Guitar Of The Month - April 2024

The Scrap-o-caster

This is my build #6½. It's a little rustic and has quite some history behind.

The body is pine and started its life as a beam in a cottage at my inlaws' and was reused as a doorstep at our front door. And then it supported stacks of firewood in our yard.

Similarly the neck is of recycled materials, maple, cherry and nogal. The main part is a leftover but it was a bit too thin so I stack leftovers from another to the headstock and heel. Plus the headstock back plate is constructed from offcuts from a third neck. The front plate of figured birch was found in the trash bin of the workshop, We could resaw four such plates of the block, the other three had much more worm holes than this one. The fretboard is of merbau which I once bought from a parquet factory, the dots are cut of offcuts. The scale appears to be 25", I let our tutor cut a dozen boards at various scale lengths and this one was left. And the floating bridge is simply a piece of pine from my firewood storage equipped with a length of fretwire.

The pickups are donationware, I got a broken Tokai Strat scratchplate with the mid and bridge pickups from a guitarist after he learned about my hobby. For the wiring I used salvaged computer power supply cables. The trapeze was given me by a fellow builder, salvaged from Chinese guitars when he replaced them with hard tails.

The pots and tuners are new, original Chinese cheapos. And the pot knobs were turned a decade ago of a branch of our plum tree, same batch as I used for my first build.

For finishing I used steel wool diluted in vinegar which I mostly sanded off. It highlights the growth rings nicely, though. And on top of that I applied several coats of a mix of BLO, lacquer and turpentine. Finally I applied a layer of a mix of beeswax and carnauba, also home cooked.

The original Neverending Story can be read here: https://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/54656-what-next/?do=findComment&comment=616388

There was a knot at the end of the bridge but it fell off despite having been secured with a drop of CA glue.

Inlaying the jack plate has become somewhat of a trade mark. Logically I had to inlay the trapeze bracket as well. All cracks were filled with CA glue and some dust.

On the volute you can see a bit of the offcut from another neck used for steepening the headstock angle. Most of it is hidden under the back plate.

For the control cavity cover there's both sides of the headstock veneers used. There's a cross laminated veneer for added strength underneath.