t1r12003

Admittingly never having an original idea, I came across this guitar which looks stunning.  Having never thrown away any of my offcut scraps of wood, I decided to embark upon this project.  Right now, I've started cutting my scrap pieces with a miter saw.  

The inspiration:

My materials:

Starting to put the puzzle together on top of my Strat template:

Need to keep cutting down more pieces and arranging them to optimize contrast of colors and sizes.  More to come...

On 5/29/2018 at 12:58 PM, Norris said:

Cool. How's the design going to be applied? Hand painted? Transfer?

I’m going to attempt wood carving and hand painting.  

So I had some spare off cuts from other projects and decided to do a fun build. 
This is based off a bass made by Hembry Guitars. 

I made some adjustments to the size and shape and making a guitar.  Here's a print out template.

Template laid out on the blank

Body cut out.   I decided against the horn coming out of the head of the skull because I think it would have poked me in the stomach while playing it.

Neck, bridge and pickup all routed out. 

Filling the grain and cracks with epoxy

That's it for today.  Let it dry and sand down tomorrow.

33 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

Its been a while....yes! That looks damn sweet. Simple and flattering to the Redwood.

So how's she settling in as a player?

I couldn't be happier with the tone of this walnut.  It's got some nice bright snappiness to it along with tight lows.  Going from an LP style guitar to this, it is brighter but not so much that I have to EQ the heck out of my amp.  I went through a few bridge pickups before settling on a Dimarzio Norton.  It is a nice match.  That being said, walnut is possibly not as forgiving in that respect whereas an alder or something neutral would work with a wider variety of pickups.

I realized I never posted a finished pic of this one.  

Sealing the grain was quite the experience.  The epoxy I used was way too thick and took forever to sand back and level.  I ended up going back over the top with a couple passes of superglue.

This is after a couple cans of lacquer spray.

After another long cold Chicago winter I'm on to finishing this. First coat of epoxy to seal the grain

Need a little more light sanding, but looks ok to me. Also noticed the small ding in the cover I'll sand out.

Blob of wood putty I stained brown. Let this dry then sand it level.

When I had a router slip like yours above, I took a carving gouge and turned the missing bit into a little recess for finger access. As a result, that cover is super easy to remove.

That thought had crossed my mind. If my patch job doesn't look good, I'll probably go that route.

Went with neck bolt ferrules instead of a neck plate, but now the squared off neck pocket doesn't look right. I think I'm going to round it out. Should look better.

Output jack hole drilled. Recessed the cavity cover. Had a router slip and took a gouge out. I'll need to patch this up with some brown stained wood putty : (

Got the neck pickup cavity done. Almost finished the bridge before I had to stop for the evening.

Routed out the control cavity. Using a scrap piece of walnut for a cavity cover. Drilled holes for the controls. I still need to recess the cavity to fit the cover.

Nice flame! As far as body wood, limba is a favorite and if it's got some nice curl, even better. What's your neck wood going to be? Ziricote would be more unique than ebony or rosewood. For color, Tiger's Eye looks best on flame.

And the mock up pics, dull top...

Scraped the binding and cleaned up the glue residue and sanded out a bit.

It was windy when I tried to take the pics and the naptha was evaporating before I could even snap the picture.

Took off the tape this morning. Little bit of glue residue, but not too bad. No noticeable gaps. Scraping and sanding up next.

Heated up the binding with a hair drier and taped it to the body to set the shape and make it easier to glue. Let it sit for a few hours, then glued it up.

Comfort cut

I already had the Hipshot bridge from another project that went south. Everything else just came this week.

Mailman brought presents.

Spent a few hours sanding the sides. Man, this walnut is hard. Even with my new palm sander and 60, 120, 220 grit papers, I was still noticing scratches. I spent more time with a sanding block really working those spots. Some nice grain patterns popping out.

I was pretty happy. I'd been searching for one for a while. This is my first walnut build, so I wanted neck and body woods to be the same. I've heard all different reviews of what walnut will sound like. I'll be interested to hear how this one sounds.

No real progress. Had to buy a new random orbital palm sander as my old one died.

Got a Tusq nut