Valkyrie

[Akula]

Ok, ok, here's a story of recklessness and restlessness. A few weeks before I started my last big run of work, I was looking at the pile of offcuts I had accrued underneath my staircase, and thinking about how I should really reduce my level of clutter in the household. That was really it, y'know, the whole thing is just a big clean-up mission, and definitely not because I wanted to build another guitar...

First up, I had to figure out whether my offcuts were of the correct dimensions to start a guitar build. I had nothing wide enough, but several thinner pieces, so a 7-piece laminate neck it shall be. I've got Maple, Walnut, Oak, and Queensland Maple in there, and the whole sandwich should be long enough to do a neck-through.

 

Got those bits all planed, trued, glued and clamped, and then sat down to draw up the plans.

Now, I've never even owned a Flying V styled guitar at all, so we can mostly put this one down to curiosity. On the few occasions I've tried one out, however, I've always been seriously pissed about the inability to play sitting down. Not everything's a gig, man, and I practice seated! So I needed to shape the lower run of the guitar to accommodate for balance. The weird little arse-end was in part inspired by the LTD Arrow, but equally it just came about from the lines of the insides of the "V" coming together. If I'd just met them in the middle, it would've looked strange. The carves are penciled in at this point. 

I'm going for a single pickup, most likely an EMG 81 until somebody can convince me otherwise, and a single volume control. Wings are Queensland maple, fretboard will be Tassie Oak stained black, reverse headstock, and a 27" scale length for all that baritone badassery. 

 

Scarf jointing, by hand, with a tenon saw. With all the power tools and jigs available to me nowadays, I still feel most confident doing it slow and steady. Marking out all four sides and checking regularly is the way to go.

 

Hate clamping up scarf joints though! I tried the salt trick, which helped a bit.

 

And at this point, I'd like the drop the bombshell on thickness. Not body thickness, not neck thickness, but neck-through thickness.... 

[Akula]

Glued up some wings from Queensland Maple. I got a huge slab of the stuff for my Infinity bass build, before deciding to go with Walnut for it's body wings, so after taking a slice for the neck lamination I had almost the entire board left over. I had to router-thickness it to 34mm to fit my design, then plane all the ugly router marks away, and do a bit of creative board-planning before the glue and clamps. 

 

Before I go too far forward, it's important to address the fact that my neck-through is far thinner than my wings - the core is barely 23mm thick, while the wings are 34mm. Purely born out of the stock I had available, this is now a major focus point for the guitar, and I'm going to build a super-thin instrument that doesn't "feel" super-thin.

 

And, a box-cove bit makes the transition much cooler. Gull wings.

 

Ran out of acrylic, so I went with 6mm ply for the templates, with the edges splashed with CA for a touch of extra hardness against the bearing. The tips were dauntingly fragile, so I went for a lot of passes, and somehow still managed to end up with a fair amount of burning.

 

After worrying about the fragile horns on the body, I somehow managed to tear-out the headstock nub. Damn! As seen by the pencil marks, I decided to go for a re-shape anyways - sometimes, and especially when a plan comes together so quickly, it really does take disaster for you to sit back and rethink your paper plans.

 

 

[ScottR]

I'm enjoying this one. Love the creativity and resourcefulness.

SR

[JAK]

Incidentally I was thinking a few days ago about how to make a V shape that worked while sitting down, and was envisioning something similar (but not quite as subtle) on the lower edge. In the drawing it just looks flat then curves out towards the butt end. In the photo where it's rough cut out looks like it has a bit of a curve back outwards near the forward point (where the lower horn would be) so it will help sit on the leg better; is this the case?  (Does what I'm describing make sense?) Also thought that maybe the longer-scale neck might help balance the large back end for the same sitting ergonomics.

Can't wait to see how this one will turn out; looks pretty cool already.

Also that Queensland Maple looks so dark and red next to the other maple it seems more like a mahogany/sapele, even with the grain. (And then a quick Google tells me it's technically not a "maple", also called "red beech", and has been used as a mahogany substitute, so I guess that makes sense.)

[Muzz]

This guitar has a great metal shape, nice.

[Akula]

7 hours ago, JAK said:

Incidentally I was thinking a few days ago about how to make a V shape that worked while sitting down, and was envisioning something similar (but not quite as subtle) on the lower edge. In the drawing it just looks flat then curves out towards the butt end. In the photo where it's rough cut out looks like it has a bit of a curve back outwards near the forward point (where the lower horn would be) so it will help sit on the leg better; is this the case?  (Does what I'm describing make sense?) Also thought that maybe the longer-scale neck might help balance the large back end for the same sitting ergonomics.

