DrummerDude

I have used "domestic cherry" or whatever it is called. It's was kinda cool looking but was very soft and was easy on the tools.

I already took it to that carpenter, but I guess it is OK to send you just the beer? @Setch you say that I should have picked up a cherry blank. Did I get it right? I have worked with cherry and it was almost as soft as basswood. I didn't know that people were making necks out of it. :D

^ We have a guitar company here that used to make the necks on their guitars almost exclusively out of beech. Actually, I am not sure if they ever made any maple necks. I have one of those guitars and the neck warped on the back side. It is more correct to say that it kind of bulged. If beech produces a sound that is more on the "neutral" side and in the middle between bright and warm, then it must be close in sound to alder? Do you think that it is a good idea to hollow out the body of my future beech guitar? It's for a Randy Rhoads copy. Pretty long body overall (but kinda sleek and narrow) and it's going to have only a bridge pickup and no electronics, so this would make it even heavier than a standard RR. By the way your beech bass looks killer.

I am afraid that my piece is not one of those light beech blanks. It weighs a bloody ton. Can't tell about stiffness yet but it looks damn rigid and rock hard. I got it from a company that sells kiln and stream dried wood so I keep my fingers crossed that it is dry enough and survives without any warping. It is going to be a V-shaped guitar, so I hope the horns don't go corkscrew.

This is cool. I hear that beech is not good for necks, though. it warps too much, even when it is steam dried and even without any pressure applied to it. How does your Tele's beech neck behave. Does it tend to warp? Also, do you notice any difference in the sound as compared to a regular Telecaster that has its body made out of alder or ash?

I know that beech is not the best choice. Where I got this blank from, there were HUGE cherry blanks, some of them wide enough to accommodate 3 Stratocaster bodies next to each other. They were just monstrously huge, probably from 50,000,000 years old cherry trees. I thought of buying a smaller cherry blank for a second but then I remembered those mambo-jambo stories about how beech is supposed to deliver a sound close to maple and decided to go for beech. And the funny part is that I don't even believe in wood being that important for the sound of a guitar. But somehow the mambo-jambo theory prevailed and i bought the beech blank. Anyway, I took the blank for squaring to a carpenter and I hope that the guy will not screw it up. I guess all he has to do is put the blank in one of the many bigass machines he has in his shop. We had a small conversation on woodworking and guitars ant it was really hard for me to explain this guy (who has at least 20 years of woodworking experience) that it is not OK to use a gummy, elastic glue on a guitar body blank. I guess I left him wondering "Why the heck not?"... So, I am at the mercy of this carpenter. Hope that he squares the blank alright. This is all that is required from him.

Thanks, guys. I have thought of doing this and I have done it on small blanks, but I was afraid that my router will burst if I try to square this huge blank. It is 5 centimeters thick and 180 centimeters (1,8 meters) long. And beech is such a PITA to route. It's damn hard.

I'm not an OP but I think the thread belongs in the "Player's Corner" section. By the way, the link in your post does not work.

I just got this beech blank that I will be using for the body of my project guitar (see pictures below). It is Precious to me. The blank will be cut up in three even pieces and the pieces joined together via gluing. Is there a way to square the narrow sides of this blank for gluing? I mean, at the home shop. With "standard" power tools. I have no huge stationary planers, no table saws, no circular saws. Tools available: plunge routers, jigsaws, drills, angle grinders, a hand-held power planer, a Dremel, a stationary belt grinder, a bench grinder and other pretty ordinary and common power and hand tools.

I have a hand-held power planer and I definitely do NOT recommend it for thinning down of bodies. If you are extra careful, MAYBE you could use it for the rough part but it always makes fullers in the wood. It is just too narrow and digs its own groove in the blank and you can never achieve an even surface on a piece of wood that is wider than the planer's active width. Heck, it is pretty hard to achieve nice, even surfaces without screw-ups on narrow blanks too. I hear that it is much better to use a regular hand plane (not a power planer). Use the router jig. It's much more secure and fool proof.

There's a photo of a pretty cool jig...I understand you made a similar one...did you have any troubles with tearout? Man, my Pine wants to tear out at any given chance!!! I made a VERY simple jig out of plywood. Took me literally 2 minutes to "build" it. All I used was a sheet of plywood, a bunch of books (yes, not a joke) and a couple of clamps. It worked like a charm and there was no tearout at all.

I found a super cheap drill press at 130 bucks (this is like 65 Euros or $100 US dollars). It's freaking underpowered. Even more underpowered than my router and I really don't see any advantage in using this cheap drill press against the damn router itself (if we don't count its only advantage of being able to use many different sizes of drill bits). I don't think that buying this cheap and powerless tool would make my life easier. I'm left with two choices: build a drill press stand and use one of my cool drills in it OR buy a real press but an expensive one (which will cost some Cash that I don't have). Guess I will try to build the stand out of pipes or something. Thanks for your help.

