Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Alright, my first build thread! So about 5 years ago my father in law helped a friend cut down a claro walnut tree and was able to keep all the lumber from it. He kept the choicest parts, milled them and then let them dry for a couple years. It's seriously some of the most beautiful wood I've seen and made me rescind my dislike for walnut. He's almost out now, but I made him keep a bit of crotch wood for a guitar top for me, so this is what the project is all about. I love LP style guitars, but since I'm working with some not-so-traditional woods here, I decided to go a little bit off the beaten path and hollow the sucker out. I can't tell if I want to keep it a flat top (I was thinking Special originally, but the vision is constantly changing) or do some contouring to the top as it's about 9/16" and looks to have enough material for it. Keep in mind that my next build will be a '59 reproduction with maple and mahogany, so it's not like this is the only chance I'll have. Plus, my last build ( This project also started as a means for gutting this thing: which was a cheap plywood guitar I used back in my grunge phase in high school. I had fun with it, but it's time to put it down. If you're jonzin' for constant updates, you're going to be really let down-- I can only really work on this in my FIL's shop, which is about 40 minutes from here, and I don't get over there every week, so unfortunately updates will be sparse. Sorry. Alright, on to the build. Here's the plan: 1959 LP plans that I'm basing it off of, so the standard 24.75 scale, TOM bridge, 4 knobs, 3 & 3. 5-piece neck laminate of curly maple, sipo and walnut strips. 5-piece body wood laminate of sipo, walnut and thin maple strips. P-90's I got from Fatdawg, which are the ones he uses on all his imports. I have no idea what they are, but I like the sound of them. I did two mockup's in Kisekae, first in chrome: Then in gold: I can't decide what I want, but I'm leaning towards gold as I don't have a guitar with gold hardware and the richness of the wood lends itself to the gold I think. What do you think? So here's the neck wood, which I'd already joined and planed a while back. Sipo in the center, walnut strips and some beautiful maple on the sides. That's the maple I'll be using for my next LP build. I'll be getting to the neck construction in the next week or two while I wait for an order from stewmac with some binding and whatnot. Here's the fretboard. I bought it pre-radiused and cut as this will be my first neck build and I'm a little scared to tackle too much new material all at one time. I think it's beautiful though and will go good with the look of the walnut cap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Pics of the body. Here's after I've joined the sipo, maple strips and walnut together. It's a bit plain, but it's the back so I'm alright with that. My father in law's shop only has a 14" planer, so we've been racking our brains trying to figure out how to plane larger pieces. I came over a couple weeks ago and he had made this: Disregard the spelling (he's notoriously bad, so much so that it's funny), he assures me that he's a guud spelur. Underneath: in between: It works wonderfully well and is super quick and easy to use. Here he is taking a pass on the body: Here's the result-- nice and smooth and very flat: My wife is also a teacher, and she had this stuff left over from a project that's like a big sheet of see-through plastic film with adhesive on the back. So I took it and traced the plans onto it and slapped it onto the body like so. Works pretty well. I don't know the name of this stuff, but if anyone needs it I can ask my wife. As you can see on the lower bout, I'm a bit too narrow, but I'm not the biggest stickler so I'm just going to glue on two scraps to the ends and call it that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 And like you saw in the last pic, let the holes commence. I've decided to go the AJC way and hog out a whole bunch of the material with a forstner bit first, then clean up the rest. For those of you who don't know what a forstner bit is, this is one of the ones I used (I didn't know until about a year ago) First I'll take out the holes that go all the way through the body for the controls and switches. You can see the blue line around the edge at 1/2", which is where I'll be hollowing the puppy out. Then I start just ripping away You will not believe how much material is taken from a body when you do this. I was utterly amazed. Here's the drill press about halfway through: I then went ahead with a router and plunge bit and kind of cleaned up the insides, removing a bit more from the bottom. This is all freehand, so excuse the lines, but it's going to be capped off so I don't really care what it looks like. The back wood is now about 1/4" thick. That's a bit shallower than I was planning on, but it'll still work and tapping it brings about all sorts of great tones. I'm really starting to look forward to this! Now to cut it to shape. First on the bandsaw, leaving about 3/8" clearance around it Then get to work on the disc sander and drum sander. I'm getting it right up to the line as this will be my guide for cutting the top cap with a following router bit when they're joined. And here we have the body with the plastic plans off. You can see I accidentally touched the router to the rim over by where your leg goes, but it doesn't go all the way to the edge, so it's not really a concern to us: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Now on to the walnut. Here's what we wound up with after hacking out a bookmatch. You'll notice it's not really all that well matched because we unfortunately took out a ton of material while splitting the piece on account of we don't really have any good way to do a resaw. His bandsaw isn't big enough and while we have a friend that "might" be able to do it, he apparently borked up another friends $150 piece of maple with a resaw, so I'm not trusting him. I think for the next project I'll have to look around for some local hired help. Anyway, this is what we came out with. Looks kinda phallic, which I guess is good for a balls-out rock and roll machine: Here's a closeup of some of the flame. I think it's actually a tough decision when you have a large piece like this to decide where you're taking the piece from as you have to throw away so much good wood. I might be able to salvage some of it for another piece like the cavity cover, but I've got even better wood for that. Kinda tough. Here's us deciding where to take from, eventually deciding that the upper one would get the most of that beautiful flame wood in the lower bout. And the cut There's no pics of the glue-up as there were to axis that we had to worry about (center seam and cap to body) so we worked in a hurry, but you've seen it before-- dab some glue down, spread it out and clamp. Here's the final torture device: One thing I'm a little worried about is that