sounds like Johnny needs to make himself a steam bending rig...
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DIY Guitar Messing About (2 Viewers)
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Have been working with boiling water.. works in principle, but tricky with 3mm mahogany as it snaps on the longer bends. Have ordered some 1.5mm which will bend easier and then I can laminate.
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Template a Rama. Now have router templates for 4 types of pickups. Particularly happy with the p90 one as that has to be more or less bang on
not a guitar; planing and sanding what will be a coffee table for my mother. though i could make an unfeasibly heavy guitar body this way.
Looking good - you managed to dry it without it cracking?
bizarrely, yes. it had been dead standing, perhaps that allowed it to season somewhat before it was taken down.
how do you plane something like that without tearing- do you follow the ring pattern (ie go round in circles rather than horizontally?)
it had actually cupped slightly - the side i was doing there is the concave side, i figured it'd be easier to plane. i was generally planing from the centre out, simply because it was kinda easier. i don't think the direction i planed was making much difference; no matter which way you plane, the grain is perpendicular.
it's elm, so not exactly soft. i think that's been sitting in the shed since last summer, not quite two inches thick - so should dry quickly enough, as the end grain is exposed on two sides.
it's elm, so not exactly soft. i think that's been sitting in the shed since last summer, not quite two inches thick - so should dry quickly enough, as the end grain is exposed on two sides.
got the router sled out and knocked nearly 10mm off the thickness - and it is hard work on the router, going through elm endgrain, i had to sharpen the router bit two or three times, it was clearly blunting and causing tearout. slathered a coat of danish oil on it after planing and sanding, and it drank it up - but it seems to have taken some of the contrast out of the wood:
i'd been humming and hawing a bit about bringing it indoors (it's been in the shed for nine months) before applying a finish, in case the wood moved after bringing it indoors. but my reasoning in the end was apply the finish, which will be multiple coats of danish oil on each side, and that will slow any further drying once it gets indoors, which should hopefully reduce any cracking or warping.
yeah theres some drinking up going on there for sure
Slowly coming together. I made the neck block out of pine in the end (just a piece of mahogany sheet to bring it to level of the sides) which I may regret structurally if not tonally.
The small matter of a neck next
The small matter of a neck next
that's very cool; and it's just the glue join which is holding the shape the way the jig set it? i've never tried gluing like that.
Yeah - I failed to bend the 3mm stuff, so I instead got some 1.5mm, bent two strips and laminated them together in the form.
Then trimmed and planed them to the desired size, glued them together atop the tail block.
Then made the neck block to fit, and glued and clamped it using a very basic jig invoking the off cuts from the side of the neck block.
I’ve since remade the neck block from teak and mahogany, as I made a number of mistakes with the pine one structurally.
Ideally I should have a form for the whole thing in which all gluing would take place, but being me I’m just making shit up as I go along!
i still haven't started my next build; other stuff in the way but i'm still vacillating over how to construct the neck. also need to google to find out how thick a standard fretboard is, would be a pain in the ass to have to hand sand a couple of mm off an already formed fretboard. or worse, to have made it too thin.
Most are in the 5-7mm range. Once you’re in that ball park you can compensate else where.
In the stuff I’ve built - which have all used hard tail plate bridges like a tele, I’ve aimed for the fret board to be between 9-11mm above the body at the heel when fitted. (I’ve also either angled the heel or the neck pocket so there’s a fall of about 1mm over the length of the pocket/mortise).
Regardless of relative sizes of heel, fretboard etc - this is the critical measurement as it determines how playable the guitar is.
So unless you’re wildly deviating from spec, you’ll probably be grand
cheers - i was half tempted to buy something like this, and use it to base it off, and either use for the hardware, or sell off afterwards.
Thats not the worst idea in the world - as you'd almost certainly be able to sell the striped body and next as a project.
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