Can't wait to see how this one will turn out; looks pretty cool already.

Also that Queensland Maple looks so dark and red next to the other maple it seems more like a mahogany/sapele, even with the grain. (And then a quick Google tells me it's technically not a "maple", also called "red beech", and has been used as a mahogany substitute, so I guess that makes sense.)

The lower edge, or "horn", kinda hits the "cutaway" at a little under 90 degrees. So it kinda does curve out, but only by a little. The paper design for this came out in 45 minutes and two beers, so the next day when I made the template out of plywood I left enough material to make a few edits if needed; I can't remember if I changed the design of the lower cutaway part, but if I did it would've been subtle. After I'd cut the template, I had something I could actually hold in my hands and lap, and figure out whether it'd be comfortable or ergonomic - I figured it would, so I started building the thing! And as it's turned out, it's balanced pretty well on the leg, and it goes okay propped up on the finger:

Queensland Maple is definitely not a true maple - I find it looks and to some extent sounds much more like a mahogany. But much cheaper, in this part of the world!

 

Did the truss rod slot with the router in the jig.

 

Marked out all the carves on the body. Going off what I mentioned earlier, I did the paper plans with reckless abandon, so on the timber I decided to take my time and really visualize what would look and feel decent.

 

Had at it with an angle grinder wielding a 60-grit flap disk, for the concave parts such as the lower edge leading into the cutaway.

 

The top edge was entirely rasp and file work. I couldn't get the plane in there, for the risk of creating a "hump" where the shoe hits the neck, and I wanted a flat but shallow bevel, so I just went steady by hand. And the back end of the guitar was also slightly concave, so grinder and flap disk made an appearance again,

 

Really starting to look more like an aircraft than a guitar, which is about the time I started calling it the "Valkyrie". 

[JAK]

2 hours ago, Akula said:

After I'd cut the template, I had something I could actually hold in my hands and lap, and figure out whether it'd be comfortable or ergonomic - I figured it would, so I started building the thing! And as it's turned out, it's balanced pretty well on the leg, and it goes okay propped up on the finger

That’s awesome! Very nice balance.

[Akula]

Marked up the fretboard with my steel rule, calipers, square, and a sharp knife. I'm using Tasmanian Oak for this one. Couldn't find much in the way of resources about how this wood would fare as a fretboard, so I'm really taking a punt here. The hardness seems to be in the ballpark, although not as resilient as other species, and it handled the fret slotting saw with no splintering.

 

With such a violently-shaped instrument, I couldn't do a normal round-over on the end of the fretboard. It's gotta look violent! 

 

Glued up, then I radiused it, and stained it jet black.

 

Frets installed.

 

And then I carved the neck, with my usual method of rasps and files, then scraper and sandpaper, plus a touch of angle grinding in just the right places. This shot also shows the whole gull-wing thing - don't quite know how I'm gonna fit pickups into this thing!

[JAK]

Might need to look for shallow pickups - almost surface mount? Lace Sensor Dually are apparently only 12.7mm deep compared to the 22.8mm of the EMG 81.

[Akula]

On 8/5/2021 at 2:39 PM, JAK said:

Might need to look for shallow pickups - almost surface mount? Lace Sensor Dually are apparently only 12.7mm deep compared to the 22.8mm of the EMG 81.

I did actually consider the Lace Sensor pickups. The lower profile would've made it a lot easier to route and place them, but I also wanted to keep the option open for other full-sized pickups later down the line. That, and I managed to find a set of EMG 81/60 pickups for $150 used, which was too good a deal for me to pass up.

So, I made up a template out of 18mm MDF for some standard EMG-sized pickups. Also note how there's two of them - my whole one-pickup design got thrown out the window when I found that EMG set for so cheap. Guess I'm doing two now.

 

The other interesting thing about adding a new pickup was that I simply didn't have that much space - this is a small guitar! So, the bridge pickup sits around 25mm forward of the bridge, and there's about 35mm between the two pickups.

I routed down to 18mm, which leaves barely 6mm of timber underneath the pickups, and should stand the pickups 5mm proud of the guitar body, and about 2mm lower than the strings. It's gonna be tight! If I do need to drop the pickups any lower, I can always drill only the leg areas down by another few mil, and failing that I'm prepared to do some EMG-butchery and transform the bent legs into flat legs.

