Building my second electric

Jan 2012

No updates for ages. This guitar was given to my dad for his Christmas present - it was his sixtieth last year. It's all finished. I'll get some pictures of it...

30th May 2011

Short update, just showing the grain pattern with some alcohol on the top.

Top grain

25th May 2011

Two updates today both told in pictures. Firstly the rough carve done free-hand underneath my router i sketched on the body where i wanted what depth and then went for it. Doesn't look too bad.

Roughed out

The second update is that i've now attacked it with sandpaper and elbow grease.

Smoothed out a bit

Not finished yet, but getting close. More soon.

15th May 2011

A few hours spent in the garage this weekend. My aim was to get the neck and pickup angles defined and hopefully get the neck and pickups routes cut. Well i did pretty well. The angles are done, after some maths they came out pretty much as expected, the neck needs to be 3deg off the pickups and i put the pickups angle at 1.5deg. So it all comes pretty close to the LP standard, not surprising really as the hardware and scale length all match and the angles are defined by these.

Anyway i used my router on rails to do the angles, after some trig and carefully placed wedges. Templates for the neck and the pickups were made and i managed to get the neck and one of the pups cut. The neck lines up nicely with the centre of the body.

Top view after the angles have been cut, brown area near neck has disappeared which is good.

Neck pocket and pickup cut.

Mock up with neck and single pup.

Picture of the back, it needs to be finish sanded but i think it's pretty.

It will be a whole week before i get to do much more but that's life.

May 2011

Get the chance to have a few quality hours in the garage. Body is now routed out and the top is flatted using my router table. The grain in the top now visible, the dark areas near the join should disappear when i take more material off for the curve - hopefully!

Body shaped

The router table i made to hold my 1/2inch plunge router. The router can be mounted underneath the table or on rails above the table. I can also use the rails and move the router along them, uses a guide bush to prevent me hitting said rails (ooch - Tungsten Carbide cutter running at 30,000rpm into steel hmmm). The base is a piece of 12mm aluminium tool plat salvaged out of a decommisioned scientific instrument. My extract system (yes it's a dyson) is shown in the background of the above and connected to the router using the router's extract mounting. When the router is mounted underneath the table i mount the extract near the cutter.

router table showing router above the table

One word about my extract system, i'm using a domestic dyson vacuum cleaner. This has a HEPA filter cutting out particles down to above 0.5micron which is important 'cause the 5-0.5um range is the most damaging to the lungs and a particle range that doesn't get extracted by the bag type wood extract systems. Qualitatively this makes a huge difference (and i mean huge) however i still use a personal respirator.

April 2011

Guitar now rough cut and figure on the back is now visible, but that's all i've got time fore now, more in a couple of weeks. I need to make a braket to connect my daughter's tag-along to my bike better than the current one which is at the wrong angle, so out comes the welding and metal working kit.

Rough cut, back

April 2011

Unconventionally i'm going to make this guitar out of Cherry. I don't really know what it will sound like but it's generally like Maple so i'd guess it should be quite bright. The Cherry was bought as a 2inch slab of wood, kiln dried and ragged edged. I have since stored it for a year and realised that it's not quite big enough to get a whole guitar out of the width. Anyway have some pictures of the bare wood.

Left hand side

Right hand side

Once i'd decided how to cut and join the wood to get the best grain, i joined and glued the two pieces needed. I used Titebond (the original stuff with a red label), this worked really nicely and when dry has seemingly formed a very good bond. I jointed the wood with a fore plane then sandpaper on granite (my plane isn't quite flat but i'm working on that).

Cherry being glued up

I'd decided to maximise the grain patterns (and avoiding some shakes and splits) which meant joining the outside of one piece to the inside of the other. I don't know if this is a bad idea but i guess i'll find out. Before i start routing the shape i need to make sure one of the surfaces is flat. For arbitrary reasons i decide to make the back flat. So i make a frame which is nice and square on a flat piece of board and my (little) router is mounted on another board which is then used to create a flat surface.

Frame around the body making the back flat

March 2011

I plan to build a Les Paul style guitar not only cause i think they look and sound cool, but also because it presents more challenge than my first guitar with the carved top and the angled neck. I'm still not planning to make a neck (yet!) therefore i've bought one, therefore i plan to bolt this neck on rather than the more traditional set neck.

Anyway let's have a quick look at my new workshop. We moved in the middle of last year and i've been tied up doing some DIY and setting up home. My new garage is bigger than my last one but is still jammed full of stuff as can be seen below.

Electronics, mostly

Woodstore, tools, bikes

Freezer, paints behind, some more tools

More tools and workspace

So it's fairly obvious that i have lots of stuff. But i play all sorts of games, not just guitar making and this garage has to store all the toys needed for them.