1st build

WantzChas · 2009-05-17T15:36:03+00:00

I'm seriously considering to start a guitar build during my June holidays. I have had the idea for 2years now and have done a lot of reading and research. I would like to use the forum as a base for information I might need and inputs on my design, ideas and in the process of building it. I have no idea on what wood I want to use. What indegineous wood will work on a guitar, anyone had experience? I currenlty have 2 designs I'm working from. Don't know which one I'm building yet. I'm looking for a full bodied tone, think PRS tone. Ok number 1 is what I call the "Lovechild". Was bored one day and came up with this: The other is just a normal Schecter Ultra Classic (I like the body shape). http://www.flickr.com/photos/78494170@N00/2518683138/

WantzChas

Maple planks (I have three 1,2m planks)

The Imbuya piece

The Mahogony piece (930mm x 310mm x 45mm)

WantzChas

Ok, I did some more work today. I started with the templates.

Here is the rescaled paper template on my guitar. I think it looks amazing. I printed it over 6pages (actually just printed on 5 of them) and it worked out to be the exact size. I printed out the picture as is and measured the outermost points. I them worked out the % it had to be increased and printed it on MS Paint.

Wooden template next to the paper template.

Gearhead

Imho there's no need to smooth out the paper curvatures: you will work from coarse to smooth on the body itself anyway. Plus, whether you're going to saw the body contour with a bandsaw or a jigsaw, you will not be able to follow the template perfectly so you need to give yourself a couple of mm slack anyway.

I can't see the body centreline on the template; also your body blank does not have a glue line in the centre. Later in the build, when you will be cutting out pickup cavities, neck pockets and drilling bridge studs, you will really really need a centreline.

WantzChas

I made the template so that it will fit my body blank perfectly. It is 310mm wide which is about the width of my blank. That is why I rescaled the body. I'm going to do the center lines, pickup cutouts and maybe the neck pocket cutout (out of the template of course) today and try to finish most of the top body template today. Then the back body template tomorrow.

WantzChas

WantzChas wrote I made the template so that it will fit my body blank perfectly. It is 310mm wide which is about the width of my blank.

Aparantly not. It is not going to fit. So I'm left with 3 choices.

1.) Cut 2 pieces out of the Mahogany and glue them together for a 2 piece body and waste a lot of precious wood.
2.) Cut the blank in half and add another strip of wood, maybe maple, walnut etc between the Mahogany for a sandwich
3.) Built the guitar with a neck through.

I'm currently leaning towards #3. What challenges does this present as to a bolt on neck? Will I go a bit over my head doing a neck through on a first build?

Gearhead

Neck through has the disadvantage of having to do some operations to the whole guitar instead of to only the body / neck:
- saw and sand contour of body;
- thickness and plane body;
- shape neck;
- finish.
Most of this is not so bad when you're doing everything manually (which is harder than using machines) but it gets cumbersome when using thinknesser/planers, bench routers, band saws etcetera.

The other downside is (assuming you do not have a thicknesser wide enough to do the whole guitar ?) that you will have to find a good way of getting both the centre piece and the 'wings' flat and square. If you don't, the top/back will not be flat and give you a whole new challenge. My advice would be to rout the faces to be glued (in fact I would advise to machine all faces to be glued).

The final issue is with the neck angle - not a problem with Fender-style flat top electrics but if you're going for a Les Paul style 2-5 degree neck angle you need to get it right before glueing on the fretboard.

On the upside: neck through guitars do not have a neck pocket ?

Are you sure you can't glue on the pieces of the body blank that you saw off, to get the outline? This would require for the blank to be as wide as (the guitar width minus the cutout width). IfyeknowwhotImean. If so, rout the outer edges square and straight before sawing the outline!

WantzChas

Cant I pre cut the neck part to lign up with the thickness of the wings? The wings/body is allready thick enough and doesn't need to be thicknessed.

Gearhead

The thickness is not the real issue; the alignment is. In general if you glue up two parts and you don't take off a bit, you will see the glue line even when finishing opaque. If the edges are not square to the face, the flatness of your new face will be a couple of millimetres very quickly (with thickness to width ratio of 1:10 things go out of flat fast).
Of course you can mask with a lot of sanding sealer, but that affects tone. Of course you can sand with a flat object, but different woods sand at a different rate and you will have a hard time getting things flat. The planer is the only thing that really helps. It can be done but would not voluntarily hand plane something significantly wider than a planer, especially with the lekker cross grain mahogany tends to have.

If you were to rout the edge square, cut off and glue on parts of the same wood (more so if you have a very flat table to glue on) you can get away with taking off only a couple of tenths, possible with sanding. That's why this is first choice.

If going for a neck through, leave the centre piece thicker than the wings on both sides. That way, you can plane the centre using the wings as a reference.
You would need to get the edges square and straight though. Glueing will also be a bit of a pain since you want to get the wings level with each other. Conclusion: you will wind up planing either top or bottom as well.

To be completely clear: I am a perfectionist when it comes to woodwork and I am not trying to put you off. It would just be better if you got a guitar that you can really be proud of for years....

WantzChas

I get what you are saying. Thanks for the advice and I apreciate you guys bearing with me, but I don't want to screw up this lovely wood. I sanded the wood blanks a bit and wiped it down with a damp cloth. The Imbuia is really beautiful.

Here is some quick photos I took with me phone
Mahogany,

Imbuia, note the difference to the first photos,

And now for the master plan,

I was thinking of making a sandwich with the Mahagony and Imbuia.

EDIT: Is it just me or is the Mahagany very light coloured?

