Guitar No2 WIP - Im on a roll now.

[Kalimna]

Greetings folks,
Having had a certain amount of enjoyment building the first guitar, before I had finished it I made a start on the second one. This was to be slightly different, and upping the 'Eeeeek' factor a little too with regards to "How on earth am I going to do that?". The inspiration behind the guitar was from a collection of posts on MIMF (American luthiery forum) by a chap making semi-hollowbody guitars. The second inspiration was the fortuitous accumulation of reclaimed university workshop bench tops (engineering, not woodworking), the timber being labelled as afromosia. I figured that if I make a hash of the project, I will have spent very little as the afromosia cost a couple of car journeys worth of diesel.

Right then, on with the project.

The idea was to use the same external shape of my previous 'model', and hollow out the inside. Not in the manner of an archtop (carved or laminated), rather taking two slabs and routing away most of the inside then gluing together. The pictures explain better than my words, but it is a sort of clam-shell approach. Electrics are to be provided by 3 single coils (again a set from Bareknuckle), hardware Gotoh 510 series, a glued in neck (noting angle issues this time) of indian rosewood (sliced off from a billet intended to produce one neck, I decided to use a scarfed join at the headstock and this way will get 3 necks instead of 1) with a locally sourced laburnum fingerboard of 22 frets.

Here are a couple of samples of the wood as I received it. The thicker slab shows reasonably good QS, but also evidence of bench vice and years of engineering detritus. The cut away corners on the thick slab are there because I couldnt work out a way to remove the screws that were protruding from underneath. It was only after taking a couple of layers of grime away from the top did I notice the doweling used to conceal the screw holes from above. Sneaky.
I made very good use of a scrub plane to clear most of the muck, following up with swipes from a 5 1/2 or 6. At this point I would like to say what an absolute pineapple this afromosia is to plane - you may get an idea from some of the photos - from the interlocked grain to the (I think) silica deposits that blunt the blade from across the garage. I am lucky enough to have a second hand Performax drum sander from eBay a few years back, and I made very good use of it to thickness and remove planing tearout.

A view of the rear, showing off some nice figuring in the wood. beeswing? Now, here is an example of my first mistake, a variation on a theme of "measure twice, cut once". Somehow, despite double checking and labelling each side of the timber blank for orientation, I went on and routed out the internal cavities on the wrong side (for both the original front and back). There were two options - 1) build guitar as if it were left-handed (but I didnt like the aesthetics of the horns that way around) or 2) build it back-to-front. The second option was the better, I felt. The only reason I had originally gone for the other way around was visual.

The front, showing the f-holes (mostly of a visual nature and not really playing the same role as those found on acoustic instruments, i.e. sound distribution) and a faint outline of internal routing and pickup placement. By now, it has obviously been glued back and front together, and the three-piece front is not as nice to look at as the bookmatched rear. I was parrticularly pleased that I managed to resaw, with very little wastage, this timber. Thank you SIP and Tuffsaws.

With a garish purple rough overlay of where the internal cavities lay, with a central block hollowed out from the rear (shaded pinkish red) that will house the pickups mounted directly on the front. I am making this overly difficult, I feel.

Moving onto the neck, heres the rosewood blank marked out and ready to be sawn.

Headstock scarf joint cut and tidied up with a handplane (I think I used a Clifton 6 here, despite the size difference, the Clifton cut nicely on this timber)

Once glued up, I checked the neck (with the stacked heel too) with my scale-length rule. And here is my second mistake. The end of the neck should sit at about where the 25-26th fret would be. Not the 20th. Damn you, measure twice rule!

Please see following post for resolution to this problem

 

[Kalimna]

To sort out the short neck, I glued up another stacked block to the end of the neck, and since the rosewood would be buried in the afromosia body anyyway, that is what I used. The trickiest bit here was squaring up the butt join section. I felt that even though far from perfect, there would be very little stress on that part of the neck, so I would get away with it.

Moving on a little, I used the test-piece of laburnum I practiced fret-cutting for the first guitar on as the fretboard. It was kept in orientation with a couple of pre-drilled nails and a full length clamping caul whilst the glue set. You can see a nice bit of seep-out. What you may not notice here is that I have already tapered the neck using a 25" scale template and bearing-guided straight router bit. When ready to do so, I shall use the tapered neck as a template for the same router cutter to trim the fingerboard to taper also.

