Thin guitar build...VERY thin! 12mm/half an inch roughly.

[ShatnersBassoon]

Firstly, an apology of sorts. I’ve realised that I tend to go from one project to the next, even when the previous build could have been titivated in to something approaching true completion. Such is my personality though, I just get way too excited about new ideas. I feel a bit sheepish about that, because I feel I peak peoples interest and they don't get to see where it ends up.

Anyway, for this build I have salvaged the fretboard off a carbon fiber neck I built over a year ago, that proved to not be viable because I hadn’t calculated properly how much it flexed. As you can see, the fretboard is corian...I made the mistake of using too much corian and too little CF. Anyway...Luckily the board came off reasonably easily.

Calculations confirmed that with a shorter scale length, and with the addition of a heel, I could incorporate this fretboard in to a CF panel neck that was ridiculously thin (15.2mm). I went ahead and did just that, making sure to test how much it flexed, almost a negligible amount...but to me about the right amount allowing for around 100lbs of string tension. Luckily my father is a structural engineer, so he helped me out with calculations.

This lead me to want to do a similar thing with the body, why not make use of the rest of my carbon fiber, and make that really thin too? Ofcourse, this has posed a bit of a dilemma with regards to electronics and clearance for the output jack. So I went with the option of a Stratocaster jack turned upside down. The humbucker is going to go all the way through the body and will be screwed in from the back. 

So anyway, in its current incarnation its short scale (23 inch) guitar, zero radius scalloped corian fretboard, 15.2 mm neck (apart from the heel), with a 12mm thick carbon fiber body that has an aluminium back. Im working on semi hemispherical fret ends to incorporate in to it. 

Obviously the neck is going to be recessed, I just placed it on the body so I could get a rough idea of things.

As you can see, its far from there yet on a aesthetic level, but I think I have it worked out. Should hopefully look pretty bangin' when its done. I might even contour it a bit to make some of the areas even thinner...if Im feeling brave enough! Another thing Im going to do is route a quasi scratchlpate section in to the top, which will be filled with coloured epoxy.

[Akula]

I dig it! Keen to see how the pickup mounting idea works, I investigated a similar idea a few years ago which didn't pan out, I'm sure you have much better ideas.

 

That inverted strat-jack is genius!

 

 - Jam

[ShatnersBassoon]

36 minutes ago, Akula said:

I dig it! Keen to see how the pickup mounting idea works, I investigated a similar idea a few years ago which didn't pan out, I'm sure you have much better ideas.

 

That inverted strat-jack is genius!

 

 - Jam

I think that maybe the difficulty when it comes to that mounting strategy possibly is related to if the pickup is adjustable or not. Don’t think it will be in this case, the body is just too thin to allow for that….but we will see. I came across the inverted Strat jack thing on another forum, but I didn’t hear about anyone doing it for clearance. 

[Akula]

 

Here's a quick cross section of the idea I had a few years back. The view is a cross section viewed from the strap button, looking at a slice of the body, down the neck.

 

I've accounted for a 12mm body, standard humbucker at 23mm total height, and a 5mm fretboard. Springs go between the pickup ears and the body, as usual. The drawback being, clearly, you've got the butt-end of a humbucker poking out through the back of the guitar, as in, the pickup route will be quite literally a hole through the guitar body.

 

Solutions include making the body just thick enough for a pickup, but just in the area underneath the pickup. Think like the camera "bump" on a modern super thin smartphone. Or you could look at some ultra thin pickups, I think Lace Sensor make a super slim model.

 

I'm really interested to see this one come together! Following intently.

 

 - Jam

[ShatnersBassoon]

15 minutes ago, Akula said:

 

Here's a quick cross section of the idea I had a few years back. The view is a cross section viewed from the strap button, looking at a slice of the body, down the neck.

 

I've accounted for a 12mm body, standard humbucker at 23mm total height, and a 5mm fretboard. Springs go between the pickup ears and the body, as usual. The drawback being, clearly, you've got the butt-end of a humbucker poking out through the back of the guitar, as in, the pickup route will be quite literally a hole through the guitar body.

 

Solutions include making the body just thick enough for a pickup, but just in the area underneath the pickup. Think like the camera "bump" on a modern super thin smartphone. Or you could look at some ultra thin pickups, I think Lace Sensor make a super slim model.

 

I'm really interested to see this one come together! Following intently.

