57 Gibson Futura build

[pshupe]

I just finished up a build for a friend that was based on the prototype of the Explorer, which along with the Flying V and the Moderne were introduced as new designs in 1958.  These modernistic guitars were a bit of a flop and never really took off.  They didn't even produce "for sale": Modernes and produced a limited number of Explorers and Flying Vs in 1958 - 1960.

Here are a couple of pics of the one I just finished - 

 

These actually used wood that I had made a test body and neck for a Futura I built a couple of years ago.  The person sent me some wood he had been saving and I didn't want to "mess up" his prized wood, so I made a body and neck to work out the kinks.  This was more of a kit build as I did not do any finish on the guitar but had everything else setup.

Here is how that build turned out - 

 

If there is interest I could post up a thread with pics throughout the build process.  I have documented both entire builds, pretty much.  I have posted them on other forums.

 

Cheers Peter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Andyjr1515]

6 hours ago, pshupe said:

If there is interest I could post up a thread with pics throughout the build process.  I have documented both entire builds, pretty much.  I have posted them on other forums

Yes please!  I'm particularly interested in those neck joints.  They look very neat

[pshupe]

13 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Yes please!  I'm particularly interested in those neck joints.  They look very neat

Thanks.  I'll start off from the beginning of the build.  The neck joint is very interesting and clearly something that was probably a little complicated for a quick production run.  Although I think the Explorers were very similar, meaning they didn't change that part much.

Here is the original patent drawing from 1957

 

The Futura was the prototype to the Explorer. After a little research here is what I found. It showed up at the NAMM show in 1957.

 

There is good story about one of the prototypes that surfaced in the mid '70s. Kurt Linhof was a guitar collector and seller of vintage guitars. He was driving to a guitar shop in Texas and drove by a house where there was a guitar on the front porch. The owner was a blues musician, Ponty "Guitar" Gonzales, who was using the guitar as art work and used to drive around with it in the window of his Cadillac. It turned out to be one of the 4 - 6 prototypes created. I believe it was the only one made with a korina body and mahogany neck. The others were all mahogany or all korina ( FYI - korina is also known as white limba).

Here is a picture of the guitar as found by Kurt and Ponty is holding it.

Here is the CAD file I created from this and a bunch of other sources to hopefully get close to the original design intent.

 

Cheers Peter

[pshupe]

The person I built the first Futura sent me the wood to make the guitar. He sent me a huge one piece blank of black limba for the body, a piece of honduran mahogany for a one piece neck, and a flat sawn piece of brazilian rosewood for the fret board.  Here is the body blank.

neck blank.  I forgot to take a picture of it before I rough cut the shape -

and the fret board blank  -

 

Cheers Peter.

[pshupe]

So I cut the head stock angle after rough cutting the neck with a jig on my table saw.

 

 

then the truss rod slot - I have a table saw blade with a 3/16" kerf -

 

I drilled for the anchor, and truss rod access, and rough shaped the neck.  He wanted vintage correct so I will use a one way truss rod.

 

I cut up some hard maple strips .

 

Cheers Peter.

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by pshupe

[Bizman62]

Using a table saw instead of a router, now that's something! That's the way to use the tools you have and not whine about not having this or that routing template to copy.

[mistermikev]

once again I'm out of likes... so I just wanted to say... I like this!  thanks for sharing.

[pshupe]

2 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Using a table saw instead of a router, now that's something! That's the way to use the tools you have and not whine about not having this or that routing template to copy.

It's also a lot quicker and not as finiky.  The 3/16" kerf blade ain't cheap but it sure is worth it when doing a bunch all at once. 

 

Cheers Peter.

 

[pshupe]

So I used a fret board template that I created to layout the board.  It's 1/8" stainless steel and has indexing pin holes in it so I can drill small dowels holes to locate the board on the neck, and in the CNC machine.

 

A friend of mine has a thickness planer with 12" radius knives in it but I was concerned about tear out with the crazy grain on this board.  Also since it was client supplied brazilian rosewood I didn't want to have to call him and say hey I just blew your board apart in my planer.  So I went hand tool route.

