Hardware! YAY!

Ugh, I have to get out of the habit of posting my work several days after I actually do it. Anyways, I was able to fix the problem with my guitar's bridge not fitting. Here's what I did:

 Some sawing and a cut later...

I sanded the post down so that it was flush with the body.

I then re-drilled the hole for the bridge hardware, and as you can see, the new hole is a little bit off of where the old hole was.

I re-installed the hardware, and played the guitar for a bit. I noticed that the action was a bit high. I couldn't do anything about it, though, because the bridge was already in its lowest position. Apparently tune-o-matic bridges are not meant to work with fender necks. To bring the strings closer to the fret board, I decided to drill some recesses in the body so that the bridge would sit down lower.

I pulled the hardware... again. I sanded down some more dowels and covered them in tape to keep them from spinning inside the holes. I proceeded to make recesses about 3/16" deep. I then reinstalled the hardware, but I forgot to take a photograph, so I'll update this post once I have another photo of the guitar.

You take a step forward, you take a step back.

Ok, so I got lazy. So here's two days of work in one post.

I took the body to my dad's work to sand the edges down to a smoother texture in prep for the final hand sanding.

This is an oscillating spindle sander. As the spindle rotates, it moves up and down to create a perfectly even sanding job. I had to move quickly around the body, or else the spindle would create divots in the body.

Then, I took the body home and started the belly cut. I clamped the body to the table so it wouldn't move.

Using the belt sander (upper left) to take most of the material away, I progressed to using a file to take more material away in a less abrasive manner. Then, I moved to sand paper to give the result you see above.

Today, I went about installing some hardware. I used some masking tape to make some markings.

I carefully drilled some holes for the tailpiece. It wasn't a very exact science, as I used a brad point drill bit as a transfer punch to mark where the holes went.

This hardware fit just fine.

And so did the tailpiece.

A very exciting part of the whole process was putting some strings on the guitar in order to place the bridge in the right spot. For the first time, I was able to PLAY the guitar! It had a bit a of bark to it, similar sounding to a Gibson SG without an amp.

Then, the disaster happened when I drilled the hole for the bridge. I drilled the holes ever so slightly too close to each other, and the bridge refused to fit onto the body. So, I pulled the hardware out of the hole I drilled (harder to pull than a dentist pulling a tooth).

So, I cut a dowel and filled the hole. Next, I plan to saw off the top of the dowel and sand it flush with the body. Then, I'll re-drill the hole so that the bridge fits. Not the best way to learn how critical hole placement on a guitar is, but at least the hardware will cover up the mistake, not to mention the paint that is to come.

Silky Smooth...

Disclaimer:

So, as the school year starts to roll in, I'm not going to have as much time to work on my guitar. That doesn't mean, however, that I won't be working on the guitar at all. So, expect some shorter posts from now on, like this one.

Whew! Now that that is taken care of, let's see what I did today.

 Today, I routed out the edges of the guitar's body with a round off bit. It has a 1/4" radius, meaning that the arc formed by the bit has a 1/4" radius. While the body rides along the bearing, the bit nibbles away at the corner of the body. I used the table mount for the router because it made it easier to get a square cut. I had to move the body around the bit quickly to avoid any burn marks.

The body is really starting to look nice now! With that smooth edge, the guitar feels very smooth to the touch. I sanded for a bit, and then realized that I had not sanded the edges of the guitar yet (which will take care of those nasty burn marks). So, I'll have to take care of that, and then see whether I need to route the edges again or if just sanding the edges will be acceptable.

Dat neck...

So, I routed out the neck slot, and fitted the neck yesterday! Here's what I did:

The neck slot isn't just any old part of the guitar that you can route and not care about how it comes out because you have a pick guard to cover it up; it's an essential piece that holds the neck in place and makes sure that the guitar doesn't snap in two when there is string tension on. So, to get the router to precisely cut the slot, I fabricated a jig that would support both sides of the router when cutting to ensure a clean, even cut. Since the router is a bit low tech and only locks the height adjustment on one side, I had to be sure not to put too much pressure on the non-locking side (putting too much pressure on would cause the bit to tilt and cut too deep).

This is what the fitting looked like after the routing was complete. Looks pretty good, huh? Wrong. The neck wasn't even close to fitting. Still, I was pleased that the surface that the neck attaches to was nice and flat.

A few hours, a lot of sanding and a little chiseling later, the neck finally fit. I was able to bolt it on using the correct size screws, and voila! A guitar appeared before my eyes. I can see it now.... just a little more shaping, and the body will be complete!

Slicing away that flab...

Whew! A second full day of work is definitely starting to take its toll on my energy level! But, I did manage to get a lot of work done! This piece of alder wood is really starting to look like a guitar more and more. I can hardly stand it! Here's what I accomplished today:

Since this was my first time using a router bit with a bearing on it, I decided to try it out on a piece of scrap wood. The new blades cut it beautifully along the line!

I then set to work routing the body along the template (please excuse the faulty autofocus).

 I was only able to route the body down about three quarters of the way due to the fact that the plunge router can only plunge up so far through the router table. So, I was left with a body 3/4 the way cut. I switched out to a laminate trimmer bit to finish off the rest of the body (shown in photo).

The laminate trimmer finished off the body quite well, so I gave it a rough sand to even things out a bit.