 

 - Jam

I will have to ‘shim’ the bridge anyway, because as my plans stand the neck will be a little bit higher off the body than usual, so if I did a similar thing in the humbucker area like you suggested then I could make it so that it doesn’t look out of place, maybe make that area kind of ‘at one’ with the bridge.

[Andyjr1515]

Love it ! 

 

[ShatnersBassoon]

Routed out a section on the top of the body and filled it with crumpled tin foil, put a layer of epoxy on the top.

My design now has evolved in to a guitar with no neck pocket (taking inspiration from Ken Parker). I bolted it on to the body today. The bridge hasn’t been bolted on yet, but it’s going to go on top of a corian riser so that it is at the right height for the strings. So far so good! Exciting times! 

As you can see, I need to titivate the shape slightly…parts of the aluminum are not yet plush with the carbon fiber. I’m also going to make it blend in to the neck section properly. 

[ShatnersBassoon]

Did a bit more shaping today, added some contours in to the top and got rid of most of the extraneous metal from the sides. Incidentally, this aluminium is insanely hard…it must be some sort of space age alloy. Still need to shape it where it meets the end of the neck. 

[Professor Woozle]

Are you sure it's aluminium? If it's light but really hard it could be titanium.

[ShatnersBassoon]

26 minutes ago, Professor Woozle said:

Are you sure it's aluminium? If it's light but really hard it could be titanium.

Pretty sure it isn't. I have quite a bit of titanium in the house and it changes colour when i work on it (the whole heat reaction thing). Also it 'work hardens'. Not getting that from this particular metal. However, interestingly its heavier than other aluminium I have used.

[henrim]

There is substantial difference in hardness between different aluminum grades. But if you have worked with titanium it should be fairly easy to know whether you are working with aluminum or titanium. Aluminum work-hardens too, but I don’t think you get much of that that when working with file or saw. When shaping aluminum with mallet, english wheel or something like that, you need to anneal it every now and then, otherwise it gets too hard and cracks. But as far as I understand it shouldn’t be the case here. Maybe you got 7000 series or something.

[ShatnersBassoon]

18 hours ago, henrim said:

There is substantial difference in hardness between different aluminum grades. But if you have worked with titanium it should be fairly easy to know whether you are working with aluminum or titanium. Aluminum work-hardens too, but I don’t think you get much of that that when working with file or saw. When shaping aluminum with mallet, english wheel or something like that, you need to anneal it every now and then, otherwise it gets too hard and cracks. But as far as I understand it shouldn’t be the case here. Maybe you got 7000 series or something.

It was a bit of a pig to work with! Another thing about the titanium I have is that it smells like horse dung….maybe that’s just my imagination though

[ShatnersBassoon]

 So…after lots of finagling, I felt a change of plan was in order. I wasn’t quite satisfied on an aesthetic level. I got a sheet of stainless steel and did some heat treating on it with the blowtorch. You get all these cool colours when you do that, as I’m sure most of you guys already know. The bottom section is going to be covered by a panel…thinking of cutting some artwork in to that section so that atleast some of the tinfoil/epoxy is visible. So far so good! More shaping still to come obviously. I might do a bit of chambering underneath the new top, as the stainless steel has added another 1.7 lbs on to the weight. 
 

Still not sure what to do about fretboard inlays. The board is already scalloped, which complicates matters.

[ShatnersBassoon]

This bloody guitar has went through more changes than David Bowie I’m sure there’s a few facepalms going around from people that are following this. I made the decision to actually go for a neck pocket, it’s not very deep…but makes everything look more streamlined. Put some fabric on the top…Made a mistake though, I stupidly used some Zap 30 minute epoxy. Whilst it’s a superb product, it definitely wasn’t ideal for the purpose. It was very thick and as a result hard to get level. Ah well, learnt some new tricks along the way, mainly how to get a nice 1k clear coat on there. Got some craft epoxy today that is much more suited to this kind of thing. Going for the fabric look on the headstock next, and maybe the back of the guitar. Maybe I should call this guitar ‘Ch Ch Ch Changes’

[henrim]

8 minutes ago, ShatnersBassoon said:

I’m sure there’s a few facepalms going around from people that are following this.

Nah, at least I think you have a good process going on here. In my experience things like this may result something you wouldn’t have thought had you designed it in CAD. Of course, when designing while making, there’s always a chance of great disaster but still, you got to experiment and probably learned a ton. Which gives you new ways of thinking that you can use in future! Rock on!

