SPRAYED !!!

I haven't posted in far too long. Since my last post I have sprayed my guitar with lacquer, sanded, and buffed. Then I decided I wasn't happy with the finish, so I re-sanded, re-lacquered, re-buffed. Then again I decided I wasn't happy with it. So I re-sanded, re-lacquered, re-buffed.......Yeah, you guessed it, still not happy. However, this time there was just a small spot to re-sand, re-lacquer, and rebuff. Each time i decide to improve the finish I had to wait for it to dry enough to sand and buff, so with that many attempts you can understand why I haven't posted in a while.

Today I buffed with a machine, then hand buffed. I know that by now you would assume that the finish is perfect. Well you would be wrong, it is not nearly perfect. I however am pleased with the finish and will consider it good.

Next is installing the electronics, I am eager to get on with my guitar. I want to see the finished project.

Ready to Spray

I finally had a free day to work on the guitar. I was able to get it ready to spray the lacquer. It is all sanded with 400 grit paper. The holes for the wiring of the electronics are drilled. I also drilled the holes for the bridge and the the tailpiece.

I am so excited to get this thing done, but today was too hot to spray by the time i got everything else finished. I wish at this point it was spray and play however, it is more like spray, wet sand, buff, install pickups, bridge, tailpiece, Re-cut the fret slots, install the frets, install the tuning machines, wire the pots and switch, install the strap buttons, shape the nut, install the nut,and the strings, tune, then play......whew, I'm kinda tired just thinkin about it.

Now I need to decide who I wall ask to play it for the first time. Tough decision.

Getting Closer

In the past few days I have been able to make a little progress. In fact, I am getting close to being able to start routing the holes for the pickups and stuff. Soon I can cut the neck to the correct width, shape the neck, install the fretboard, etc. The bummer is, not sure how much time I will have on Saturday to work on it. Oh well, it seems some other things are important too. Including an animated .gif for y'all. you will have to click this link tho.

WOW! Two posts in two days!

This morning I took the clamps off of the pieces i was gluing together and thought I'd post pics of them.

I still have the backs to glue on, the front and back pieces are curly cherry but the center is just regular cherry. So after some more sanding i will glue on the backs an then be on to the next steps including cutting the neck to the width of the fretboard and rounding the back of the neck to its shape.

I set the fretboard on just to see how it looks. It won't be attached until a later time.

Finally..Progress

Today was a nice day, not too hot and certainly not too cold. I was able to make significant progress today, I can only imagine how much I would have gotten finished if the glue dried instantly.

I was able to do the rough cutting on the neck giving it its basic shape, It still needs to be tapered to fit the fretboard and also have the back rounded.













After cutting the neck i was able to cut several of the pieces of the body and glue them together and start gluing them to the neck.




I was able to glue 1/2 of the body to the neck, the other 1/2 will have to wait. This is the part where I wish the glue was instant, waiting for the glue is something that I don't dare to rush. I would hate it if something came apart because of my impatience. So, even tho it is hard, I will wait, until it is safe to remove the clamps and glue the other side on.

It's starting to look something like a guitar :)

Dual Action Truss Rod install

I finished another part of the guitar. It isn't the most romantic or pretty piece, in fact you will never see it once the guitar is finished, it is hidden.

However, it is a vital part of the guitar, It is in the neck, it allows you to bend the neck in either direction to give the correct amount of string spacing. I am including a couple pics because I know you want to see it before it is covered by the fretboard.

I made my own router bit from a 1/4" router bit that I have laying around. As we all know, the slot needed to be 5.5 millimeters instead of the 1/4". A difference of approximately 3.4 hundreths of an inch. It doesn't seem like much however you want it snug to prevent and rattle. Also, there are several places where i put a drop of silicone in the groove, again, to prevent rattling. As you can see i protected the wood on the sides of the groove with tape before applying silicone because i want to make sure there is no residue on the wood when gluing the fretboard on.

I am glad to be done with this, now I am ready to start the shaping of the neck. Stay tuned.

Old and New Tools

I've been reading some other instrument builders blogs, some of them talk about the need to use spokeshaves and other ancient tools that builders in the past have used.


I think the only reason they want to use a spokeshave is so they can say " I used a spokeshave on this ". In my opinion, the only reason the old builders used spokshaves is because electricity hadn't been discovered yet. They were intelligent people, they would have used Dremel tools and belt sanders if they had the chance. True, many of them did beautiful work, but, todays builders do equal and better work using state of the art tools.

I remember years ago working for one of my first employers in the building trades. He was using a handsaw on a 6 inch x 24" beam. I asked him why he wasn't using power tools to do that. He replied that that was they way he learned in the old country and if it was good enough for them it was good enough for him. I found that terribly illogical, but, he was the boss and I let him do it.

Seems to me, that is like having something frozen that needs to be thawed,Not using a microwave oven, but building a fire out of logs because great-grandma did it that way. I will continue to use modern tools and will gladly let others turn up their nose because they used obsolete tools.

Answered Question

I have been slacking a little the last week. Not because i didn't want to work on my guitar but rather, HOW to work on my guitar when i needed a certain tool. I had an idea how the make the tool I needed because I am too cheap to buy a $45 tool to work on one guitar.

The problem is , when i tried making a prototype it was not working the way I wanted it to. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. It was driving me a little nuts to tell the truth.

This morning at about 5:30 I woke up and had the answer all figured out. It turns out that I was just being stupid and not looking at the problem from the right direction. I guess I do my best thinking while I am sleeping. Maybe I should write a list of stuff I need to figure out and read it before going to sleep.

