OK, thank you all for the excellent well heeled advice, much appreciated.
I think I will go for the cheapest Tele I can find, even if I can find one in the dumpster!
My whole life I have been pulling things apart to see how they work, so i think the best way for me to either re-build a Tele or build one from scratch is to pull one apart and go from there.
I have to be careful about going too nuts on this, or again I will have a million things on the go and another frigging hobby that I cant stop
By the way, I'm a Bass player by preference, but I love playing guitar too, you know muffing around with a 4-track in my bedroom..
When I get a Tele, I will start a thread on the build/re-build and you can have a beer and laugh, cheers from the Apprentice.