[ShatnersBassoon]

1 minute ago, henrim said:

Nah, at least I think you have a good process going on here. In my experience things like this may result something you wouldn’t have thought had you designed it in CAD. Of course, when designing while making, there’s always a chance of great disaster but still, you got to experiment and probably learned a ton. Which gives you new ways of thinking that you can use in future! Rock on!

I’m quite a fan of the whole “flying by the seat of your pants” approach. It’s exciting

[henrim]

3 minutes ago, ShatnersBassoon said:

flying by the seat of your pants

That’s a new idiom to me. Love it, thanks! And I like to think it’s the best way to learn. Although I know people who would strongly disagree. And there are days when I wholeheartedly agree with them. 

In Finland we have a similar expression “mennä perse edellä puuhun”, to climb a tree butt first.

[Bizman62]

10 hours ago, ShatnersBassoon said:

“flying by the seat of your pants”

New to me as well, thanks! In Finnish we have an idiom close to that, "perstuntumalla" - literally "by feel of the arse".

[ScottR]

On 3/1/2024 at 1:59 PM, henrim said:

That’s a new idiom to me. Love it, thanks! And I like to think it’s the best way to learn. Although I know people who would strongly disagree. And there are days when I wholeheartedly agree with them. 

In Finland we have a similar expression “mennä perse edellä puuhun”, to climb a tree butt first.

 

On 3/2/2024 at 12:31 AM, Bizman62 said:

New to me as well, thanks! In Finnish we have an idiom close to that, "perstuntumalla" - literally "by feel of the arse".

Those are fun!

The former is a very descriptive way of saying we're doing things the hard way, at least to this English speaker.

The latter creates more pleasant mental imagery, but (no pun intended) I can see how it could equate to "flying by the seat of the pants"  which is pretty much "making it up as we go".

Comparing expressions and idioms by language could make for an entertaining evening around a fire, if a couple of adult beverages were tossed into the mix.

SR

[ShatnersBassoon]

Took off the black feathering/paint today, and put another layer of epoxy on there…with a more suitable brand.  I suppose you could say it’s evolving  

 

[Andyjr1515]

When you first posted that last iteration I thought, 'Yes.  That's it!'  And now you've added the epoxy, that looks super special!  Like that very much.

[ShatnersBassoon]

Yeah, it’s shaping up nicely. As is often the case with epoxy, it looks great when you first put it on, but when it’s fully cured the result can look sub optimal. I had to do some heating with the gun during the curing process to get rid of certain anomalies in the epoxy. Hopefully it will look good when it fully cures…otherwise lots of sanding will be needed to get it looking right. Won’t be the end of the world though. Fingers crossed!

[ShatnersBassoon]

Turns out that I did indeed need to level etc, and a few anomalies did occur. Probably the environment I was working in. Anyway, went through all the sandpaper grades and it refuses to fully gloss…maybe the powers that be are telling me to keep it that way. Or maybe I need to work on my buffing I think this requires a scratchplate. It’s a bit bare without I think. Mocked up a quick idea with some paper. 
 

[Bizman62]

11 hours ago, ShatnersBassoon said:

Anyway, went through all the sandpaper grades and it refuses to fully gloss…

How high was the highest grade? When sanding the 2K poly of my Strat I used "papers" intended for sanding paint, got them from a car paint vendor. Up to 2000 grit wet paper works quite well, from there I used 3M foam disks 3000 and 6000 grit, also wet. At places I had to go back one or two grits to remove sanding marks that popped up from an otherwise smooth surface. Even the 6000 left a milky shade to the clearcoat. After that I used a swirl remover compound. I skimped so I only bought the finest of the three of that series which I had to pay by having to use more elbow grease.

[ShatnersBassoon]

1 hour ago, Bizman62 said:

How high was the highest grade? When sanding the 2K poly of my Strat I used "papers" intended for sanding paint, got them from a car paint vendor. Up to 2000 grit wet paper works quite well, from there I used 3M foam disks 3000 and 6000 grit, also wet. At places I had to go back one or two grits to remove sanding marks that popped up from an otherwise smooth surface. Even the 6000 left a milky shade to the clearcoat. After that I used a swirl remover compound. I skimped so I only bought the finest of the three of that series which I had to pay by having to use more elbow grease.

Thanks

I went up to 2500 grit. I may work on it more to get that shine. Or I may keep it a satin. I seem to have a huge problem getting rid of scratches though, still lots of tiny little marks if you look really closely…it’s the bane of my life  Interestingly, in the past I’ve noticed that fine wire wool does not show up marks in the same way that sandpaper does.