 

I have a jig I made up with an 18" aluminum sanding beam.  I also double face tape my walnut planer push stick to use as a handle.

 

 

I started with 60 grit, which makes short work of radiusing.  I marked with yellow pencil and when the marks are all gone I'm done and can move up grits.

 

A little bit later and -

 

Down through some finer grits and then checked radius - Looks good.

 

I put it in the CNC machine to cut the taper, cut the slots with a 0.023" diameter end mill and also marked the location of the dots.  I had to mark the holes with a yellow pencil because the bit was very tiny.  I'll use a brad point bit to drill for the dot inlays.

 

Cheers Peter.

Edited January 20, 2020 by pshupe

[pshupe]

Drilled for dots - had to put my reading glasses on to find those tiny marks.

got out a sheet of cellulose nitrate and punched out some dots and glued in -

 

sanded flush -

The board was a little thick so I flipped it over stick it to my radius beam and fed it through my thickness sander.  Took off about 1.2mm down to final vintage thickness.

 

Finish sanded to a fairly high grrit and a little acetone over the inlays to shine them up.  Nice fancy BRW fret board ready for frets -

Cheers Peter.

[Norris]

Lovely work. Thanks for sharing 

[pshupe]

Moving on to frets. My fret bender doesn't really work very well so I decided to print out a few radii on a piece of paper and see which one worked the best for a slightly over bent fret wire.  I printed out 11" 10" and 9".  Bent a few pieces and a little less than 10" radius seemed to be about the correct bend.

 

I use my drill press to press in the frets.

I wicked some CA glue under the fret tangs and clamped with my radius beam, which was probably unnecessary but the result was pretty nice. sanded the ends of the frets close to the board edge then filed flat with a bastard file.

 

Cheers Peter

[Andyjr1515]

Yes - really good thread.  Thanks!

[pshupe]

So the fret board is pretty much done.  I'll turn my attention back to the neck.  I saved some of the cut offs from the neck rough shaping and cut up some ears to try and match grain.

 

Found a nice set that matched and glued them on -

 

Took the clamps off and planed the ears to match the surface of the head stock.  The joints are tight and the grain matches quite well.

 

I thicknessed the head stock to close to final dimensions then used a plywood template to get the shape.  First I drilled some holes straight through so I could sit the head stock flat on my bandsaw table.

then put on the template and sand as close as I can to the edge on my oscillating sander.  I want to reduce the possibility of tear out with this procedure.

onto the router table with a template bit -

 

Cheers Peter.

[pshupe]

Drilled for tuners.  I bought a tuner hole drilling jig but frankly it's just as easy and possibly easier to just drill on my drill press.

 

Pretty straight forward.

 

So I will stay on the neck and look at cutting the tenon.  This is the most complicated part of this build.  I did some CAD drawings to figure out bridge height etc.  It's tricky because it has a tenon like an LP but a flat top like a JR.  So there either needs to be a ramp under the fret board or the body has to be sanded so that is where the ramp exists.  I figured I'd split the difference and go with a small ramp under the fret board and sand a bit of a ramp into the body.  I actually think this is what they did on the Futura and then moved the neck join location to minimize the thickness of the ramp for the Explorer.  Here are the cad files and then how I will cut the tenon and angle on my CNC machine.

 

So I constructed an angled ramp on my CNC machine and cut the tenon to the right depth.  This kept a bit of mahogony as a ramp joined to the tenon, which I decided not to use in the end but it looked pretty cool.

 

and test fit on my korina body.

 

then glued up the fret board.  I took the ramp of the sides first and will use a cut off to slide under the fret board when I glue the neck on.  Glued up with hot hide glue.  Gotta be vintage correct.

 

Cheers Peter.

[Crusader]

Very cool, thanks for posting!

I find it interesting how we all do things a little differently. We each have a different assortment of tools and come up with ways of overcoming obstacles as they come against us. I wish I had a good drill press!

[pshupe]

So I added some side dots and did a bit more rough sanding on the neck.

 

So onto the body now.  Back to the CAD machine and create the tool paths for the CNC.