 

I also decided a belly-carve would be prudent. There's no use in making a super-thin ergonomically-minded guitar which still feels "boxy" to play.

 

Next up, I'll be looking at electronics - and the biggest question of the whole build: will it fit?

[Gogzs]

At this thickness you might encounter problems fitting the pickup selector switch if you go for a blade type switch, toggle should fit (Göldo has some blade switches that could fit as well, they are really shallow). Push/pull pots should fit. As for the other stuff, you might wanna use threaded inserts if you'll want to mount the pickups into the wood to gain some maneuvering space, otherwise, pickup rings will do it. Awesome build by the way!

[Akula]

On 8/6/2021 at 10:06 PM, Gogzs said:

At this thickness you might encounter problems fitting the pickup selector switch if you go for a blade type switch, toggle should fit (Göldo has some blade switches that could fit as well, they are really shallow). Push/pull pots should fit. As for the other stuff, you might wanna use threaded inserts if you'll want to mount the pickups into the wood to gain some maneuvering space, otherwise, pickup rings will do it. Awesome build by the way!

Toggle switch fits, just by a bee's! I've decided that pickup rings are out of the question aesthetically, but I've got a crazy idea for mounting them with an actual way of changing the height - only by, like, the two mil of wiggle room they've got between the strings and bottoming out.

 

Bridge arrived. I threw about thirty bucks at something on eBay, and was pleasantly surprised for once - it's quite solid and heavy, decently finished with no sharp edges, and quite a looker to my eyes. 

The pickups are an eyesore. The previous owner pulled them out of a Jaguar that he'd returned to stock, and the owner before that had deemed it important to spray-paint a set of EMG's white. The price was right, so I went for it, and my penance was to sit there for twenty minutes of my life and chip it all off with an old credit card. 

 

.....Ok, it was way more like an hour. And it wasn't just a credit card, there was a rag soaked in metho, and safety goggles - because those paint chips went everywhere!

 

The electronics cavity had to be done to precise measurements - that battery has to just fit, along with two pots and a switch. I drew up the plan on the wood, laboriously checked every component had adequate breathing space, and bear in mind that those components also had to line up perfectly with the contour on the top of the guitar, and then traced it through onto acrylic.

 

Cut the inside shape, using some shiny new blades which seem to actually cut and not melt the acrylic. I hate this material with a passion, but its optically-transparent qualities are really useful sometimes. 

 

Spent a hot moment with files and sandpaper to get the edges real smooth, then routed the cavity. Stuffed all the electronics in there - it fits!

 

Then I cut the second shape out of the acrylic, and routed the "shelf" at about 1.5mm. The cavity cover is going to be steel held down by neo magnets. I have a fair amount of 0.6mm galvanized steel sheet, and I was kind of thinking about laminating two layers of steel together with epoxy for added stiffness. 

 

 

[Bizman62]

12 minutes ago, Akula said:

kind of thinking about laminating two layers of steel together with epoxy for added stiffness. 

Not steel and wood, though?

Back in the day I tried to sell laptop stands made out of a polypropylene sheet laminated between two aluminium sheets. An interesting product but it didn't sell. The material was actually more interesting...

[Akula]

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

Not steel and wood, though?

Back in the day I tried to sell laptop stands made out of a polypropylene sheet laminated between two aluminium sheets. An interesting product but it didn't sell. The material was actually more interesting...

I was really thinking along the same lines of steel/timber! But alas, I don't have an offcut of Qld Maple large enough to make the part. This did irk me for some time, because I'm a sucker for those awesome same-timber cavity covers... Then I realised, this guitar looks to me more like a dangerous aircraft than it does an instrument, and I should be going for a more industrial look. A cavity cover made of steel? Nah, let's just call it a bomb-bay door, or a hatch. 

 

I cut one layer out of the galvanized steel today, and ran it thorough with some 240-grit along an axis, and sprayed it with a good coat of black. That's the photo I've got, but after it'd dried I ran it again with some 320, and found a pretty cool brushed aluminium style burned black kind of finish. 

 

I'll keep working on the finish - I've got a whole sheet of this material. 

 

 

Also, quite often in the world of TV and bull, we use ACM boards to clad set pieces - I believe it's aluminium and polyethylene? Is that similar to the material you made laptop stands from? 

[Bizman62]

33 minutes ago, Akula said:

we use ACM boards to clad set pieces - I believe it's aluminium and polyethylene? Is that similar to the material you made laptop stands from? 