I have no doubt that the answer I came up with will work, 'cause like I said, I was being stupid. But, if it's not correct, I will sleep on it.

exciting

I just found out today that a very good acquaintance of mine makes guitars. i knew he had a big Elvis collection, and plays guitar but didn't know he makes them too. Now i have a brain to pick.!!!!

Fretboard update mountains mostly complete

So, I got to work on the fretboard yesterday :). It still needs to be finished, recutting the slots for the frets to fit in etc.

Everything went well and I am eager to move on to the next step which will be cutting the neck and installing the fretboard on it, etc. Always eager to move on to the next step , makes me feel like progress is taking place.

I am including pics and video of what i worked on yesterday.

HOT Guitar

My friends in Texas probably think I am a wimp because I decided that my un-air conditioned shop (AKA messy garage) is tooooo hot to work in. However, I will wait till saturday morning when I can work on it in the cool of the day.

The Hills Are Alive !

The hills are alive, but not with the sound of music yet. They are alive because i have been cutting and sanding and fitting and routing them into the fretboard. I am liking the way they look, my theory is that if a can't make good music with the guitar, distract people with good looks. (Not mine, the guitar).

The picture shows white lines drawn on the fretboard, that is where the fretboard will actually be cut, it is narrower near the head than the body. While working on it it is much easier if it is the same width, i will cut the angle at a later time.

I used tiny drips of craft glue to temporarily tack the mountains in place after they were fit together. I was very surprised that the glue was strong enough to actually rip off a little of the wood from the mountain backs a little later when I removed them. My wife said she wasn't surprised...it seems I should have asked her opinion. :)



A couple of things.. when you use a router on ebony wood, you make a lot of black dust. I bought a plunge router attachment for my Dremel tool. The router attachment is awesome for $29 and i would gladly spend the money again, it is nice and light, it has a clear base so you can see what you are doing. I can see many uses for it in the future. Not heavy duty enough for all uses but for light duty and detail, much nicer than a full sized router.

Starting the mountain design

I had hoped to start cutting the mountain scene on the fretboard last Saturday. However, that didn't work out so I started today.

I got the mountains cut but need to do a lot of fine sanding to make them fit together perfectly. Once they are fit, they will be inlayed into the fretboard, but they need to be a very nice fit or it will not look very nice.

Oh yeah, I have almost all of my materials now, the only things i am missing are things I will purchase locally.

I am including some pics so you can see the start of my mountain scene and also some of the parts that I will be using.

Yay! Parts are trickling in

Today was exciting, got some components in for my guitar. I got the dual action truss rod, the pots and the 5-way switch and the wiring instructions. Oh Yeah, I also got the nut. I am getting very eager for the rest of the stuff to arrive.

My Neck Thru Guitar Build: My Pretty Neck

My Neck Thru Guitar Build: My Pretty Neck: "So, today I glued my neck..No, not the one hooked to my body. I glued five pieces of wood together for my guitar neck, I think it is going ..."

My Pretty Neck

So, today I glued my neck..No, not the one hooked to my body. I glued five pieces of wood together for my guitar neck, I think it is going to look awesome. I used a combination of three different woods, I think they look great together.

I thought it sounded like a really good idea to use a four inch foam roller brush to apply the glue, however, I think that squirting the glue on and spreading it with a popscicle stick would have been just as good, if not better. Oh well, I had the foam roller already so it was no loss.

After gluing up the boards I decided to make a homemade fretboard sander, i made a ten inch radius sanding board, was a very easy project and very accurate.

I'm very eager to take the clamps off tomorrow and clean off the glue and true up the boards. Then if I understand correctly, I need to start on my fretboard..woohoo, fun fun fun.

When Is More, Less?

I was thinking today, "How do you know where to stop with pretties?".
For instance, i have noticed that a lot of guitars have one or two f-holes. An f-hole is a hole through a musical instrument to let sound out. It is not required on a solid body electric guitar because the sound comes from the pick-ups. However, I think they look kinda cool. How do you know what looks best? One f-hole, two f-holes? When is something added a good thing, and at what point does it become a bad thing? I don't think that 3 , or 7 f-holes would look good. Is that just 'cause I have never seen it?

Michelangelo's Statue of David is nude, but Leonardo's Mona Lisa is clothed, would they be as good of art if she were naked and David were clothed? Are they famous simply because of the artist? my mind is cluttered..

more on pretties later

Decisions 05/25/2011

I find it hard to imagine that I want to make a guitar. I mean I don't play a guitar and am not even sure that I will want to learn when I am done. Three of my kids play but that doesn't help me. However, I have made a violin, I don't play that either. For me, I guess the main thing is the art of it. I know it will look great but it would be nice if it sounds good too. Not knowing how to play kind of limits me. So I have been studying online for bits and pieces of knowledge, hoping that some will rub off on me.

I now know a lot of terms, Humbucker, hardtail bridge, nuts, frets and on and on and on. So many decisions to make about wood and finish and hardware.

Thankfully, today I was able to talk to a tech at a guitar store. He and I talked about a lot of things. What I gathered most from our talk was this, it really probably does not matter a whole lot in the long run, because I am not doing this for a specific purpose. I am not going to play in a band, make recordings, or even play in a coffee shop, I am just doing it for fun and will have a nice playable guitar regardless of my choices.

I do have my plans, a neckthru design, I also picked the wood I am going to use.. please join me on my journey.

loren