Ok, so feeling inspired after following this thread
http://www.guitarforum.co.za/setup-mods-and-repair/the-danish-oilmij-squiernaked-rebuild/ and being primarily an acoustic player, I figured I could live without my Squier Strat for a couple of days/weeks/months. I decided to embark upon a similar exercise and hope for the best, given my limited woodworking skills.
The "victim". My original, unedited Squier Strat.
I thought it would be prudent to photo-document how everything went together, just in case...
Once I had stripped all parts from the guitar, I began to formulate an action plan for sanding down the body to the bare wood and refinishing. Upon closer inspection, I soon realised that this was going to be a whole lot of sanding and there was no way to tell what the quality of the wood underneath the paint may be, chances are it wouldn't be all that great. Then it hit me; why not attempt to
make a new body for my guitar from a plank of wood? That way, while it may take a bit longer, it would certainly be more fun than hours and hours of sanding paint off the old body and I had the little bit of insurance that if I botched it up, I could always just put my old guitar back together again and remind myself that I'm not a carpenter by trade.
Armed with renewed enthusiasm for the project, I began researching various wood types, comparing density, colour and grain pattern. Eventually I settled on African Mahogany (
Khaya ivorensis), due to its slightly lighter weight compared to other hardwoods, availability and price. I organised a slab-cut plank 1400mm x 200mm x 50mm, with a plan to cut it in half and glue the two halves together side by side, ending up with a finished size of 700mm x 400mm x 50mm to shape my guitar from.
Unfortunately I only started snapping pics of the progress once I realised that this was actually a feasible task and not some silly idea.
I managed to download a scale plan of a 1962 Fender Strat which I decided to use for shaping the body, but for all the internal routing and mounting holes I referenced my original Squier Strat to ensure the parts would match up.
Planing the wood to the correct thickness and cutting out the shape went quite a bit quicker than what I had estimated, but the time consuming routing was still looming...
After the routing, it was time to shape the arm rest contour on the front (easy) and the curved contour on the back (not so easy). I basically marked them out from the 1962 Strat template and then went to work with the belt sander to remove most of the material, with the final shaping being done by hand.
Finally it was onto something I had been stressing about from first cut I made into that piece of wood; how was I going to finish the corners into a nice, uniform, smooth radius all the way around the body? I couldn't possibly do this by hand with a piece of sandpaper. As it turns out, there is router bit available specifically for this task, with a bearing on the bottom that literally rolls along the edge the wood while the bit cuts a uniform radius.
Note to self: Stress less. This part of the process took all of about half an hour to complete!
Then it's over to the wood finishing side of things. This part is requires a lot of patience in between applying finishing coats and sanding smooth with water paper, but it is also a really cool stage in the project where the wood grain "pops" and you start getting excited and thinking about plugging in a strumming a few chords on yer geetar!
And finally - the finished product you can plug in and play!
Is it an American Fender now? No, not even close.
Is it an improvement from the original Chinese-made Squier? With the new body and upgraded Tonerider pickups, heck yes!
From start to finish, the whole project took less than 2 weeks, working a few hours on the weekend and a hour or two in the evenings during the week. I really enjoyed this project and it definitely won't be my last, but for now I need to upgrade a few tools and organise a more suitable workshop area.
Next project: Acoustic guitar (This one may take a little longer...)
Thanks for reading!
