least that's what the designer told, having heard it from a guy playing by a bonfire - or was it "only" halogen stage lighting, can't remember for sure. Anyhow, heat made the neck so flexible that the truss rod had no resistance other than what the strings caused.

[JouniK]

Routing control cavity and recess for plate.

Neck to body. Flaxwood neck already had fitted bolt threads in the neck but the "outer" ones were in the way because I wanted the access to upper frets to be different than in a normal strat. So I decided to fit my own. Which brings me to one thing that this material is difficult to work with. It sands like wood but drilling hole are more precise work than working with wood. The material cracks under pressure unlike wood when screw or in this case insert nut is screwed in. The hole needs to be big enough to fit the insert in but small enough it to cut into the material. I ended up drilling a hole big enough inserts to go in but not tightly enough it hold in place. Then filling the insert threads with 2-component metal glue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Routing mistakes continued. Trying to route a recess type of thing for the input jack I managed not to check the router bit bearing to get in contact with the template so I also routed the template. So again changes to plans and new plans how to fix this one. Decided to cut a cube with a input jack hole in it to fill the gap. Then did the control plate using the template I used to route the cavity.

Then some wiring holes

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[mistermikev]

some beauty wood there.  flaxwood... never heard of it.  certainly looks cool.

[JouniK]

21 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

It's not affected by moisture but definitely by temperature. At least that's what the designer told, having heard it from a guy playing by a bonfire - or was it "only" halogen stage lighting, can't remember for sure. Anyhow, heat made the neck so flexible that the truss rod had no resistance other than what the strings caused.

I think they at that time advertised that it would be "impervious to humidity and temperature variations". That does not sound very good. 

Edited December 18, 2019 by JouniK

[Bizman62]

Well,  maybe the player was too close to the heat source.

Also, as it's a wood composite it's basically plastic which gets plastic when heated. Most likely, unlike wood, it will return to the original shape when it cools down. At least it did in this case.

I know a couple of Flaxwood players and they've been reasonably happy. One fellow built two kits of them last winter.

Edited December 18, 2019 by Bizman62

[JayT]

Nice job so far. I don't have much to add as far as advice, but it is interesting to see another first-timer's progress. I can relate to every single one of your "learning moments' ... my dreams (fantasies) of crafting the perfect guitar on my first build went out the window on my first cut. 

Question, are the fret inlay dots not in yet? Or does it just look that way in the pictures since they're black? 

[JouniK]

Nice to hear.

Neck came without installed dot inlays because I ordered the neck without them since normally they would have installed white dots. I wanted just black neck/fretboard. As I understood their molding process the inlay holes are fixed in their mold casts.

At the current state of the build where I am now they are in place. but I have not yet posted the photos about those stages. I will in the following days.

[JouniK]

Shaping the body (arm/neck heel contour,bellycut) was at this point of the project the most rewarding time...atleast after the initial fear of ruining the whole thing with these files. Actually I was very pleased how it turned out. The belly cut in all the guitars I have played has always been very odd and felt that it is in the wrong place and too drastic. I moved the belly cut a bit to the right and made it wide and shallow.

These pics were in the middle of the work. This was rough filing and finished with course sand paper and random orbital sander.

Edited December 19, 2019 by JouniK

[JayT]

18 hours ago, JouniK said:

Nice to hear.

Neck came without installed dot inlays because I ordered the neck without them since normally they would have installed white dots. I wanted just black neck/fretboard. As I understood their molding process the inlay holes are fixed in their mold casts.

At the current state of the build where I am now they are in place. but I have not yet posted the photos about those stages. I will in the following days.

So how did you get them flush smooth without having to sand the whole fingerboard? Or at least not without scuffing it all up. Did you have to re-sand every fret that has an inlay?  Forgive my ignorance here, but I can't image how that is possible otherwise.

Your contouring is looking awesome, this thing is going to be pretty slick. 

[JouniK]

Filling the fretboard inlay and side dots with epoxy. Fretboard dots I filled with Z-Poxy Finishing resin mixed with black pigment powder. Side dots with the same epoxy but with orange luminous powder. I think these are mainly used by fishing lure builders.

I started with filling the side dots. First try was to use Z-Poxy 5min formula and the powder using the widest injection syringe I got from pharmacy. I found that this mixture was too thick to come out of the syringe so this attempt was a failure. Tried this a few times but no avail. I ended up filling the side dots with the powder and few dabs of CA glue on top.

Dots were filled with Finishing Resin mixed with black pigment powder. These were left to cure for a few day. Then scuffed with utility knife blade. I taped the blade to lift it a bit and to protect the fretboard.. Then sanded them flush individually with 400-600 grit sandpaper and water. I think it worked out pretty good.

I think I have to sand the fretboard a bit more and add some black stain. Also I need to work the frets with steel wool.

Edited December 20, 2019 by JouniK

[JouniK]

Spot burl void filling. I decided to fill the biggest voids with the same recipe than the fretboard dots using the the syringe.

Then off to sanding.

Edited December 20, 2019 by JouniK

[JouniK]

Started making my own pickup rings from my left over alder. Rough cut. These needs to be fine sanded and stained with black water based stain. Probably will cover these with finishing epoxy to make them more durable.

Found some magnets from a decoration shop. First I thought on simply use screws but these will be cool.  Those will keep control cavity plate in place.

First tests on the colour scheme. Used water based stains from Crimson Guitars. Some yellow, red and brown. Bought some black water based stain because the brown was not dark enough. This was also the first time I blended stains and never stained a burled wood. Did not have any experience how poplar burl would behave when stained or how to get the way I wanted.

[JouniK]

Glued some left over poplar burl to the head and filled the tuner holes with epoxy.

.

[JouniK]

Staining. This was very enjoyable moment.

Sanded down.

Version 1,

Version 2: Needed more darker hue. Finished staining. This will be finished with Crimson Penetrating Oil. I plan on mixing the Penetrating Oil with some natural resin strengthened linseed oil/tung oil mix to get more durable finish.

 

Edited December 23, 2019 by JouniK

[willliam_q]

Looks great.  How do you find the Crimson stains?  I’m thinking of getting their purple stain for my project.

i reckon, once stained, I’m just going to coat mine with danish oil.  Just because I happen to have some fro a previous project.

[JouniK]

9 hours ago, willliam_q said:

How do you find the Crimson stains?

They are ok. I got their already diluted water based stains....not the shots. These were very bright which was good. I have no experience with the mixed colors.

[JouniK]

9 hours ago, willliam_q said:

I’m just going to coat mine with danish oil

That was my first option but read that these smell for a quite some time so went and bought Crimson Penetrating oil. I read online and tested that the oil will soak in endlessly into poplar burl since it so porous wood. So I went and bought a little can of natural resin, linseed oil and tung oil -varnish. I will mix these 2 products together with some mineral spirits so it will be somewhat like danish oil.

Edited December 24, 2019 by JouniK

[JayT]

Looks fantastic! Is that “headstock” the finished shape?

[JouniK]

1 hour ago, JayT said:

Looks fantastic! Is that “headstock” the finished shape?

Thanks. Yeah, the shape is. It is still missing the string locking headpiece and some finishing touches.

[mistermikev]

looks great with that color on it.  Not being critical, and perhaps it's the pics.. but is that neck sitting reverse angled in the pocket?  I know sometimes perspective gets warbled looking at pics on here... but couldn't help but notice. 

edit- I think it's just the shadow at the bottom making it look like that to me.  ROCK ON.