Guitar WIP - And so it begins

[Kalimna]

Greetings folks,
Here are some piccies of my long-gestating project to build my interpretation of Eddie Van Halens' Frankenstein guitar.
The body is padouk, with a selection of maple, walnut and indian rosewood stripes inlaid in 3/4" deep routed channels of various widths.
Unfortunately and due to, I suspect, the use of a crummy BnQ own brand router and cutters that came with it for some of the channels, I will have to do a wee bit of filling later on.
However, for now, the body blank is essentially complete, apart from marking out the various bits of kit (Bare Knuckle humbuckers, wraparound bridge, tone/vol/selector switch), neck pocket and carving/rounding on the top.
The neck I have started work on, but doesnt look anything other than a plank of wood yet. I bought a lovely piece of rippled maple which has either developed, or came with, a twist. So that was (hopefully) planed out today. I shall leave it for a few days in the house before marking/cutting out to make up the heel and head, just in case the twist returns. Hopefully I will get to post fairly regularly, but am not promising anything

I know there isnt much to look at so far, but I would be happy for any comments, good or bad And suggestions for anything luthierally related.

Cheers
Adam

The padouk blank glued up, with marked out positions for the stripes

The first channels cut, and strips glued in. I need more/longer reach clamps!

More gluing up - note the Warburtons toastie loaf wrapper - quite the most excellent paper for preventing glue sticking to clamps

A close up of one of the routed channels

The completed body blank

And the body roughly bandsawn out

 

[MickCheese]

Looking forward to this. Have played the guitar since I was 12 and still dreadful but enjoy it.

Mick

 

[xraymtb]

I'll second that. Its something I've thought about in the past but never got beyond the planning stages.

 

[AndyT]

That looks a lot more practical than assembling separate pieces without a backing board! Watching with interest.

 

[Steve Blackdog]

This is going to be fun. Please keep us posted.

Steve

 

[stevenw1963]

Am a bass player & always wanted to make my own so am watching this with keen interest.

Keep going, it's looking good

 

[Kalimna]

Thanks for the comments
Well, I certainly wont profess to being any better than strumming a couple of chords together, but I love playing guitars
Andy - indeed, a lot more practical. The only issue is that unless I marked things out very accurately, there is no way I could the stripes to match up all around the body by using a router, which is the reason I was originally going to do it by cutting the body up all the way through. However, given that I have gone through 5 sessions of routing, squaring, thicknessing, gluing and planing back just to get the body as it is so far, I reckon if I ever do this again I shall use the same process!
The only real holdback to me starting this project (well, apart from the actual getting-butt-into-gear-and-cutting-some-wood) has been working out how I will achieve the acccuracy required for the neck join. Ive read almost all the books available, and came to the conclusion that it is quite feasible and any problems just sort out when they arise rather than continue to overthink them....

Next job is to glue up the neck blank for the stacked heel and angled headstock. And cutting the fret slots and the rest of the fingerboard prep.

Cheers,
Adam

 

[Tom K]

Nice work if you get bogged down during the construction of this just try to remember..If you build it,they will strum.

 

[MickCheese]

I know there are a few guitar builders on here who gave me loads of advice when I was repairing a snapped guitar neck. I am convinced they will be along to help if you need any.

Mick

 

[Kalimna]

Greetings folks,
Here is part 2 of the EVH-a-like WIP...
I have now assembled the neck blank (stacked heel and scarf-jointed headstock), and also installed the truss rod.
A couple of issues have arisen :
1 - the neck blank was a little warped, and removing said warp out of a longish neck blank of rippled maple wasnt much fun. However, the trued-up blank remained flat over 2-3 days indoors, so I carried on
2 - I discovered that I used too much pressure with the g-clamps on the heel - I have left a faint dent/dimple where the clamping blocks were positioned. Most should be carved away, but Im not happy with it.
3 - Not enough distributed clamping pressure on the scarf joint led to a gap, later filled with cyano. Again, joint will be strengthened by headstock veneer and I am hoping wont be an issue.
4 - Messy carving at truss rod adjustment area.
5 - I managed to apply uneven clamping pressure (wooden cam-clamps) for the fillet covering the truss-rod to the extent that a dip appeared when the clamps were removed (possibly to just about see on one of the photos - the one with spuds in the background....) Whether this will be an issue or not I have no idea. There isnt actually much depth of fillet within the truss rod channel, so I am hoping not....

Anyway, I look forward to any comments/criticisms as usual

Adam

G-clamps good, but a little too much pressure applied

Scarf joint a slipped a little too

Truss-rod installed and fillet glued in. Note the dip in the fillet (purpleheart as I had some at nearly correct dimensions anyway) towards the headstock.

Messy truss-rod adjustment area. Might need to place a trussrod cover here

 

[whiskywill]

note the Warburtons toastie loaf wrapper - quite the most excellent paper for preventing glue sticking to clamp

I use the inner bag from an Aldi's cornflakes box.

 

[L2wis]

Great progress so far!!