 

Layout everything in AutoCAD first then into my CAM software.  I have switched over to Fusion 360 for most of my stuff but because this is pretty much all 2d routing stuff I use my old CAM software. Vcarve Pro -

Then onto the CNC and cut out the body - front -

and back -

 

That pretty much took care of the body.  I just hand drill the wiring channel through from the jack hole all the way to the neck PUP.  This is probably another detail that was changed because it's a tricky maneuver.

 

I laid out the drill path on some paper and got out my long drill bits and a spot facer for the jack hole.

 

Cheers Peter.

Edited January 22, 2020 by pshupe

[pshupe]

So back to the body.  I did the round over on the router table and stopped well short of the neck route.  I need to sand down quite a bit to match the angle of the neck for about half of the tenon.  I printed out a layout of the pots from the CAD drawing and cut it out to fit in the control cavity.  Then I drilled through with a small bit to locate and drill from the front.

 

 

I test fit the pots with knobs -

 

I will test fit the neck and fine tune the fit.  I used a test piece and planed and sanded the ramp into the body -

 

then fine tuned with the real neck.  I bought some thin strips of sand paper in a box from Lee Valley and this works great for fine tuning the 3 vertical faces of the neck joint -

Once the neck fit is good I can glue up.  I cut shims to go under the fret board and glued them in at the same time and clamped.  HHG again.  This is a PITA especially when working alone.  You have to work really quickly.

 

and a mock up with paper for the pickguard.  Just confirming that I want to go with the 4 ply vintage pickguard material with the white side up.

 

 

Cheers Peter.

[Andyjr1515]

Great stuff.  Looking good, too 

[pshupe]

Thanks Andy.  These were definitely fun builds.  Especially the more recent as I got to finish it as well.  The first one was shipped without finish and my buddy was going to finish it himself.  It never looks as good as when the finish and all the parts are on,

 

Cheers Peter.

 

[pshupe]

On to adding some parts.  I sourced some vintage long  bushings and tailpiece as well as drilled the ground wire into the control cavity.  I thought the bushings may be a bit tight but they pressed in nicely using my drill press with a drill bit in upside down.

 

Tilpiece slid on perfectly.  Sometimes I struggle with getting this perfect, although sometimes it's nice if it binds a bit so it doesn't pop off when you change strings.

 

On to plastics.  The pick guard on these things are a little crazy as one leg of the bridge sits on top of it.  I also want the switch to be centered in the cavity so I have to lay out fairly precisely.  Not to mention that I want the pickguard equal spaced along the edges and pup rings.

 

CAD Layout -

I ordered the pickguard material from Mojoaxe who supply awesome vintage stuff.  I'm trying to maximize the sheet, so I cut right to the edge.

 

I also made a little 1/4" MDF template to use a chamfer bit on my router table.

and a quick mock up again.

 

Now I just have to do a setup and get it all packed up and shipped out.

 

Cheers Peter.

[pshupe]

That is pretty much it for that build.  My buddy wanted a tortoise shell head stock veneer so I did that and then a setup.  Here is the final shots before I sent it off.

 

As I said this was an unfinished build so it doesn't look that great without finish but I am happy with the fit and finish and I had fun building it.

Regards Peter.

 

 

 

 

[ScottR]

You do very clean work and shared some great tips as well. Love the bushing press!

And I love the great slab of black limba. You don't get any credit for growing it, but mucho credit for finding it and making brilliant use of it.

SR

[pshupe]

4 hours ago, ScottR said:

You do very clean work and shared some great tips as well. Love the bushing press!

And I love the great slab of black limba. You don't get any credit for growing it, but mucho credit for finding it and making brilliant use of it.

SR

Thanks.  My buddy had been saving that chunk for a long time to do something special with it.  No pressure on me! LOL. I was more interested in the wild flat sawn chunk of brazilian rosewood he sent me in the mail.

 

Cheers Peter.

 

[ScottR]

4 minutes ago, pshupe said:

Thanks.  My buddy had been saving that chunk for a long time to do something special with it.  No pressure on me! LOL. I was more interested in the wild flat sawn chunk of brazilian rosewood he sent me in the mail.

 

Cheers Peter.

 

Well yeah. That is way harder to come by. I had forgotten that. There's got to be a good story behind that piece.

SR