Guitar plans?

kornfreak007

Where do one download guitar plans?
Is it free?
Legal?
Do i just copy from another guitar?
Hmmm...where do i start?

Manfred-Klose

Reminds me of a scene from karate kid:

"Concentrate daniel son, you must focus"

The best way is to put the guitar on piece of paper and trace, there is some free plans that i found on the net, but none of them are any good.

This is where the fun part of guitar building starts, the quest begins.............

What plan are you looking for?
I'll check with what i have.

MikeM

Plans are handy, but like Manfred said, take em with a pinch of salt.

Just compared my tele to a template, slight differences, up to 7/8mm at worst. But a good starting point.

Dude, if you're looking for plans, don't even THINK of starting. There's TONS more research to do.

AlanRatcliffe

You'll find that the commercial plans available from places like the Guild of American Luthiers (http://luth.org/plans/bp.htm) or The Musical Instrument Makers Forum (https://secure.mimf.com/order.htm) are better.

There is a lot of variance between plans for things like Strats and Teles, because there is a big difference between examples from Fender themselves, so it depends not only on the plans being accurate copies, but on the guitar itself being copied.

Gearhead

Another way would be to go straight from guitar to template. You roughly cut a piece of perspex or supawood of 3-4mm thickness to the shape you want to copy. Then, stick it with double sided tape onto the body you want to copy. Obviously you will need to put masking tape on the sides of the body if you want to keep using it. Put an 'upcopy' router bit in the router and run it around. Before taking your new template off you might want to mark the centerline of the guitar on it.

What no router? Forget guitar building altogether or get a good one, you'll need it. Don't want to use a template? That's fine if you want to build just one guitar or you don't need the second one to be too much like the first. It's just that very little people make just one guitar.

If you must work from a drawing, note that the hardest part is making the template smooth enough without leaving little wobbles. It's better left a little too big to smooth out the body itself then to sand into the template too deep, since the body is thicker and will sand off more slowly.

Gearhead

MikeM wrote: Dude, if you're looking for plans, don't even THINK of starting. There's TONS more research to do.

Agreed, the best tip is to leave the wood in your shop (acclimatising) until you've bought ALL parts for the guitar. ALL. Otherwise, you'll end up having too large pickup cavities, bridge holes, nut slots etc. for the hardware you get. It all looks alike but the are no standards.