Close up of the headstock with wings glued on.

Close up of the heel, showing the added section

Close up of the fingerboard

Absolutely nothing to do with making a guitar, but a warning to those who leave a freshly baked chocolate muffin and 9 month old baby in the same room.

Here is the template I used to rout out the internal cavities. It is merely flipped over in use between routing out the top and the bottom blanks. This way, in theory everything should meet up nicely when glued. It worked OK, but I think I need to devise a registering device for the next build, simillar to that employed for the fingerboard.

The two internally routed body blank halves. A lot of routing, and a lot of dust. I really should invest in a proper filtered mask. The central block is quite evident here, but I shall be routing away most of that from the rear when I come to work on the pickup cavity. The reasoning behind doing it this way rather than mounting the pickups from the front is that I prefer the cleaner lines of single coils not having a mounting ring. The eagle eyed amongst you might notice the intended error in the handwritten date.... Out of interest, the f-holes were routed using a 1/4" straight bit in a makita laminate trimmer, the shank providing the bearing surface guided by the template. Making the template was a time-consuming introduction to the joys of a coping saw and those Liogier rasps came in handy again.

And lastly for now, a photo of the intended top (now the back) showing a lovely bookmatched pattern.

So far, this has progressed a little quicker than the first guitar, mostly because I am a little more familiar with the procedures, but also because I dont have to make any new jigs this time around!
The mistakes mentioned so far I think have been covered up OK, but the main concern I now have is that there isnt going to be a great deal of timber mass around the neck join. To compensate, I will try and join the neck a little lower down the fretboard. I think it will be enough. Also, for the rear pickup cavity rout to go as planned, I need to devise a way of registering accurately the internal cavity template on the rear.

As always, please feel free to make comments, suggestions, criticisms of any nature...

Thanks for looking,
Adam

 

[JakeS]

Also, for the rear pickup cavity rout to go as planned, I need to devise a way of registering accurately the internal cavity template on the rear.

I'm next to clueless about guitars, but it looks nice so far!

For the rear cavity, could you not:

- put a few bits of double-sided tape on the template you used for the main cavity - in the middle and around the edges
- place the blank back-down on the template, lining it up with the outline you have drawn on (assuming that's accurate)
- turn the whole thing over carefully to avoid the tape becoming unstuck and allowing movement
- trace around the internal part of the rear cavity wall on the back of the guitar
- remove the template, and then use the traced lines to align the rear-cavity template

?

Perhaps, once the internal-wall part is traced on, then freehand another line 10mm (or whatever clearance you want to ensure) around the inside of that line, so that when you place down the rear-cavity template you can see through the hole whether you're encroaching upon that 10mm-clearance line anywhere.

 

[MARK.B.]

Ya gotta love a chocolate muffin :wink:
looking forward to seeing the finished piece (guitar that is not muffin )

 

[jimmy rivers]

Great WIP...looking forward to more and in particular some neck shaping and layout tips. Any recommended readings for those considering a build? ...my concerns are the mechanics and functionality and how to get that right.

Cheers Jim

 

[JonnyD]

Great WIP...looking forward to more and in particular some neck shaping and layout tips. Any recommended readings for those considering a build? ...my concerns are the mechanics and functionality and how to get that right.

Cheers Jim

Guitar looking good. I've been working my way through make your own electric guitar by Melvyn Hiscock and it seems to cover most aspects of the build. I hope to start on 2 les Paul jrs soon.

Cheers

Jon

 

[MickCheese]

That is looking really good.

Keep up the pictures.

Mick

 

[Kalimna]

Thanks for the kind words, folks

Now that I've used up all my annual leave in my garage, I won't be able to make as rapid progress, but I do have some more pictures I'll get posted up tonight.