I had to google for ACM boards... The sandwiched idea is similar but the polypropylene version used a much thinner sheet of polypropylene in the middle. It actually looked like 3 ply aircraft plywood, the total thickness being about 1.5 mm or 1/16".

The laptop stands were imported, not my invention. By searching I think I found the very product on Ebay, the name Hylite for the material rings a bell and is similar. It was almost twenty years ago...

[Akula]

Had a few days of pottering around doing odd jobs in the shed, and after a little persuasion, the house as well. Got a couple of things done on this guitar, and then last night and today I really cracked on with the finish. 

 

Did some final neck shaping with the rusty (trusty) plane and scraper. These are tools I've been meaning to upgrade for a long time - boy, it'd just be great to have a plane stay sharp for more than five hits. I know that a full set of scrapers would benefit me in ways I feel dirty talking about, because they'd feel so good, but without any work I feel apprehensive letting go of too much of my savings; says the one building guitars by the minute, I may add!

 

This was followed by an eternity of sanding. And I don't mean that in a negative way - I turn up the stereo, crack a can of beer and place it on the top shelf away from the dust, and to know myself a little better.

 

I got up to 400 grit before I realised I'd lost myself and this guitar to the world for hours.

 

Poured a good slug of ebony stain onto a rag and had at it. The idea for this finish is to be satin, black, metal, evil, and somewhat transparent - I don't want to cover up the fact I've laminated seven pieces of offcut into a neck-through, yet I don't want a brown V either.

 

Back of the neck was originally going to be straight-up oil, but the stark contrast between evil and blonde didn't match up in reality. So I stained it too.

 

After leaving it to dry for a full 36hrs, I got the Danish oil out and started my routine of soak it up, wait half an hour, and rub it in.

All went well, until that last part.

 

Unholy god of hell.

What do I do now?

Of course, now I realise, the Danish oil has a certain constituent of turpentine, which is lifting the oil-based stain. Or at least, that's what I think is happening. 

I stared the guitar down with unfathomable eyes for an eternity, then decided to mix up a half-oil, half-stain concoction, and rub that in real good.

 

And, like, I'm happy with that! There's enough oil to form a good sunk-in barrier, I can always do a poly coat over the top. But, I'm not happy with the blotches - spot the light area!

 

I'm about ready to hoof this thing into the harbour. Any tips, mates?

[Bizman62]

Ouch! There's only one cure I know of and that's to reduce the overall volume by sanding a mil off... Unless, and this is not guaranteed to work, you can wash the surface with turpentine, hoping to make the colour more even? Caution! This is just a wild idea, never tested, based on someone telling how they wash a figured stained surface with alcohol or other solvent instead of sanding.

[ScottR]

6 hours ago, Akula said:

This was followed by an eternity of sanding. And I don't mean that in a negative way - I turn up the stereo, crack a can of beer and place it on the top shelf away from the dust, and to know myself a little better.

That's my philosophy exactly!

6 hours ago, Akula said:

 

I got up to 400 grit before I realised I'd lost myself and this guitar to the world for hours.

Exactly.

6 hours ago, Akula said:

I'm about ready to hoof this thing into the harbour. Any tips, mates?

Were it me, after a few minutes of trying out new and inventive phrases of colorful language, I'd crack the beer, turn up the stereo, and get lost again.

SR

[Akula]

15 hours ago, ScottR said:

Were it me, after a few minutes of trying out new and inventive phrases of colorful language, I'd crack the beer, turn up the stereo, and get lost again.

There was some very colourful language, even for a stagehand. I have this idea, and please nobody ruin the illusion for me, that everybody must go through at least one finishing fark-up before they can call themselves a luthier. 

 

19 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

Unless, and this is not guaranteed to work, you can wash the surface with turpentine, hoping to make the colour more even?

I gave this a red-hot go. Soaked up a cloth with turps and went nuts, I even poured a good glug onto the guitar and rubbed it all in, but to no avail. I guess the poly part of th Danish oil is stopping the solvent reaching the oil underneath, but only in patches. Thanks for the idea, though, I hadn't thought of that one!

 

Well, if you can't get lighter, just get darker.

I went for a different approach with the stain, and rubbed in another coat with some 600 grit sandpaper, exactly the same as the oil slurry method. I left the stain on the wood for quite a long time, perhaps twenty minutes, before wiping off the excess with a soft rag. This gave me the benefit of the stain being almost dry in places yet wet in others, and I found that pattern corresponded to how heavily I'd laid the stain on, which was consciously where I wanted darker/lighter coverage.