in the time since we bookmatched the top to the time we did this, it had been a month and the wood had warped a little bit. I would have thought that 5 years time would be enough drying to settle the wood completely, but let this be a less to you all: if you resaw a cap, glue it on soon after because if you use figured wood, it's most often from a high-stress area of the tree that will settle more after the process. For the most part, the seams looked good like this and this But there is this seam, which I'm concerned about: As you can see the glue didn't bead out completely and it looks like there's a small gap there (though the pencil makes it look a little bigger). If need be, perhaps we can just run some more glue in the joint and clamp it down with a vice in that spot, though structurally I'm convinced it's fine. Perhaps that's more cause for binding. So that's it for now. My FIL took it out of the clamps yesterday and called me up on the pone while knocking it, saying "Can ya hear how resonant it sounds?!" but until this weekend, I'm away from it. Here's the questions I'd love to flesh out with you guys: *Binding or no binding. I wasn't originally planning on it, but it doesn't look to hard, it may make it look nicer and that joint seems to be calling for some cover up. *Inlays on the fretboard or no? I've got some old red abalone shells that the tenants of the house before me left out back, about 12 in all, that are just absolutely beautiful. I've been playing around with how to machine them and I've practice inlayed a couple pieces onto some of my tools, but I'm hesitant to bling this guitar out. Might make it look cheese-dick. What do you think? *Gold or chrome? *Flat topped "special" without the pickguard or carved top? Thanks for looking and I'll keep everyone updated. Oh yeah, this is only my second non-PartsCaster build, and as AJC always states, if I can do it so can you. This is one hell of a fun hobby and I highly recommend everyone start their own builds too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Elias Graves Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Chrome hardware. I like this very much. Carry on. EG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members B4z1k Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Awesome thread Looking forward to more. Subscribing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members The Bear Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Very nice work.I'll be following this one.Look forward for more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuitarNoobie Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 great thread !!! keep up the good work... i vote chrome, no pickguard, with binding... have to see the red abalone up against your fretboard to decide on that.... tell your FIL to take a picture and email it to you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members datru Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 I'm in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 great thread !!! keep up the good work... i vote chrome, no pickguard, with binding... have to see the red abalone up against your fretboard to decide on that.... tell your FIL to take a picture and email it to you While he's an ace in the shop, I don't think that's in the realm of an easy job for him, so we'll just have to wait and see.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BG76 Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 great job! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 great job! That means a lot coming from you. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 7, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 i vote chrome, no pickguard, with binding... Oh yeah, and by no pickguard, do you mean keep it a flattop, or did you mean arched without a pickguard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members fullmetalguitar Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Cool. I love looking at these build threads. Keep us updated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuitarNoobie Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Oh yeah, and by no pickguard, do you mean keep it a flattop, or did you mean arched without a pickguard? either way... just let that figured walnut show... just my .02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members littlemilo Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 Nice work so far. This will be interesting to follow. My vote is chrome hardware, no binding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members magnido45 Posted July 7, 2009 Members Share Posted July 7, 2009 arched w/ f-hole=AWESOME!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dmerge Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 I would wait on the inlays. Give it a chance without them first as you can always add them later. Regardless of what you choose - This will be a beautiful build! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JMR Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 arched or flat... hmmm, I'm not sure Gold F-hole Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hellion_213 Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 That is an Amazing build man! Looking forward to the next set of pics! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members axegrinder Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 I hope you are carving the top. I vote black hardware, and no F-hole. AND I am jealous. If you are in SF, does that mean he's in Marin Co.? A shop teacher with 10 fingers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deafinoneear Posted July 8, 2009 Author Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 I hope you are carving the top. I vote black hardware, and no F-hole. AND I am jealous. If you are in SF, does that mean he's in Marin Co.? A shop teacher with 10 fingers? Yeah, 10 whole fingers after 30 years of service! Pretty cool. He actually just retired from the Benicia school district. I think I'm with you on no f-hole, but definitely not black hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members axegrinder Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 It's just that shiney stuff detracts from the natural mineral patterns of the wood grain...IMHO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members VOS Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 I cant think of a better thread for my first post here...... BEAUTIFUL work ! I cant wait for the follow ups and the final product..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GreatDane Posted July 8, 2009 Members Share Posted July 8, 2009 nickel or chrome hardware. would love to see the inlays (what about oval-shaped? nice and unique but still classy and understated; a twist on the LP Special dot inlays). i'd do an arched top (no F hole). no pickguard. binding would be lovely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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