No Electricity Tele Build

[grandtguitars]

Didn't make much progress today. Drilled the tuner holes and shaped the neck contour a little.

Also still debating which color parts to use, and also, if I should use a Tele bridge or a regular hardtail one. The reason why I'm not sure about a Tele bridge is that it'll cover quite a bit of the wood.

[grandtguitars]

So I think I'm going to take a short break, I'm missing a few key tools to proceed (forstner bits and a spokeshave). Don't really want to have to rasp the neck to the correct thickness (done it before, not really fun  ). I'm thinking I'll use the spokeshave to thickness the neck. Would use a plane but I need to keep the thickness of the heel and headstock as they are currently.

[Bizman62]

A surform rasp/plane can also be very effective. And inexpensive.

[iommichild]

A good shinto rasp is worth its weight in gold when shaping a neck. Rough it out with ye olde shinto (and maybe a rasp) and dial it in with a scraper - its so oddly calming to slowly shave the neck down to size..!

[grandtguitars]

Yeah, I have a shinto rasp, but I really dislike rasping So I think I'll order a spokeshave and until next week guys!

[henrim]

I too prefer planes in general but I don’t think there is that much to shave that I could imagine me carving a neck with just a rasp. That said, I use both rasps and a spokes shave for necks. But sometimes you just have to get a new tool I know.

[grandtguitars]

So, I improvised. Can't rest easy knowing there's a guitar to be made. What I did was I took a steel plate that we have lots of and I added a burr on its edge using a drill bit. Is it fast? Not really, but more enjoyable than rasping Maybe I won't even buy a spokeshave, although it would be cool to have, but I want to buy a decent one and those go for at least 40 Euros.

[henrim]

I bet it takes some time. But if if you like it, why not

One tool I really like for some carving is this tool that combines a scraper to a spokeshave type handle. It may have a name I don’t know. Maybe spokescraper. It can be relatively aggressive if sharpen to have a large burr. On the other hand it can be tamed to a quite delicate tool.

[grandtguitars]

I urge everyone to try carving a neck themselves - it's the second most satisfying process in making a guitar, coming after buffing the finish to a mirror gloss. It just feels amazing to carve something that fits in your hand nicely.

[grandtguitars]

So today I carved the neck, still a work in progress, lots of sculpting and sanding to do. I don't like how the heel area and the volute(?) turned out, the taper needs to be more aggressive for lack of a better word.

[grandtguitars]

Today I cut the headstock to thickness and also worked on the neck profile a little. Now I need to prepare the fretboard and work on fretting it.

[grandtguitars]

So I think I've decided that I'll be using chrome hardware. It's more readily available and cheaper (at least at Thomann). Black would look real nice, but I think chrome will look just as good. Black is more modern in my opinion and this Tele would be a rather modern one (no pickguard, no control plate), but I can't seem to find any good deals for black parts in Europe and my budget is quite limited

[grandtguitars]

After hours upon hours of drilling this is the result - neck pocket and humbucker cavity. This is my progress so far. The neck pocket still needs some work though.

Now working on the body contour and also will have to start drilling the control cavity.

Edited September 19, 2022 by grandtguitars

[grandtguitars]

Here are a couple videos of the process:

 

[Bizman62]

After seeing how accurately you sliced the headstock I can't but wonder why you left such a wide margin to be rasped off on the sides of the neck.

So far I like what I see.

[grandtguitars]

15 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

After seeing how accurately you sliced the headstock I can't but wonder why you left such a wide margin to be rasped off on the sides of the neck.

So far I like what I see.

Just me being too cautious as usual

[grandtguitars]

So yeah, this happened. Guess I should have used titebond

[Bizman62]

On the positive side, isn't it good that it happened now instead of after everything being finished and polished? It's not too hard to clean up and reglue.

[henrim]

Did it break along a glue joint? Titebond is no magic solution then. Any PVA glue should hold if the faces are jointed straight and pieces clamped properly.

[grandtguitars]

11 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

On the positive side, isn't it good that it happened now instead of after everything being finished and polished? It's not too hard to clean up and reglue.

