Lookit!

Thanks for the advice guys! After a lot if deliberation and letting the woid finish moving I went with draks advice. I filled the crack with a thick CA glue, waited for it to harden and then sanded it flat. I actually think it worked out okay. I think I will cover the areas with the obvious glue line with an inlay of some sort. So, now for the next question. In order to prevent the wood from moving while i work on the neck (i want to make the neck before I route the neck pocket and pickup cavities) do you think sealing it with something as an interim measure would be okay? I want to try and highlight the ripples in the wood so I thought about applying an amber shellac which would stain the end grain then lightly sand it and apply something like danish oil or tru-oil.

I think I prefer without. you dont have gold anywhere else on that guitar and the blac/silver of the pickups without there covers matches the bridge quite nicely.

both are looking stunning! I really like the acoustic. With regards to the oil finish. What are the differences between danish oil and tru oil and tung oil? In terms of application, wood sealing capability and finish? For my guitar i need to seal the wood and would like to try and keep that amazing satin feel.

I have been speaking to a local luthier and he says that its a big problem working during this transition period between seasons. By chop it up and start again do you mean start from scratch? or split the laminate, reflatten and then reglue?

So making some progress with the carve. I have been working with a rasp and sandpaper got it up to 800 grit. I am quite pleased with the results and the grain is looking stunning! Only problem i have encountered so far is that as the dry season sets in up here on the highveld the wood is drying out further. This has resulted in partial delamination of the body. Its less tha. 2mm wide but still a big problem As far as I can tell, my options are to either fill it with something or to try and seperate the laminations. Flatten and reglue. I am not keen on the second option as i think getting it all to align afterwards is going to be quite difficult. Any suggestions folks?

Thanks for the glueing advice! I wound up using a PVA. it worked quite well! I have had a very productive weekend. Got the body glued up and routed to shape. I am quite pleased with the results! If I quit now at least I will have an interesting cheese board. XD I have also glued up the neck blank and got it nice and flat. This woodworking hobby is fun! I have a question regarding the fretboard. My piece of leadwood has twisted a bit. Should I be trying to sand it straight before cutting the fret slots and sanding a radius to it? Or is the fact that it is going to be glued to a dead flat neck blank sufficient to keep it flat? Secondly is it better to glue the fretboard to the neck blank and then route it to shape and sand the radius? Or should I rather sand the radius, route both the neck and the fretboard to shape and then glue them together?

Right! Finally got these surfaces straight and are ready to be glued. And the leadwood fretboard blank is looking pretty good. The leadwood is really, really hard. It actually chipped parts of the planers blades. It also has small airspaces in the grain which I am going to have to fill before finishing. Any suggestions as to what I should use? I do not want to stain the awesome pale part of the wood. Finally, what glues do people use? I knoW a lot of luthiers use titebond 1 but thats hard to get here, i have only seen titebond 3, would that still be suitable? The other available options are pva glue, aliphatic glue or a polyurethane glue. I am not too keen on epoxy.

I like the maple with black inlays! What material did you use for the inlays?

Thanks for the good advice! I have finally got all the glueing surfaces ready for gluing and I am busy with getting the neck wood preparedn the problem with using these local timbers is that they are typically big rough cut wood slabs that need a lot of tlc before you have something usable. I had a scary experience while using the router to prepare the glueing surfaces on the olive. The router bit hit an extremely hard peice of wood (sounded like I hit a nail) and the router ripped a giant chip off the wood despite my only removing less than 2mm using the bit. I am terrified of this happening agaib when I am shaping the body to the template! Hopefully the wood grain will be better supported as it will be a glued laminate.

Gosh. That post came out a bit garbled. Sorry guys. Phone typing!

Thanks for the advice everyone!I think what i will do is glue up everything and trim the body blank more or less to shape and then spend some time using either the router technique or use a sanding table To get it all flat. Fortunately the tear out is happening in an area which is going to be bevelled for an arm curve anyway so I dont think its too much of a disaster. The main thing is to get the neck pocket to bridge area totally flat. the worry that I now have is that all of these woids seem to have an oily feel and I am not too sure how that is going to affect the glue bonding. I be wiping the glueing surfaces with a slovent of some sort before applying the glue?