 

[Kalimna]

Greetings all,
I have been lucky enough to get a fair bit of garage time recently, and have made a little progress on the guitar. So, here are some photo's of said progress. Essentially, jigs have been made, holes of varying size made, wood rasped away and caffeine consumed. A few issues/errors on the way, but it is starting to look like a guitar....

Wings glued on to the headstock. A lot of swearing as the clamps didnt play ball, what with non-ninety-degree angles. And tidying it up afterwards to ensure a flat surface for gluing headstock veneer was a royal pain.

Gratuitous photo of Bareknuckle Abraxas humbuckers. Not strictly woodworky, but an important part of the build

Various jigs - a fretwire bender, control cavity + matching cover (quite pleased about the fit achieved there) templates and a humbucker template with control-position holes

Setting up various straight-edged boards to act as a neck-pocket jig. This follows the method in Martin Koch's book, and I decided to have the neck angle on the neck itself rather than the neck pocket. Please excuse the mess on my bench....

A nice pocket was the result, and the neck required the merest whiff of a flat sanding block to allow a good fit. Beginning to look like a guitar

At this point I noticed that the guitar body felt a little unwieldy - here's a direct lay-over my Les Paul for comparison. Not much difference in the lower bout, but a fair bit on the horns, and not as waisted as the LP.

Perfect guitar building weather. Who needs humidity and temperature control?

Some more piccies to follow - apologies for the image heavy post......

Adam

 

[rileytoolworks]

No need for an apology.
Loving following this thread.
I'm afraid I have nothing constructive to say but it looks lovely.
All the best.
Adam.

 

[Kalimna]

To follow on from my above post, here are a few more images of the neck being worked on.
First up, fingerboard has been slotted, position markers glued in and radius being radiused. It may not come out too well on the image, but a big thanks goes out to a well known plane maker of these here parts.

Possibly the most 'eeeek' moment of the build so far. Taking a nice coarse rasp to the beautifully prepared neck and turning it from a squared taper to a rounded one.

As good a picture as I could get of the nearly - finished neck carve. I used a combination of a very coarse largish rasp, a couple of smaller and finer rasps, and plenty of 80-grit to obtain the shape. Frequent checking with both digital calipers (though not frequent enough, as it turned out), a straight edge and fingers to be sure of correct neck depth and no undulations/high/low spots. Unfortunately I think I have made the neck about 1-1.5mm too thin along it's length. I didnt carve through into the truss rod channel, and the profile is much flatter than the 'v' shape I was aiming for, so hopefully it will work...

So, altogether I am quite pleased with what has been done. The problems are several :
1) neck too thin
2) neck profile not quite right
3) body shape too big - I could have done something, but I couldnt find the right lines to fit within the wood that was left after I routed the body shape out.
4) a tiny 'wobble' when the nut is placed inbetween the fretboard and the headstock veneer.
5) first headstock veneer had a bird inlaid in various mother-of-pearls. I wasnt happy with it, and wasted pretty much a day (and small amount of cash) doing it.
6) I somehow misplaced a mark for drilling one of the control-knob holes. The jig I made is OK (I checked afterwards), but on the guitar is about 2mm out.
7) Whilst typing this post up, I remembered I hadnt drilled/glued in the side position markers. Hmmm.

Again, sorry for the long post with multiple images. As usual, I welcome any thoughts/suggestions/comments, both good or bad

Cheers,
Adam

 

[L2wis]

We like pics!! Great work with the rasp on the neck it looks good!!

 

[Kalimna]

Thanks Adam, Lewis The rasps (Liogier) were a joy to use, but the 80-grit was absolutely necessary to smooth things out (in fact, I went up to 600grit, and the finish is quite lovely apart from a small area at the heel). The neck does feel nice, but as mentioned, is a little flat in profile for me.

My main concern remains the neck. At the first fret the depth is 19mm, and 21.8mm at the 12th fret. The truss rod channel has a depth of around 12.5mm, with fretboard finished thickness of around 5mm. So, if there are any luthiers out there who could weigh in, I would really appreciate it regarding the neck........

Cheers,
Adam

 

[Mike Wingate]

You have some nice tools, plenty of clamps and the skill to use them. A really nice idea and build. But in Padauk it is going to be really heavy. I made an EVH Frankenstein many yeas ago for a customer and the body was made out of 2 laminations of MDF with plenty of paint to seal the surface and edges. It sustained well! Have you considered binding the body to conceal the inlays around the edge?

 

[stevenw1963]

Cracking WIP

 

[Kalimna]

Again, thanks for the comments
Mike - I do have some nice tools (dont think that the BS chisels made it as a drive by though ), but im not really sure that I have the skills to use them anywhere near their fullest yet. Clamps? Well, there are a few, but the Axi f-clamps arent the best at holding the clamping pressure unfortunately. I might have to replace some of them... As for doing a binding channel, well to be honest I hadnt thought of it as I initially wanted to have a carved effect around the edge, with the inlaid wood showing through. However, it is still an option that I'll think about as I havent finished carving the body yet.

Cheers,
Adam