 

Now I've got a layer cake stacked up somewhat like this: wood, blotchy stain, oil, solid stain.

The guitar looks great now. All I've gotta do is figure out how to get one final protective layer of oil down without lifting the stain again. I'm hoping the sandpaper technique will help, and also I'm letting the stain dry for a full week instead of two days this time. 

 

Back in a week!

[ScottR]

34 minutes ago, Akula said:

I have this idea, and please nobody ruin the illusion for me, that everybody must go through at least one finishing fark-up before they can call themselves a luthier. 

if it only happens once, you're not trying hard enough. Practicing overcoming all those little surprises that you never see till the next day is essential to building character and skill in a luthier.

SR

[Armaan]

22 hours ago, Akula said:

I have this idea, and please nobody ruin the illusion for me, that everybody must go through at least one finishing fark-up before they can call themselves a luthier. 

Not sure if this makes me a luthier , but I recently goofed up the finish in my first build.

I applied about 6 coats of danish, 5-6 coats of poly and then polishing it with wax. The wax filled pores in the walnut, which were not visible before applying the wax, and there were really ugly looking white spots on the guitar. Whatever I did, it wouldn't come off. So I sanded it down and refinished it. 

Cool design btw ...

[Akula]

On 8/13/2021 at 11:58 PM, ScottR said:

if it only happens once, you're not trying hard enough

Sometimes you take a piece of advice that just gives you faith. Thanks mate. Next time I fark up a finish, I'll remind myself that others, strangers and greats have done it before. And that anything can be fixed.

 

3 hours ago, Armaan said:

The wax filled pores in the walnut, which were not visible before applying the wax, and there were really ugly looking white spots on the guitar. Whatever I did, it wouldn't come off. So I sanded it down and refinished it. 

That's a bummer! I just did a walnut-oil-wax finish on my Infinity bass build, and it worked out okay - I think I sanded that to about 400 grit before doing an oil slurry, which would've filled the pores. I can't recommend this technique enough, it made the most porous timber turn into glassy-flat after a single coat. How did you refinish it, with Danish oil again?

And thanks about the cool design - it was literally the product of too many beers and too little wood. 

 

[Armaan]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:39 PM, Akula said:

How did you refinish it, with Danish oil again?

Yep - repeated the entire finishing process. A few coats of danish and a bunch of coats of poly after the danish. 

Continue with the beers - seems to be working!

[Akula]

I'm back after a week.

 

I put that last coat of oil on the thing, and, after letting my oil-stain mix dry for a week, I got pretty much no blotchiness at all. Great stuff.

Then, in my pure wisdom, I decided to wipe on a quick coat of poly. Like, a butt-thin layer. 

Turned out badly. I rubbed on the poly using silk, I kid you not, silk, and made sure it was tidy and smooth, yet I still ended up with runs.

So I sanded everything back with 400 grit. Wet sanding with a mix of turps and water was pretty nice though - I didn't touch the shaping of the object, and I could still feel that original layer of oil from weeks ago, let alone the deep grain filling effect the multiple layers of stain have had.

 

Let that dry out for a day, and put one coat of Danish Oil and ebony stain mix onto it. 

 

Bingo. I'll have to get my better half to take some awesome photos at a later date, but the slight figure in the Qld maple all popped out, and it looks a different shade of black-to-brown depending on the angle of incidence. Love it. Finishing nightmare is finally over.

Without even waiting for the oil to fully cure, I went ahead and did a test-fit of the hardware, electronics, and strings.

 

My headstock design keeps popping the lowest string out of the nut. The nut itself needs some serious work, and my new set of files are in the mail.

 

Worst of all? Back bow.

 

Help.

 

[Akula]

Looking at it now, I'm pretty sure I cooked the scarf joint at the headstock. There's no other way that I can have a dead flat neck up to fret 6, which is incidentally where the scarf joint starts, and then dead notes. How this got past me, and how I'm only noticing this now, is beyond what I would call normal comprehension, and definitely wanders into the land of frustration.

 

It might be a case of lifting the fretboard, planing the neck surface flat again at the loss of half a millimetre, and re-installing a new fretboard. I've tried the dual-action truss rod to no avail, and I think it's too severe for fret levelling to sort out.

 

Right before I go buy some ebony - is there any other way I haven't thought of fixing this? Heat? Moisture and clamping? Raising the action higher than the Eiffel Tower?