I was hoping that about this time I would be posting pictures my first guitar and it would be awesome. I would be proud and it would look as killer as Drak's or Myka's guitars. But that didn't happen. So now I'm writing this post for people like me....the ones who suck and screw up and fail. I may not post any pictures of this guitar at all. In a fit of anger I took it to the bandsaw and created my first WOD victim. So instead of posting pics of all the cool details of my first guitar, I will tell you everything I did wrong and the things that came out right.
Lets start by going over my woodworking experience. It's just about zero. I've put together a guitar from warmoth parts and I built my computer desk. I've been reading this site and tutorials for about a year and read several guitar building books.
Here were my guitar details.
7 string fretless guitar
Original body design
2 piece korina body
maple top
1 pice korina neck
maple headstock overlay
10 degree headstock angle
set neck
stabalized macascar ebony fretboard
tom bridge string through body
Now for the bad.
I had a guide on the bandsaw when I cut the headstock angle. It caused the surface of the headstock to be cut at an angle.
When I glued the top on I thought I had enough clamps. But everyone is right... you never have enough clamps. Ended up with a bad glue joint.
I didn't plan my neck joint enough and carved too much of the neck before glueing it in.
Instead of going of the center line when laying out the bridge post. I try eyeballing it with some strings roughly in place. I ended up with the post holes drilled in the wrong place.
I screwed up the string ferrules....way way off.
I got countless dings in the neck and body just from being clumbsy when moving it around.
Now with each of these mistakes it fixed them and moved on..not wanting to give up even though they looked pretty awful.
Now with all these errors and my first guitar a complete failure I think I should probably give up on building, but some things did go right. And those few things that did go right felt so damn good that I can stop thinking about trying again.
So, I'm trying to look on the bright side and take a little pride in the things that came out ok. These things will probably seem silly to some people here, but to me were big steps.
With that said
Here was the good.
I drew complete plans for the entire guitar which was an original design.
I got a really good glue joint on the 2 piece body and I leveled it with handplanes. I had never used a handplane before.
I made a pretty good neck pocket...used the Myka jig.
I carved a neck from a piece of wood. Again this probably is silly to some, but it was scary to me and I was just amazed that I was able to do it.
I made the neck to the exact size I was trying for and drilled the tuner holes in the right spots
I made a jig for 7 string pickup routing.
I routed the pickup cavities pretty well.
So should I give up...probably. I will probably never build a guitar as nice as some of the people on this board. But those little baby steps made me feel good and the whole reason I wanted to build was to create guitars just for me. Guitars that no one else would want to build with strange shapes and electronics.
I guess I lost the point of this post along the way, but I just wanted to let people know that if they screw up and fail, they are not alone.