Gearhead

There are cracks in your Imbuia piece, which is a bit of a nono for structural parts like necks and bodies. If you do not know how deep the crack goes, either glue it up (hard) or cut it off. You did get it cheaply :-\
Edit: the mahogany will darken a lot when finished. To predict this effect, I always wet the wood locally with a sponge (don't try this on thin/small pieces!).

Very often you will see a neck through consisting of different pieces of wood. The theory behind this is that every piece of wood bends and longer slender ones obviously more than short wide ones. Every time you machine the wood, every time the weather changes and over time the piece will try to make its grains go straight. By glueing up different pieces so the grains face like () or )( you can stop this (putting on lacquer also does as long as you completely seal the wood).
The thing to do here is to have a look at which way the grain goes through your Imbuia. You may need to sand/plane until it is more clear to avoid getting confused by the saw marks. Grain direction in guitar parts is almost always along the centreline.

You could also consider glueing the Imbuia in the centre of your guitar and still go for a set/bolt-on neck. Depends on what you are looking for tonally (can't say what Imbuia bodies sound like, sorry).

I would say the further away from the bridge and neck, the less the wood influences tone. In other words, you might use pieces of offcut on the extremes of the body without changing the character of the guitar. It would force you to go for the opaque finish or for the sunburst.

WantzChas

Gearhead wrote You could also consider glueing the Imbuia in the centre of your guitar and still go for a set/bolt-on neck. Depends on what you are looking for tonally (can't say what Imbuia bodies sound like, sorry).

This is what I was thinking. I'm going to sand it down more and see where that leaves me. I noticed the cracks, but I'm sure I'll be able to get a crackless piece out that will fit the dimensions I require. The set neck idea was, well just an idea and I know now that I should rather stick to bolt on.

I'm NOT going to paint this a solid colour (color). I've seem to get a real liking to opaque finishes and will likely stain the wood and maybe do a busrt finish. Will test multiple techniques on off cuts and see what I like best.

I will definately check with you before cutting any wood to confront the grain issue. I've read that Imbuya is tonally a lot similar to Walnut, "Tonally, Imbuya is comparable to walnut. It provides sparkling trebles and a warm midrange."

WantzChas

Today I phoned Woodstock, a carpentry shop in Centurion, to find out whether they can cut and plane three small pieces of wood for me. The salesperson said that they can quickly fit it in with some of the other projects. He quoted me R40 to cut and plane 3 small planks, small compared to what they work with quantity wise anyway.

Not willing to pay that I decided to saw the planks myself with a jigsaw, yes it is possible and no it didn't burn out, handled the 50mm thick Mahagony like a breeze. The trick in using a jigsaw for this kind of work is to go REALLY REALLY slow.

Jig put together with ladders, plank and other strange stuff, was really stable.

Close up,

With the template other it, not quite sure what I'm going to use in the middel. Leaning towards the Imbuia,

The end result I'm currently (before Gearhead's reply LOL) aiming at doing, Mahogany-Imbuia-Mahogany and maple fret board. The Imbuia piece wide enough so the neck pocket will be cut out entirely from the Imbuia. I think it will be stronger this way.

Manfred-Klose

Are you going to plane it with a hand plane? the sides that you are going to glue, mahogany-imbuia-mahogany?
So that there wont be any unwanted open spaces in the wood.

WantzChas

Probably going to be machine planed. A friend said that he might be able to get it planed for free, but I'm more than willing to pay for it to be planed. That Mahogany is a lot heavier than I thought.

WantzChas

Heya guys. Long time since an update, but there is a few on the way. Gearhead was in Pretoria over the weekend and stopped by to give some advice and a helping hand, which was more than helpful. He planed the Imbuia and routed the glue faces on both my Mahogany blanks square. Obviously I can't show enough gratitude towards him for the amount of effort.

The routing process:

After routing:

Still need to get the Imbuia nice and straight at this point:

Rig to do sand the Imbuia straight:

This morning I however discovered that the Imbuia has a lot more cracks than I initially could see, sanding prevails a lot. I sawed what I thought was the best part of the Imbuia to be used, but can now see why the guy at the timber yard gave it to me for free. I'm not quite happy with all the cracks and will definately be more comfartable using another specimen for the laminate between the Mahogany pieces. Will drive over to the timber yard in the week and see if a can of Coke can help the workers to find me a better piece. Will also scavenge for off cuts.

The other Mahogany blank, with fuzzy lines so it stands out a bit. Not quite happy yet with the lines on it. The curves seem awkward.

If I don't find a good piece of wood for the original body's center laminate, the M-I-M, I'm going to rather wait a bit and use it for a future project.

Please fire away.

Manfred-Klose

Try a piece of maple in the center? or maby a other piece of mahogany or even sapele.

MikeM

The middle piece will count for most of your tonal qualities so I vote get some walnut or something ? If you can, whatever it is, something that'll compliment the pups + mahogony.

WantzChas

I will definately get another piece for Body A, but in the mean while I think I should go with Body B while I try and find another speciman for the center laminate for Body A.

Gearhead

Way to go Wantz, cracks are tone killers. I say don't let the 'ideal' centrepiece get in the way of finishing your build, go for the other blank first. Wanting to build too good a guitar straight away is imho the biggest threat to the amateur luthier. After all, how many great sounding guitars have a fancy-wood centrepiece?
This same perfectionism will keep you pondering over those outline curves. My vote is to not look at the body halves too much, just focus on the shape of the template. It is more balanced. Maybe even sand the template smooth first and 'air guitar' with the mirror. Then scribe it on and cut it out!

Wizard

I'm thinking of using this as my first build
http://www.papertoys.com/guitar.htm

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