To answer a couple of questions :
I have changed my pickup-mounting solution to routing the pickup socket from the front and using mounting rings. Not as elegant for single coils, but much less headache also. Having said that, I think a locating pin centred on the internal routing jig and part of the "central block" of the top and back should do the trick. This would be placed approximately in the middle of a pickup hole to be routed away later in the build. Not dissimilar to using a couple of pins to locate the fingerboard during glue up.
Books I would recommend are the two Hiscock ones (acoustic and electric) and the Cumpiano & Natelson acoustic book (even if you have no intention of building an acoustic, their explanation of processes and hand/power ways of doing things is the best out there). Melvyn Hiscocks books are written with a wonderful sense of humour, but are somewhat light on how to achieve certain processes, and rather liight on the reasoning behind design choices and ways of achieving them. I also have Kochs' book, which is an excellent, alternative approach and well worth reading in concert with Hiscock. Benedettos archtop book is a source of marvellous inspiration, but not, I think, of much practical use to a beginner.
Beyond books, the MIMF has many very knowledgable contributors, without whom by first build would not have happened. And the Guild of American Luthiers has a website and large list of publications that are well worth looking at.
Regarding neck carving and other layout aspects, I shall try and explain with photos, as I'm not too good at describing! But I would say that one thing missing from every book I have browsed on the subject is a one-two page summary of important dimensions, positions, shapes etc.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[Kalimna]

Rightyo then, here are a few more pictures and a little discussion on the latest aspects of my current build. The body has been finish-sanded and is awaiting some coats of Tru-Oil (to be applied in a similar manner to first attempt - i.e. not pore filled, though the afromosia does not seem to have visible pores anyway, unlike the padouk), the neck nearly shaped as I would like it to be (not sure how to finish though, I like the feel of 'plain' rosewood, so a little thought to be done there) but still awaiting frets. Nearly all of the hardware has arrived (still waiting for the pickup rings), and Im still fretting over how to install the electrics through the f-holes.

First off, routing the neck pocket (and apologies if I am repeating info/detail from previous posts). There appear to be many ways of doing this, either making a dedicated template for each neck, routing the neck angle on either the neck itself or the bottom of the neck pocket or doing like I have done and arranging a few straight-edged pieces of timber (birch ply in this instance) to cut an accurate pocket. It can also be done with a hammer and chisel, but that way lies madness
The photo's arent the clearest, but essentially the idea is :
1) Clamp the neck onto the un-routed body in exactly the right spot, with regard to the bridge which is placed at the one end of the scale length (25" here), and the centre line. A centre line should always be kept visible on the body, either the glue line or pencil drawn, and kept accurate as several things use this as a datum. There s.hould also be a centre line marked on the neck to aid this.
2) Clamp two planks with their straight edges adjacent to the tapered, but uncarved, neck. (I use a cam clamp here, which seems to give plenty of clamping force).
3) Clamp a third plank (no requirement for straightness, and positioned directly underneath the two planks already clamped) to these two planks, in order to reduce any movement as the neck is removed later.
4) Clamp the two planks to the guitar body, nice and tight.
5) Clamp/DS tape a 4th piece (of same thickness as the two neck-planks) against the end of the neck, flat against the body. The fit does not have to be perfect, just allowing the bearing-guided router bit to move without dipping into the corners.
6) As you now have a 'copy' of the neck taper outlined by the 3 pieces of wood directly attached to the body, these can be used as a very accurate template to rout the neck pocket.
7) Remove neck from body and rout pocket to desired depth (20mm from memory, but might be wrong).

And from a different view

The neck angle can then be planed onto the end of the neck, and then the corners rounded over to match the neck pocket as so:

And the finished neck pocket. I have found that the neck needs a little fettling to fit the pocket, as it is fractionally over-size. This isnt a bad thing, I think, but might indicate that the cutter I am using has a slight taper along it's length.

A quick mock-up with the neck inserted into it's pocket

Not much to see, but routing out the pickup cavity. The template was easily made with a pencil outline of the single-coil pickup and baseplate, a coping saw, a forstner bit and a flat rasp.

The body finish-sanded to 600 grit, 3-single coil cavities routed and bridge holes drilled. I will drill the control holes later on.

For detail on the neck carving, please have a gander at the next post.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[Kalimna]

And now, the neck.

For the headstock veneer, I decided to use a bit of body-offcut which I bookmatched into two 2mm veneers, glued up using wedge clamps, thickness sanded and then glued to the headstock. Here is the glued up veneer and then glued to the headstock awaiting a coping saw trim. The final trim was done with either a fine rasp or a shaped sanding block.

in an attempt to be a little more accurate in my neck carving, I tried to copy an existing neck that I like by shaping some epoxy putty (Milliput) around the protected-by-clingfilm neck at discrete points (frets as numbered on the putty). This was only partially successful. The neck-shape templates worked. My ability to carve to them didnt. A little more practice perhaps.