Hey everyone. So I have decided to start a little project I have had in the back of my mind for some time. I want to build a guitar entirely from woods that are local to Southern africa (and preferably trees that have been sustainably harvested) So here it goes. Specs: 24 fret, 25.5' scale, Gotoh hardtail bridge, gotoh tuners and one single fat humbucker (type to be determined) and a volume and tone knob. I first went on a mission sourcing a local wood I liked the look of. I eventally settled on African Wild Olive. I bought two planks, each of which measured about 35mm thick. this wood was collected from a tree that was removed during the development of an office park. I then settled on the right hand side plank and cut it in half and used a borrowed planer to get the faces relatively flat. There is going to be a piece of African leadwood sandwiched in between these two peices. I still need to get all the faces straight and true. I then spent some time doodling on guitar designs and decided on the following design for the body. This design is going to be mostly flat with the exception of the outside area which will have a slight bevel. I then designed the fretboard and headstock and made up the master templates. I am unsure as to if I should keep the headstock fender style or go with an angled headstock. will decide on that when I start making the neck I guess. The neck is going to be a 3 peice laminate consisting of african mahogany and leadwood with a leadwood fretboard. I was lucky enough to get a massive slab of leadwood from a tree that was removed during the development of the Tokwe Mukorsi Dam in Zimbabwe. will post picks of that later. Pics of the Templates My next step is going to consist of cutting up the leadwood into useful bits, get the body blank trued and glued up and then work on getting the body ready while I wait for the shipment from stew mac to arrive. I have a couple of questions for the experts here. This olive wood has grain that is all over the place and is quite brittle. How do you prevent tear out from happening when using a plane on this? I have even tried using my freshly sharpened hand plane set as finely as I can and it still happens. Secondly. With regards to the angle on the neck of the guitar. I am planning on using a gotoh hardtail bridge. is it okay if the neck is parallel to the body of the guitar or does there need to be a slight angle to the neck to ensure that the action is okay? Finally, for fretting I was planning on using the stewmac fretwire which has a 0.58mm tang width. Could I get away with using a Saw blade with a 0.4mm kerf width? or do I have to buy a fretsaw from stewmac? Cheers! Hayden

Heh challenge accepted!

How thin can one reasonably go for the body of the guitar? I am busy planning my first build and i have some beautiful african olive which is about 35mm thick and I was wondering if it would be feasable to make the body solely out of that? Aim was to make a bolt on neck and use a hipshot hardtail bridge.

Good luck! Now is a very difficult time for small businesses so I hope yours does okay! Do you only ship to the USA? Cheers

Hi all. After a lot of deliberation I have decided to make my beautiful olivewood planks into a guitar. I have decided on a 24 fret bolt on neck with a 25.5 inch scale length because then if i make a mistake on the neck its not a huge issue for the rest of the guitar. (As this is my first ever build the plan is to keep it as simple as possible) My plan is to use a non trem bridge such as a hipshot, The neck will be an african mahogany/african leadwood laminate and the body will be an african olive and african leadwood laminated thingy. Does the amount of wood behind the bridge affect anything? Some guitars seem to have their bridges right on the edge of the guitar while others seem to have them placed in the middle of the guitars body? I know that the bridge needs to be a particular distance from the nut in order to achieve a particular scale length but does the bridge position in the body affect factors such as tone or sustain? It makes sense to have the bridge located in the middle of the sounding board for an acoustic but as this is a solidbody electric I am not sure what (if any) factors about the guitars body shape/ bridge position on the body will affect tone and sustain? thanks!

Great! thanks for the advice. Is a low viscosity CA glue preffered because it wont seep in to the wood and discolour it?

Hi everyone! Sorry if this is the wrong section to be posting in. ~ i am a projectguitar noob. I have wanted to build my own guitar since I started playing and now that I have a bit more free time and funds I have decided to start! Hence, I have many questions. I impulsively bought some beautiful african olivewood planks, figuring that olivewood is very hard and dense so could be used for an interesting guitar, furthermore its a local wood and i would love to play an instrument made by me from tree species that are endemic to my area (and unusual for guitars). The planks are about 3 cm thick and show beautiful figure and patterns. However they also have some good cracks in them I have no idea what the moisture content of these planks are. What would be the best way of testing water content and letting them dry out? Secondly the planks have some impressive cracks in them. Is there any way that I could stabilise these using something like a CA glue? Thirdly. I also have some Jacaranda mimosifolia wood that i ripped into thick planks to practice on (suitable wood to play with is difficult to find here in south africa). This wood is very wet still. What is the best procedure to dry them? I have access to drying ovens used for botanical samples they are very large and you can adjust temperature as well as fan rate. Thanks!