Asymmetrical V Guitar build! !!!New Stuff!!! (29-03-2010)

jingerwarrior · 2010-02-18T15:28:15+00:00

I Started building this guitar in November last year and finished it on the 2nd Feb this year. I built every thing from scratch except for the hardware of course. I will try and post as many pics as I possibly can. I photo-documented the entire build. Im so proud of him. He is called "Ukko" Enjoy! [img]http://

jingerwarrior

The size of the head as you see it on the practice model is too small however the wooden template next to it is the right size.

The wood that I used for the body and neck is African Padauk and the fingerboard is African Rosewood.
I obtained the wood from Country Woods in Malboro. They cut it into pieces my car could just handle. ?

jingerwarrior

The next step was to make the body. To do this I had to plane two sides perfectly parallel and perpendicular to each other, making sure the grain was also straight. These two pieces were then glued together using normal everyday cold glue. I used as many clamps as possible to ensure a perfect join with no glue line visible.

The last photo shows the two pieces glued.

*Note the small chip near the front of the guitar, this was routed away when doing the neck cavity.

jingerwarrior

After gluing and waiting just over a week, I decided to suck it up and cut out the body. :-[

This was done with a band saw and the result was awesome, the wood was brittle but it cut so easily. ?

Here is the body cut out with the fingerboard piece I had just plained roughly and all the hardware for the axe!
? ? ?

jingerwarrior

The next part of the process was to start the neck. I first made the neck head joint (15 degrees back) with two parallel pieces of wood.

This was glued and clamped and left over night.

Here is the neck with the angled back head, after gluing.

vic

Thanks so much for sharing with us. Congrats. Well done ! :applause:

Manfred-Klose

I must give it to you, you seem like a very organised guitar builder.

jingerwarrior

THe next thing to do was to add some meat to the head and cut out the final shape.

After that, I made a one way compression truss rod out of stainless steel with a metric 5 mm thread on the one end and an old school anchor on the other (90 degree bend).

At the same time whilst waiting for things to dry, I made the neck and pickup cavity router templates out of mdf.

jingerwarrior

The truss rod channel was then routed using a special jig I made that has a concave curve in it that matches the bend in the truss rod. Sorry I have no pics of the jig at present.

This is the truss rod in the channel.

A sliver of wood was then cut and planed to fit exactly into the channel with the negative of the truss rod curve.

jingerwarrior

The truss rod channel piece was then glued into the channel and planed down to just obove the top of the neck and scraped down to the appropriate height.

The neck and head templates were then stuck to their respective places with double sided tape and the final shape was routed, using a flush cutting router bit.

jingerwarrior

Next up, the fingerboard!

I cut the fret slots using my newly accquired fret saw and an engineers square.

Sorry about the newspaper article :-\

I then went on to rout the edge of the body using a half inch round bit set slightly lower to attain that slight lip you see all round the body.

Here is the body, neck and fingerboard. The nut is the blank I cut from giraffe bone.
*Notice the truss rod slot that has been filled.

Sean

Wow, what a valuable thread, thanks ?

jingerwarrior

Its a pleasure dude!! \m/

?

jingerwarrior

Oh hey, If anyone would like any customising done, maybe we could work something out?

What are the views of this?

jingerwarrior

The next practical step was to glue on the fingerboard. In order to do this, the exact placement of the nut must be determined and held in place so that the fingerboard can be pushed tightly against it.

After a lot of preperation and dry fitting the fingerboard can be glued on.

And there you have it!

jingerwarrior

The next thing to start doing was to sand the fingerboard to give it the 12 inch radius.

This was done using a special jig of the same radius. (Seen in the background)

The chalk crosses were drawn on to see the progress.

Here is the final sanded fingerboard on the neck.

jingerwarrior

After the fingerboard was finished, it was time to turn to the back of the head and the volute.

I sawed most of the material off using a band saw and did the rest with a rasp, files and a scraper.

The machine head holes were also drilled.

shaundtsl

Excellent stuff...

Explorerlover

"The chalk crosses were drawn on to see the progress."

Genius...probably straight foward, but I would never have thought of that

jingerwarrior

For the fretting, I used stainless steel fret wire from Lmii. The wire came in a roll and it turned out that the radius was perfect, so I just used it as is.

I bought a pair of flush cutters and reground them so that they would cut flush. (seen in pic)

The pieces of wire were tapped in with a hard rubber mallet as well as secured using a small amount of superglue before tapping in.

The wire was cut fractionally longer than needed so that the ends to do not stick up. The excess was cut off using the flush cutters. (Before cutting, the ends were pushed up to test the strength of the fit).

Skywalker

Bloody hell. I can't believe I missed this post.

Dude!!! Seriously cool looking axe 8) Most impressive.

I just bought a decent router( got sick of begging mates to lend me theirs :?) a week ago and am going to be messing around with stuff like this soon. Can't say that I've got the patience or skill to do the neck,fretboard and frets etc from scratch yet.
How long have you been building guitars? Did you teach yourself or just pick up tips and tricks etc?

Stunning work dude!

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