To do the carving, the neck needs to be secured in some way. There are holding jigs that can be built or purchased to cradle the neck, but the method I use (though it seems a little basic and, at times, brutal) is that shown to me by a luthier (Mark Bailey) when I was at his guitar-building course. It simply consists of clamping the headstock to the corner of a bench and rasping away, in stages, the curved contour of the neck. Initial facets are rasped, followed by further facets, then reducing the neck depth to that required, then rounding off the facets with a long strip of sandpaper in a shoe-shine fashion. Of course, there are other ways, such as using a spokeshave and scraper, but this method is quick and relatively easy. Any finessing of the neck shape can then be done with fine rasps/sandpaper. At all stages, I found it essential to keep checking the neck depth with my cheap Maplin digital calipers, and also to check the straightness of the neck contours along its length with the stock of an engineers square. I think I have, once again, made the neck a little too shallow (though shouldnt be a problem with the rosewood) and flat-U shaped, but I am getting closer to what I want in my minds eye.
I have only sanded to about 180 grit so far, as there are a few lumps/blends to finesse out prior to finish sanding.

Also, note the tidy, uncluttered nature of my workspace , and the roughly-drawn pencil lines marking the centre of the neck (and therefore not to be touchedd in initial rasping), a depth-from-fingerboard limit, a rough blend around the heel, and neck-body-join outline.

Right then, that's it for now. As usual, please ask any questions (even if to reduce the length of these posts!), comments, criticisms and suggestions all welcome.
Cheers,
Adam

 

[Mike Wingate]

I really like your F-holes, nice. I used to shape necks in a similar way before I built this neck carving jig.

 

[stevenw1963]

Another cracking WIP

 

[Kalimna]

Mike - yep, I quite like the look of the f-holes too, but I think they could do with being narrowed a little. On this guitar, a purely aesthetic choice, but possibly too big had it been on a proper archtop. I hope this doesn't come across as too cheeky, but do you find a great benefit with your jig? Which, by the way, looks very well thought out - I particularly like the variable headstock angle support. I know the clamp-it-to-the-bench method works, and is cheap, but I am also always slightly worried that the neck will snap!

Steven - thanks

Adam

 

[devonwoody]

I'm into this one, I know how exacting you have to be making guitar and you are making a lovely job of this one.

 

[Kalimna]

Greetings again folks,
I know it has been a while since the last update, but this guitar has now been finished so here's the rest of the WIP As the larger portion of the work had been completed already, there probably wont be too much of interest here, but the end result isnt too shabby.

First, heres approximately where I left off, with the neck in it's shaped and sanded state. My intention was to have as thin a finish as possible for the rosewood, and having taken advice here and there, I settled on a couple of coats of tru-oil. I perhaps could have left no finish whatsoever on the neck, but I chickened out of that option. On the second photo, you will notice the blue masking tape. This was to allow me to finish the neck and body separately, and the masked area is that which will take the glue for the neck join. I slightly undercut the outer margin of the join, so as to keep a neater finish.

Here is a piccy of the body having had a couple of coats of tru-oil. The body cavity has been stuffed with kitchen roll in an attempt to keep the oil out. I think there are about 3 coats on by now. I put somewhere around 6-7 in total. To allow all-over oiling in one session, I DS taped a piece of ply to the neck pocket. I wasnt too worried about a little oil overspill into the pocket as the primary glueing area is on the base, and what little did go over the edge could be scraped back.

Glueing the neck to the body. An eek moment. Please notice the Mk1 Maclaren Guitar-o-matic holder too

No going back now. First look of the neck attached to body. Please also note the work of a 2 3/4 yr old decorator.

A close up of the rear. I do like the amber tones of the afromosia here - shame it isnt on the front as originaly intended. Whilst the upper neck is still quite nice to hold/play, I am a little unhappy with the sharper edges and lack of smoothing than I managed on my first build.

Getting set up to do the thoroughly tedious (and messy) job of 'doing the frets'. There are many aspects to building a guitar, and I think I can honestly say that this is the only one I dont enjoy. It is slow work, but utterly necessary. First I adjust the truss rod so that the neck is as straight as possible, then level the frets with some 320grit wet n dry spray-glued to some 1cm thick glass. With the experience (!) I now have, I think I will go to 600 grit as the 320 can be a bit aggressive. Marker pen to the top of the frets to check what still needs to be levelled. Then re-crowning with a fairly dismal re-crowning file (Mr Liogier if you are lilstening - how about some fret crowning files?) and chasing the frets up and down the neck until they are all nicely shaped and level. The fret ends, too, were bevelled and rounded off (though I should have taken more care here as they feel a little sharp in the hand).

