Danstinyexplorer

Strings on at last and sounding great

A few steps forward and we’re nearly there. The binding changed colour and the pickguard shrank a little. 
 I’m toying between the knobs shown here and doing some home made ebony ones with bone dots…

Thought I’d share this little gem I found. Whilst trawling eBay I found the perfect thing for making ebony knobs. Search for Rolling rule. They are a funky circular ruler that solicitors use for their ledger books etc. Some are quite costly but if you keep looking they can be a bargain. £8 inc postage bought me a couple of 12” x 1” long antique ebony circular roads. Absolutely perfect for cutting into knobs. For somebody without the luxury of a lathe they are great. 
most are ebony but I’ve seen a few in other dense heavy hardwoods. Some can be 9” x 1/2” some are 18” x 1  1/4”. 
Well worth checking out.

Making an ebony scratch plate. This came from a vintage dressing table set that has been sitting in an old dears bedroom for the last 100 years. It’s a nice way to buy a useful sized piece of ebony. 
 She needs a bit of final shaping, also I’m debating wether I should put a high polish on the ebony or leave it with more of a low shine . I think I’m leaning toward the latter.

The camera flash makes this stuff come alive!

Working on a truss rod cover. She has some rare earth magnets hidden inside so no screws needed. Going to do a neater one now I know the idea works, this one somehow turns it into Ming the Merciless’s guitar!

I fed her a splash of Osmo oil and she came to life

I got a bit more done. She’s starting to look like a guitar now

God only knows.......I suspect a sharp change of direction in the grain allowed it to tear. It matters not though as the smaller piece gives me a reason to build a ukulele somewhere down the line!

I had the use of a thicknesser for a while which was great until it tore half of my top in two. Had to use the standby piece instead, less pretty but a nice piece nonetheless.

The piece I was slicing up last year is the top and headstock veneer. That part is languishing under a load of dust in the attic. Hoping to get that cleaned up and stuck on in the next week or two

I’m finding this part tedious for some reason! 

Better start making the guts look pretty before I think about sticking a top on.....

She’s one big piece cut down the middle, flipped over and stick back together. I made a spine out of some kind of rosewood and some Victorian teak as it’s not the hardest lump of mahogany in the world. It did spend 80 years drying out above a fireplace though so it rings nicely. It’s heavily hollowed out so is getting fairly lightweight now. 
I think it will be a bit of a challenge getting everything perfectly true and flat with the tools I have but who doesn’t love an uphil struggle eh?

So I got round to doing a bit more.....

This little pup got rebirthed! 

The body shape got tweaked a little, made a pick guard, stuck a tone knob on, fitted a new fretboard and by pulling the bridge back a couple of inches and refretting it was able to turn it from a 19.5” scale to a 22” scale. 
I made a new bridge that is still having its design tweaked. I cleaned up the control cavity, insulated it better and sink the pickup a little deeper into the body. 
It sounds all twangy and nice now

That’s the one!

My bridge, pickup ring,  knobs, trussrod cover and control cover all landed this afternoon in the form of a fabulously busty fairly old ebony lady that came via eBay. After looking at the price of ebony in timber form it struck me that this is the best way for me to buy. Well seasoned, cheap, kinder on the forest and there’s a good chance its sale benefited a local person at its point of origin instead of a cruel logging company......that’s what I’d like to think anyway! Either way it’s 4lbs of rock hard ebony so I’m happy.

1 hour ago, Pointer28 said:

Jesus, that's a special kind of torture.

 It was horrible!

The piece was 25mm thick. I needed two pieces at roughly 10mm each. My head told me that by the time I’d got through it (bearing in mind my saw is about 2” longer than the timber) I’d have lost about 4 or 5mm through saw wander. As it transpired that’s just about how it ended up so happy days!

I’ve got one very pumped up shoulder and have passed about 3 pints of sweat. Need to sit down until October 

Ha!

A band saw would have been nice today!

This is hopefully going to be a tactile mellow sounding thing to pluck on the sofa. It’s an old piece of flamed mahogany which is going to be chopped up to make a book matched front, back and headstock piece. I’ve got a pillar drill, a router and a few basic hand tools and will be doing most of it on the kitchen table whilst the Mrs isn’t looking. 

Going to put my Bodging skills to the test and see if I can triumph over adversity and create something worth playing. I haven’t drawn anything up, I’m just going to see what the wood gives me! 

Here we go. Went black in the end and moved the position of the controls a little. Still needs some dots and a bit of finishing work on the frets. 

Fairly pleased how it turned out considering we don’t have an electric guitar in the house to use as reference!

4 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

One of my first builds was this same beautiful colour and I tried all sorts of colours for the pickguard...and to my surprise it was simple white that REALLY made the green/teal colour shine! Try it with a piece of white paper cut to shape in case it's the same here?

I drew out a template on a bit of white card to start with, it looked nice but I found myself wanting something a bit wild and wacky. You could be right though, I suppose there’s enough going on there for it to still be distinctive whilst maintaining an element of plainness.