and another guitar

[tzsteve]

this is what i have been working on for the last three weeks

i was offered some maple burl vaneer and as son as i saw it this idea came to mind

i would need a nice piece of timber to go with it and picked this up for £67 a nice lump of african mahogany

so i cut a slice of one side to make a neck then the remainder was cut into three short pieces that were cleaned up and glued side by side

so here`s the body blank with an mdf templete

next i needed to plane and sand it nice and flat and sort of square`ish

to help with sanding large pices of timber a piece of plastic pipe with some sandpaper glued to it is a help

this is my templete which will be screwed to the timber while i cut out the shape of the body

now ready to cut the guitar body

body cut out so then it`s onto a bit of sanding to get the edges square

now onto the neck i like to splice some other wood and carbon fiber into the neck

this is a simple sandwich of three pieces of walnut and a few sheets of carbon fiber matting the glue is araldite standard

plenty of clamps this helps to get any air out of the glued joint

the glued item ready for a little planing

and here is the wood ready for the neck

cut the neck roughly to shape

then a bit of shaping with rasps and sanding sticks

start working on the neck joint

now back to the body and a few holes etc need to be cut first for the pickups

and the hole in the back for the controls

now its time to start on the frett board

this is planed and sanded flat and the frett positions marked with pencil or a marking knife

so that i can work out where the inlays are going to be

using a few chisels etec the recesses for the inlays are cut out

being honest i did not cut these inlays myself as they are only £5 a set so out of two sets i managed to get one good set.

the inlays are glued in using araldite mixed with some black sanding dust and a little black paint dye

a little sanding and they look ok

now back to the body

i need to make a rebate around the front of the body to take a plastic strip

the guitar i`m copying does not have this feature as standard but i am going to put a veneer on the guitar front and this will tidy up the edges

simply a router fixed under a piece of mdf  this is my pin router

and it cuts a rebate like this

now back to the neck and its time to cut a little bit of decoration for the headstock

this is abalone if large pieces are needed it is simpler to just buy a piece a piece 20mm x 40mm is about £10

cutting the inlay is done by gluing a pice of the shell to some plywood then when th shaping is finished

the glue is separated by boiling the wood for a couple of minutes. and the cut out simply pulls away

this inlay usually takes about 5 hours to cut out

now back to the frett board

im ready to maark out and cut the slotts for the fretts

but first a trial run on some scrap hard wood

as the frett wire comes in different sizes i need to find the correct saw for tis job

the fretss at this stage are just tapped into the slots

later when the frett board is finished they have a little super glue or french polish dripped onto the ends of the frett slots

this helps to stop them coming loose 10 years in the future

the setup im using to cut these slots is simply a couple of V-blocks to guide the saw

and hey preto it looks like this

now the fretts are fitted

then the ends of the fretts are filed flat along the frett board

now to the veneer

to glue this i used some powdered resin glue

i put the guitar body on a piece of MDF on the kitchen floor

put the glue on the guitar body

then the veneer

and a bin bag on top of the veneer

this was followed by a flat piece of cloth

another piece of MDF

then six flag stones on top of this, as a weight

this was left for 36 hours

after drying the guitar front was trimmed using a sharp marking knife

now the guitar bining is fitted

this is ABS plastic so simple glues like balsa cement or airfix glue etc work well for this job

plenty of sticky tape is used and left inplace for a couple of hours.

now the hedastock  i decided to stay with the carbon fiber theme and glued 3 or 4 lyers of carbon fiber to the front

again it was araldite to the rescue

a little sanding and it looks like this

then the inlay is set into the front with the black araldite mix

back to the guitar neck and its time to fit the frett board and truss rod

the frett board is tidied up with a strip of ABS binding along the edge

and the binding is trimmed using a couple of files and sharp chissels etc

at this stage the neck has been fitted and im just gluing a small block at the back of the neck to tidy up the neck joint

[tzsteve]

this is the block in place and it just needs trimming

plenty of sanding

then time for the paint

a few coats of clear two pack

one coat with a little yellow mixed in

then a coat with a hint of red

the masking tape is to protect the binding

now the electric bits

i made 3 pick pickups

and used the two that i liked the sound of

this is my coil winding machine

the pickups i made had 5500 turns on each bobbin of 42 AWG wire ( thats about half the thickness of human hair )

the first pickups i made

the black one was replaced with another one with different magnets fitted

this is what the finished item looks like

the sound is very 60`s

think of the kinks, the stones, the trogs, etc

unique features  well yes a few

[mark]

A Master Luthier at work !

I can manage to change tuners or pickups on mine but that’s the limit.
Set up and intonation are a black art 😀

[henri]

whoah ,again i'm very impressed with the skill an work that you do ,looks great .H