Yeah I’m not too bummed about it, just another hurdle to jump over.

But it’s not the first time this glue failed. I dunno maybe my gluing technique sucks? Or maybe I should switch to titebond 

[grandtguitars]

1 minute ago, henrim said:

Did it break along a glue joint? Titebond is no magic solution then. Any PVA glue should hold if the faces are jointed straight and pieces clamped properly.

It did. The pieces were cut straight and square as far as I remember and I applied a good amount of glue. I really don’t understand why it’d fail like that.

[henrim]

13 minutes ago, grandtguitars said:

It did. The pieces were cut straight and square as far as I remember and I applied a good amount of glue. I really don’t understand why it’d fail like that.

I only now looked your thread from the beginning. It appears you have a book matched padouk veneer on top of the body blank. They both have a glue seam where it cracked. Well I guess you should be able fix that pretty easily. Just hope the other joints hold better. Although they are not as vulnerable as the padouk is solid on top of the other joints. 

[grandtguitars]

11 minutes ago, henrim said:

I only now looked your thread from the beginning. It appears you have a book matched padouk veneer on top of the body blank. They both have a glue seam where it cracked. Well I guess you should be able fix that pretty easily. Just hope the other joints hold better. Although they are not as vulnerable as the padouk is solid on top of the other joints. 

Hope that it does hold after gluing it again. I guess all those vibrations from hammering the chisel must’ve messed up the joint.

[Bizman62]

11 hours ago, grandtguitars said:

I guess all those vibrations from hammering the chisel must’ve messed up the joint.

For most glues that should not be an issue. Even the old school hot hide glue stays somewhat flexible for years. Also remember that playing a guitar causes lots of vibrations! Admitted they're not as instant and hard as those caused by hammering a chisel but they're continual - quantity over quality so to say. Yet you rarely see an old guitar splitting into pieces, do you?

As @henrim said, straight faces and proper clamping are essential and in your comment you said they were as good as you can get. Since those are now ruled out, we're left with poor glue coverage, outdated glue, temperature issues...

Starting with glue coverage, for best results a uniform thin layer of glue on both faces can help. Thin, I repeat. Then rub the two faces against each other. If there's too much glue it can create air pockets no matter how tight you clamp. A loosely clamped heavy layer of glue also can cause the joint being made of glue instead of wood, and bare dried glue will crack. A thick layer of glue also dries more slowly which may cause further issues if you take the clamps off too soon. As someone once told me, it's the suction of two perfectly matching faces that makes the joint stick, the glue is just making it airtight. If you've ever put a drop of water between two sheets of glass or metal you know what I mean...

As an indicator of the right amount of glue look at the joint when tightening the clamps. You should get an even bead of excess glue all along the seam. Ideally a barely visible bead would tell that there's just the right amount of glue whereas a bead you can spoon glue back to your bottle tells there's way too much of it. In numbers some 1-2mm is good.

Glues also have a best before date although for wood glues they seem to work for quite a long time. The glue gets thicker but as long as it comes out of the bottle with ease it should work. I haven't seen wood glue disintegrate, it rather makes a film on top.

Temperature and humidity can cause several issues. Just last Saturday we noticed that the glue joints weren't drying. Normally Titebond joints can be unclamped after an hour or so but this time it took a couple of hours or even longer and the overflow beads still were liquid under the surface. Apparently the heating wasn't on yet and the outdoors humidity had sneaked in. At this time of the year that's normal. - Another temperature related issue is heat but I don't believe that you've had your guitar body under a heat source long enough for the joint to break. Otherwise the veneer on the top would have come off as well.

Summarized, a full but thin coverage of glue and a longer clamping time because of the weather should do the trick.

 

[grandtguitars]

Thanks @Bizman62 for the thorough post! I glued the boards like two or three years ago, so can't tell for sure how much glue I used. But I remember there being some squeeze out. I used two huge F clamps and I think the pressure was divided evenly throughout the whole joint (the boards were 30cm wide, so a lot of material from the side to the joint). Regarding temperature, I glued it when it was rather warm and not too humid I think, summer probably.