meatloaf

Neither can I but I'm going to be too busy working on my sons bathroom to do anymore work on the guitar for a few weeks.

On Wednesday my paint arrived so took the plunge and got set up to paint, I had the body sanded and it looked good and I had practised using a rattle can on some scrap the day before. So with a little apprehension I laid on the first coat of base coat all the while trying to remember all the things I had read about rattle can spraying. It went very well so I then spent the rest of the day spraying, I've never spent so much time clock watching and that 15 minutes between coats seemed to take forever, After I finished the last base coat I had some lunch as I had to wait a whole hour before I could start laying down the colour, at first I thought the wrong colour was in the can as it looked more purple than blue but as I looked at it from a different angle it was blue, spent the afternoon laying on more colour coats, lots of thin coats so lots of 15 minute waits but the end result was good with no runs. Yesterday I put on the 2k clear coats which went well except for one run but that should sand off when I do the finnishing went it has cured properly.

Thanks for those comments guys, I must admit I used that wood because it was an offcut that's been kicking around for years ( although I might not have used It if I knew about the health risks of beech) I know that making an electric guitar body is not rocket science but I have very little experience in woodwork and this project is to test my skills and learn as I progress, the aim from the start was to try and make a guitar to the best of my abilities. So far I'm very pleased with results but I now move into more uncharted waters - the finish but at least if I screw that up I can take it back to bare wood and try again.

Decided to round off the edges the old school way - using my vintage spoke shave which was given to me over 30 years ago, it did need a bit of a sharpen but then was ready to go. Then it was time to use it to start shaping the body, ran my belt sander over it to get the rough shape and finished off by hand to get yhe final shape. Then the whole body was sanded using 120, 180 and 360 grit sandpaper after several hours of sanding my arms and fingers told me that they had had enough so after cleaning up went iI ndoorsand and thought it would be a good idea to make sure everthing went togrther. The weather forecast for tomorrow is dry so maybe the final sand.

?

I learn from my mistakes or better still I try to learn from other peoples mistakes and I know that some have found out the hard way when their template was ruined. I was planning to do so sanding today but its raining so that will have to wait for another day. I did manage to clear some space in my garage so that I could use my much neglected press drill, After a lot of carefull measuring and double checking I drilled all the holes for the neck, bridge and pickguard. I haven't used this drill for over 20 years

I have had a busy couple of days, yesterday I finished the body template, it took ages getting the cavity cut outs in the right place and I had to reshape the outline at the bottom as when I put the pickguard in position the shape was all wrong, then I made a template for the neck cut out using the neck as a pattern. From these masters I made working copies using some off cuts of pine that I had laying around. I also manged to cut out the body using a jig saw, I was really crap at that and had to finish off with my belt sander. Had to make it double thickness as my router bit for the cavities is rather long. today I started routing. Halfway through cutting neck pocket, taken off top template ready to take to final depth Using this bit to route round body, scared the crap out of me, sounded like a jet engine when it span up Body routing finished -- well nearly I fogot the cavity for the jack socket . All in all quite pleased with how it turned out, really pleased that I spent so much time getting the edges of the tempates smooth it's going too save so much time sanding the edges. You can't see it in this photo but I did manage to tear out quite a big chunck out of the bottom horn, it will mean reshaping the horn and the pickguard a little, you guys will notice but most won't ( I hope )

Oh man I must have been day dreamimg again. I used to leave the UK 2 or 3 times a year to somewhere hot and sunny but due to circumstances I have'nt been out of the uk for 5 years and now I'm really starting to miss lazing about on the beach with a rum and coke in my hand.

Thanks for the warning, I did'nt know that., I always use dust extraction when routing and a new mask is now top of my shopping list of things to get before I starting working on the beach.

And there was me thinking it would be a first.

Hi guys and girls ? I've been thinking of trying to build a guitar for a while, done a lot of reading and looked at many forums and found that this one. I'm not very experienced in woodwork and know very little about electric guitars but have got a few tools including a router a rather crude router table that I made myself a cheap jigsaw and a cheap belt sander as well as chisles screwdrivers etc.# Looking at the cost of suitable wood put me off starting as I thought that I would propably screw up big time so I thought about using an offcut of wooden kitchen worktop thats been lying around since I refitted my daughters kitchen several years ago. I think it's beech, I know it's not normally used for guitar bodies but it cost me nothing and if I do screw up I'll have some more firwood. I have ordered the hardware that I need including a neck ( no way I'm going to make my own ) I don't have any blue prints so I borrowed my sons cheapo strat copy so I could make a template of the body. it's not perfect but it's a starting point and I will refine it before I use it. I wasn't sure about posting this build as it will probably be nowhere near as good as the other builds here but hopefully will not embarrass me too much.

Hi @Norris, I have just joined this forum and have enjoyed reading this thread and I must say that I am very impressed with this project, You say this your first guitar build, well it certainly doesn't look like it, brilliant work can't wait to see the finished guitar.