Installing the tuners. Note to self - next time ensure that the pilot holes are big enough, and remember that rosewood is fairly dense and unforgiving.

And the fix - 30minute Z-Poxy mixed with rosewood dust.

Onto the next post for completion

 

[Kalimna]

And now the remainder of the WIP....

Sanded back and some more tru-oil applied. Now, here's another learning point - whilst tru-oil is not tricky to repair, it is awkward when you are looking for a relatively matt finish as each application increases the gloss (up to at least 10 coats based on my first guitar) and it is nigh on impossible to only apply oil to the patch you are repairing.

With the bridge, tuners and pickups installed it was time for the electronics. A couple of issues here, and all related to the nature of building a hollowbody. Essentially, there is no rear cavity within which to pack the wiring and allow easy access. Therefore, all the wires need to come out through the f-holes to be worked on, then put back in through the f-holes. The issues were :
1) The neck pickup wire wasnt long enough to go through the other two pickup cavities, into the body, out through the f-holes and still have enough length to be manipulated into a solderable position. I therefore added a length of wire to the end (you may be able to see the green-yellow insulating tape). This works, but feels messy.
2) Getting the damn gubbins back inside. Lengths of doubled-up cotton thread (didnt have anything else handy that was fine enough, but fishing line should do the trick) was fed through a particular control hole, out of the f-hole, tied around the variable resistors' screw thread, and used to pull the VR back through the f-hole and somehow manipulate the turn-y bit through the hole in the guitar body, whence the locking nut was screwed on. This is one reason why I only went for a master volume and master tone. The pickup selector switch could only be manipulated into position if the switch was in certain positions, and my fingers could *just* reach in through the f-holes to do this. Of course, the bits n bobs had to be inserted in a specific order to allow everything to fit.
3) As little of the electronics as possible was to be visible afterwards, through the f-holes.
4) I now have a much greater appreciation for anyone who builds an f-hole hollowbody electric guitar.

Everything soldered up and inside the body, with the exception of the jack socket. If you note the awl (I would like to offer as a drive-by, but there are no makers marks on it!), it is an excellent tool for separating the shielding on the jack socket wire you see poking out of the guitar. Rather than strip the shielding back completely, I use the awl to separate a few strands and pull the central core through, therefore leaving the integrity of the shielding pretty much intact.

Strings attached. Yay!

So, with the strings on, I plugged 'er in, and gosh darn it, it worked first time Sound wise pretty much what you might expect from a 3 single coil guitar, but with perhaps more ooomph than normal for a Strat. The inbetweeny nasal sounds are pure Knopfler, and cranked up distortion wise they are quite responsive to playing dynamics. Played unplugged, this guitar sounds completely different to my previous effort, whilst not exactly rivalling a true acoustic for volume levels, the f-holes and hollowbody certainly give some acoustic sound.The tone control doesnt do too much, however, and whilst I suspect that replacing the tone capacitor might ordinarily be an easy 5-minute fix, not so on this guitar.
As for playability, the neck is still a little too square, though the rosewood feels fabulous, and I think a few months down the line I will need to play around with the action (finesse the nut, any remaining fret buzz (of which there is virtually none anyway) sort out, adjust the bridge height) a little.

Overall I reckon this is quite an improvement over my first attempt. Whilst there are aesthetic issues that push me towards the padauk stripey body and rippled maple neck, the overall fit and level of care I think is better with this one.

As always, anyt questions please ask away. Any suggestions/comments/criticisms very welcome

Adam


p.s. My next WIP will be a pair of concert ukuleles And an archtop that has been sitting as a project with nothing done to it for about 6 years.

 

[MickCheese]

That looks fantastic.

And

If it plays well too that's got to be a bonus.

Mick

 

[stevenw1963]

Certainly is a good looking guitar Adam - another nice one.

Well done on another excellent WIP & finished result

 

[Trigs]

Nice, I'm a pro player and would happily play a gig with that fine looking axe. It's hard to come up with a totally new gtr design but that looks refreshing.

 

[Lee J]

whats this tool your using for pilot holes?