D_W

Saving the front of this maybe to make a parlor guitar in the future. Resawing a billet like this takes about 25 minutes. If you're in a hurry, that's a long time. If you're not (I'm not), it's not so bad. And the two pieces after resawing: Dense wood, so I was shooting for a final thickness (guessing at this point) a little less than a typical telecaster (the first guitar I built was a cherry telecaster type, so I had dimensions in mind.

The start of this build was picking spruce or pine, and I was hoping for a guitar that had some resonance and sort of gave you a tickle while playing it. I'm new to building, but have played off and on and play unplugged a lot. Cheaper lighter guitars tend to be nicer to play unplugged. I found this spruce billet on ebay for $50 (which I could hardly believe) and while it doesn't have the even grain of a good acoustic, it's pretty even for an electric guitar. And heavy. About as heavy as cherry - well above the general top end of sitka density (+15% or so? Enough that it's noticeable). I no longer have a bandsaw, but even if I did, the one I had could resaw only 12 1/4 inches and I felt like I was always fighting it for wander. So for this relatively large billet, surface jointed flat and then smoothed (smoothed only to test the quality of the surface off the plane -I was told by several people that you couldn't plane it cleanly, but it was fine). . then start the resaw with a shop made frame saw (you can see my one power tool purchase since starting to build guitars. I found one of the rigid OSS sanders locally. After my experience with mid grade larger tools (not good), I'm surprised how well it works for something you can find used for $100. ::

I don't usually do a good job of taking pictures, but I've got some pictures from various stages of this build that i"ll see if I can sort out over the next couple of days. I did have a "normal" shop at one point but am just not organized enough for a regular power tool setup. It seems like I'm generally tripping over something or cutting something 1/4th too narrow, or whatever, so I sold my large TS years ago, then I sold my bandsaw about two years ago and have been slowly figuring out how to get some productivity without them. I do have a couple of portable tools, and the drum sander that I located used locally that I thought I'd never have because I hate sanding (have had asthma since childhood and call me cheap, but on larger projects - I built my kitchen cabinets - it just drives me up a wall throwing away tons of sandpaper that's gotten spent when i work faster with planes and a scraper. I have much respect for guys who get along with power tools - they just work faster than my brain and I get into ruining stock and having trouble planning. I figure most guys who can really get good accurate power tool setups are the types of folks who also keep neat files at work and have a spotless organized closet in their bedroom. The only place I got in trouble on this guitar is the rout between the two pickup routs - a holder on the router bit bearing came loose, wandered, and I hogged a bunch of the template and that cavity got large. Thank goodness it's hidden and relatively meaningless, but a good lesson for a guy like me who doesn't use power tools much now - everything has a learning curve, and you've got to build familiarity with your tools no matter what they are.

Thanks, and all good points with other potential elements. Making tool handles (mostly planes) is a good primer for contours on the neck and peghead, shaping a fingerboard, etc, from flat stock and sawing in the frets slots with a dovetail saw, but some of the more machine related things, like inside curves that are 90 degrees to the top of the guitar (or, I guess the entire body is like that) aren't what someone working with hand tools would design. I don't know how fast i'll progress, but I'd like to figure out smart design that is more hand tool oriented (biased off of square one direction or another with compound chamfers or curves to hide imperfect squareness by choosing other proportions. I am only 90% good at design, though - in that I can make something that doesn't quite look good in terms of a collection of design elements, but only know that the last 10% looks bad - without knowing how to make it look good. I have worked almost entirely by hand for years now, so it's been a learning experience to buy sanding drums (i don't usually even sand - usually plane and scrape) to speed up the tight inside curve work and get it clean and then use a router to cut control cavities. That's not necessary so much as some of the other things. I had some trouble trying to cut the binding channel by hand on my first guitar and am trying to come up with a design of hand tool that will cut as cleanly as the router does. I am not good with power tools, so I always feel like I'm risking disaster when using them. (it does play well - but that's thanks to leo fender mostly, I think - it's a good easy design to start with. My experience with hand tools and building tools puts me further along than the average builder would be on their second guitar - I do not have a gift for good work, just some good experience that transfers over to guitars and hope that more experience will mean better guitars as they get more complicated and unique. I'm kind of excited to have finally found a forum that focuses on building, as i tend to get off track in forums that are less on topic.

Thanks! It takes a good eye to see that in these two pictures!! I'm still cutting my teeth on this stuff. I like tortoise, but finding binding and a pickguard that are identical was more than I could come up with. The dots are just cherry, same as the neck. They'll darken over time, but the look is kind of funny for a traditionalist. I guess fender or someone made telecaster style guitars with a spruce top, but none solid spruce. I like the spruce, but sourcing it inexpensively and dealing with chipout in strong cutting machines could be a problem. Spruce is usually light, but this one is dense and the whole guitar is around 8 pounds.

Love the sculpting. Makes an otherwise machine-made pattern (the tele) guitar look like one that's got a lot more humanity in it.

Picture from the other side. Also, I'm looking to make a few les paul specials but haven't been able to find good full size plans for the side neck profile (working by hand, it's nice to lay out the roughing cuts well to save work). If anyone knows of any, please let me know where I can look. I'm OK with taking measurements off of a guitar in hand if necessary, but plans are nicer to use so that I can make a pattern to mark stock.

My first post. I've been looking for a guitar builder's forum, as I always end up getting banned/timeouts from forums that direct traffic to general topic areas. This is my second guitar. I'm a hobby tool maker and a friend of mine was a professional toolmaker and instrument maker and got me into guitars (played when I was younger for a decade, and playing again now). This guitar is a spruce telecaster type, sitka - solid (not chambered or veneer) with binding and a pine/dammar/turpentine varnish that I made (I don't think I'll do that again on a guitar - I didn't use any artificial driers and it takes a very long time for it to cure if weather on the weekends doesn't provide sunlight without birdcrap or rain). Neck is cherry, fingerboard is maple, pickups are a duncan combination (can't remember exactly which - quarter pound maybe - I haven't been keeping my hardware in order because it's sort of an afterthought - I like about anything good, low or high output, whatever, I can live with it). The switch is a 4-way type, and the jack plate i'm sure is not correct for a telecaster, but i like that type. My gimmick is that I'm working almost entirely by hand (it's easier for me) and don't really have much useful in the way of power tools. Outer profile and pickup cavity/binding channel I do with a router, but not much else sees electricity - not even resawing or most drilling. Generally happy with this guitar save the nit of the dark spot at the bottom - it's chipout and the binding crept into the chip area - I'll fix it sometime maybe. Staying away from power tools in general probably means that I'll build fewer and less spectacular guitars than most on here.