Actually I do put drill bits in my router. Set the speed at around 800-1200 RPM and start drilling. Works just like a drill press but with minimum stroke and power. And yes, sometimes I use regular router bits for drilling holes but again you are stuck to only a few diameter choices this way. thats crazy.......imo Using the router at lower RPM is same as using a drill press. Only that you can put it anywhere and over any detail in your shop. The drill bit size limitation is a major drawback, though.

I started a similar thread some time ago. Check it out here, some guys posted pics of their jigs: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...=30367&st=0

@Mattia, I do own a router, of course. It's like the tool that I use for almost every job you can imagine, even for cutting wood. But router bits are hard to get where I live. Normally they would sell you a whole kit of bits. No single pices available for separate purchase. Still, I managed to find a dealer that was selling German router bits in separate pieces and not in kits but believe it or not, I went through this German company's whole catalog and there were no 6mm roundover bits. Then the guy handed me the other catalog, this time of a Dutch manufacturer and guess what - they didn't carry any 6mm roundovers too! Then I asked about a 45mm long straight bits (for evening the sides of guitar bodies) but the guy almost thought that I was making a fool of him and I realized that it was about time for me to get the hell out of there before he calls the cops. Believe me, there's nothing guitarbuilding-friendly at the local hardware stores - they carry only **** that sells fast, mostly construction and building stuff because of the real estate frenzy that's going on here. So I am left with two choices: buy online from overseas and pay big money for otherwise ridiculously cheap items OR do the job by hand using DIY tools and methods.

That's why I set the RPM pf my router to 800 - 1200 RPM. My router has a pot that regulates it's RPM. I didn't even know that there were routers that can't be set to whatever RPM you want. Glad that mine has this ability. Nope. I don't have my 6 mm drill bits poking beyond the router base. With 8 mm drill bits (which are longer as a general rule) I simply screw two small wooden blanks to my router's base and use them as "steps" to raise it a bit. I've thought of cutting some length out of the 8 mm drill bit shafts to make them shorter but this is too much of a trouble and kind of ruins the bit making it hard to use in anything else but my router.

Actually I do put drill bits in my router. Set the speed at around 800-1200 RPM and start drilling. Works just like a drill press but with minimum stroke and power. And yes, sometimes I use regular router bits for drilling holes but again you are stuck to only a few diameter choices this way.

Don't want to buy a drill press at this stage. Until I have the spare money, will have to invent a stand and use one of my drills as a drill press. So far I've been using my router for drilling precise vertical holes but I'm stuck to using 6 & 8 millimeter bits and it does not have enough power and stroke. And the other option - drilling freehand is not exactly precise, you know. I remember there was a trick for drilling nice verticals by hand. There was some kind of a guiding straw involved.

Hi guys, I have 3 or 4 drills laying around and I thought that it would be cool if I build myself a drill press stand for drilling vertical holes and use those drills with it instead of spend 200 bucks on a new drill press. What is a fast way to make one out of scrap wood or maybe out of plywood (I remember some guy made a Dremel stand out of plywood but can't find the tutorial). I need something really simple Something folding or even disposable! Any tips or tricks?

Thanks guys. I simply can not find a router bit that is small enough for that job. But I think I just found a few on eBay. Jon, I thought of making something like that too. If I can't find a router bit, I will go this way. Manual woodwork is always fun for the elbow.

Is there a way to round the edge of a guitar body without using a router bit and still maintain a neat and precise radius? I can't find the right size router bit for the job (6mm radius), so I need an alternative. Thanks!

Thanks, these sites are awesome too.

Thanks guys. No, I am not going to cut down a tree in the park while nobody is watching. Have something in mind, though. The park guys from the municipality are cutting trees from time to time when they are re-arranging things. I may use them as a source for Maple (which is a pretty UNpopular woodworking tree where I live and a b*tch to find). One of these maples has a milky-ashy white bark. Guess that it is a Whitebarked Maple. I was adviced to use this site and it has been of great help: http://www.maple-trees.com

Hi guys, I noticed that there are trees growing on the sidewalks and in the parks in my city that I believe are different kinds of Maple. I judged that they were Maple trees by the overall leaf shape. Examining the details in the shape of the leaves is one of the basic methods for ID-ing different plants from the same family that are closely related. Problem is that I don't know anything about botanics. Can you ID these three leaves on the photos below? Which one is which kind of Maple? Or even more - are they Maple at all? Thanks! PS: I think that it is important to say that I live in Europe (which does NOT necessarily mean that the tress are local European species and not imported from America - the guys from the city park council import a lot of overseas species for park and sidewalk decoration).

Yeah, I'd like to gather as many different opinions on this before I start working on it Guess that I will go for a a full re-ret after all. Damn, I needed a shortcut to speed up my guitar buildup, not a whole lot of trouble. PS: I know Mr. Frank Ford's web site - this is where the link in my previous post came from. I didn't know about Suoer Glue accelerators before visiting his awesome site. If water/alcohol and baking soda act as accelerators, than I gues a mixture of the two (sodium bicarbonate dissolved in water or alcohol) would make one good accelerator liquid, no? Let's test it on scrap.