Wizard
Hunted around locally for body woods.
Have found a piece of Alder that is 50mm x 330mm x 3,050mm for R 1,100.
This is enough to make 6 Strat bodies.
None of the wood shops are keen on selling a piece just the right size.
Would require them to cut a piece off the end of a plank.
On the plus side this allows you to stuff it up 5 times before you get it right
?
AlanRatcliffe
...or it'll let you make a half dozen blanks, keep the best for yourself and sell off the rest, covering a large part of your outlay. ?
Manfred-Klose
I'll take one body blank.
Wizard
Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
See? ?
The wise man's words cometh true once again.
Ok.
I'll see if I can order the wood this week.
Will get it planed by the shop to 44mm, and cut into 6 blanks.
Will report on progress.
MikeM
I'd say have it planed to 46 so you have a little extra thickness to work off throughout all the sanding ?
Just me experience.
Wizard
MikeM wrote:
I'd say have it planed to 46 so you have a little extra thickness to work off throughout all the sanding ?
Noted.
And plan adjusted accordingly.
djpauw
What will the asking price be for a blank?
When will they be available?
Put my name up for one tentatively...
Wizard
Hoping to organise it within about a week.
Your name is ticked djpauw.
One evil I have discovered about wood is that due to its size and weight, shipping costs can easily exceed the costs of the wood itself !!
I'll figure out the costs after I've bought it and had it machined.
From past experience you never know in advance how many pieces end up usable.
Once bought a plank of Madagascan Rosewood, only to find after it had been planed that it had a nice crack running end to end.
Fortunately I was making 50mm strips out of it so my loss wasn't as great as it could have been.
And yes ... the wood shops make you pay for it before they plane it ... ?
Wizard
Wood ordered.
Will hopefully get early next week.
Blanks will be approximately 46 x 320 x 500.
Bit of a worry on the width (since standard Strat is 324 I think) ... but is the widest piece they had.
Apparently Alder has become very popular, since people are using it as a cheaper alternative to Cherry.
Manfred-Klose
Lucky the super strat bodies i make is 315mm ?
djpauw
:-\
That's a little narrow....
I'll either have to look at building a different design or cancel...
Wizard
djpauw wrote:
:-\
That's a little narrow....
I'll either have to look at building a different design or cancel...
What width are you looking for?
Apparently it doesn't often come much wider than that ... which explains why there are more 2 piece bodies than 1 piece.
You could always take 2 blanks and glue them together
?
AlanRatcliffe
A Strat body width is 12-3/4" (323.85 mm). Narrower and it will make using a standard template difficult. To join two pieces will waste a lot of wood. I don't see a huge problem with a slightly downsized Strat body (2mm on either side) though for the advantage of having a one-piece.
Gearhead
Call me silly but I like the centerline a 2-piece blank gives you so I prefer to buy narrower pieces. It also lets you select the wood on other criteria such as straight evenly spaced grain and more dosse / more quartersawn.
@Alan: kindly explain why you prefer the one-piece please?
AlanRatcliffe
I have nothing against multi-piece bodies - as always, the defining factor is how it sounds, and I'll take a good-sounding two-piece over an indifferent sounding one-piece any day. Tonally, the end result is all that matters. I do think the two or more piece bodies must me slightly stiffer and have less resonance, but there is no real way of proving it. ...and anyway, for many players that is a desirable thing. I do know for sure that of the hundreds of bodies I have owned, two of three of the keepers have been one-piece.
Having said that, I like the continuous look of the one-piece, and it's comparative rarity makes it more valuable.
There is of course, nothing wrong with a good two-piece body - especially one bookmatched from a single thick blank. But with a two or more piece body there is a chance that you will get pieces that don't play nice together - particularly with mass-produced bodies which are often produced by joining random planks together then sawing them into blanks. Each piece of wood has it's own resonant tone, and if you happen to join two pieces of wood that resonate only a few hertz apart (IOW, they have dissonant tones), then that body may not sound as good as one made from pieces that are either matched or are harmonically related in tone. A one piece body at least is guaranteed to not have conflicting resonance. That doesn't mean that it will sound better.....just that it's a simpler model for resonance.
Wizard
The Alder is being delivered to my home tomorrow.
I've told them to plane it to 46mm ... but to keep it waney edged on the sides.
This will increase the chances of a particular blank making it width-wise to the critical 323.85mm ?
I also tried Tung Oil for the first time tonight ... on offcuts of maple and kiaat.
I like !!
AlanRatcliffe
Wizard wrote:
I also tried Tung Oil for the first time tonight ... on offcuts of maple and kiaat.
I like !!
You like now? Give it a chance to yellow a bit and you'll start seeing any figure
really pop. You can suntan it a bit to accelerate (leave in a sunny spot for a couple of days), but make sure to do it evenly.
Did you thin for your first coat? I find that the penetration of the first coat is what makes all the difference.
Wizard
Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
Did you thin for your first coat? I find that the penetration of the first coat is what makes all the difference.
No I didn't.
I did notice how thick it was relative to my usual Rustin's Danish Oil.
What should I thin it with?
I'll do the thinned version on a few more offcuts - will allow a comparison.
AlanRatcliffe
Ideally thin with mineral/white spirits (if you can't find at a hardware, art supply houses should have). Turps works fine, but smells for longer. You need to thin about 50% for your first penetrating coat, 25% for second and unthinned for third. Don't use a third coat if you are using it as a sealer for shellac and/or nitro.