The volume and tone controls need somewhere to live, so the cavity in the back needed to be routed. As I discovered with the pickup cavity, routing the entire cavity out is no fun, so I used a drill press with a forstner bit to remove most of the material. That left a very small amount of work to be done by the router.

The main cavity was cut using the straight bearing bit, and then the offset indent was done with a regular straight bit with a template guide. The offset will make it so that the control cavity cover will be flush with the body.

Eager to have the guitar ready for the neck attachment, I drill pressed the neck slot about an 1/8 of an inch higher than it needs to be, all ready for routing tomorrow! I'm pretty pleased with where I ended up with the body today. It is already down to five and a half pounds, which is almost as light as a Fender Stratocaster, and I still have more material to take off!

Working that body...

Now I'm determined! I'm about halfway through routing out the body of the guitar. Here's how I got there:

First off, I taped some double sided tape onto the template so that I could line it up and fasten it onto the body. There are also a couple more holes in the template; those are just for the electronics.

Here it is attached to the body blank:

Then, the daunting task of routing the body began. The holes in the template were cut 3/32 of an inch larger than I intended the actual cavities in the body to end up. This is because the router bit needs a guide, which offsets the bit 3/32 of an inch from the template. This is what it looks like:

Then, I cut it!

It was a lengthy process, because the bit only liked to cut down about a 5/8 of an inch at a time, so I had to do two passes to route out the switch cavity and the pickup cavity.

The next challenge is routing out the outside. Since the bit has a bearing guide instead of an offset base guide, I am forced to cut down a full inch at a time. Because I will be cutting so much away at a time, I decided to do a pass around the guitar with a band saw leaving about a quarter inch of space so the router bit will only be doing half of the work.

This is where my adventure stops for the day, but I plan to do some more work tomorrow!

Oh my...

Whew! I can't believe it's been so long since I posted! I haven't been working on this project as much as I would have like to because of college applications and hiking vacations. Now that I'm a bit more under control, I have, however started to work on the project again. I haven't failed yet!

I had my dad print the design for the guitar full scale at his work so that I could cut the template out with ease. Also next to the design is my dad's Fender Bullet (not the Squier version, the real deal) for comparison of size.

It looked like everything was going to fit just fine, so I sprayed some Super 77 onto a 1/4" piece of plywood and pasted the design on top. I then cut the design using a jigsaw, sanded the edges down until no imperfections could be seen or felt, and drilled out the holes where the neck attaches and ended up with this.

I took these photos now just to see what the guitar would look like. The next step is to cut out all of the other places on the template where I will be routing on the real piece of Alder Wood!

The Blank Finally Arrived!

Whew! It took a while, but my alder blank arrived in the mail today. It came as a two piece glued together, and should provide a nice sound.

I did notice a few hairline cracks along the grain on the edges. That was to be expected, so I ordered the blank 2" longer than I needed. I covered up the edges with a little mixture of wood glue and water to seal it up and prevent further crackage as the humidity of the air changes (advice of my father).

Pretty excited to get my drawing finalized and start cutting and routing!

The Neck Arrived!

Super duper excited! Just received a 2011 Fender Jazzmaster neck, and it's looking great! No fret wear, and no scratches! I compared the neck to my dad's 1982 Fender Bullet, and the neck scale and thickness is about the same, so it will be nice to play on a familiar scale once I'm done with the project. Can't wait to start the real work on this guitar!

Tuners included! A great thing to already have, and cuts down the cost of the guitar.

Just look at the texture of that rosewood!

I'll oil up the fretboard soon when I get some of that Dunlop 65 lemon oil.

Computers Rock!

The scale of the cardboard cutout wasn't good enough. The neck's scale length of the cutout measured up to about 26", not even close to the 24.75" scale the Alt De Facto has. So, when discussing my guitar with my dad, he recommended I use AutoCAD to draw out the guitar with the proper dimensions so that I could have it printed out at full scale. And I did just that:

I used an image I found online of the guitar, and used the polyline tool to outline all the important parts of the guitar. Now, I won't be using the same neck as the Alt De Facto, but instead I will use a neck from a Fender Jazzmaster. Yeah, I know, I'm not truly building the guitar from scratch, but having the small amount of woodworking experience that I have, a neck would just be too difficult to make from scratch. There are still a few things to add into the drawing to make it my own guitar, as this is simply a copy of the Alt De Facto.

Ok, from now on, all posts will be written in the present tense (as much as possible), since I will be writing the posts right after I complete whatever I am writing about.

The First Step

So, it was Summer.

Yeah.

Time to start this project, and not put it off, like I do with all my projects.

But this time, I really did start the project, if only by surfing the internet. I sort of still liked my design, but not really, and then I stumbled across this, and man did I want it in that color:

The non-reverse Gibson Firebirds are gorgeous guitars. Just look at those P-90 pickups all in a row! But they're way out of my price range... and I still want to build my own guitar anyways.

Then, I found this guitar by Fano, the Alt De Facto PX6, which has a cooler, more angular shape:

And then, this was born:

My very own cardboard cutout of the guitar that I wanted to build. I had since forgotten about the design I had made. I really wanted this guitar. Maybe someday I'll build another one using my design. At this point, though, I knew that this project was going to become a reality.

Oh, and I want one of these as a tailpiece too:

The Project

Ok, so I'm a little late creating this blog, since I have already started the project. I have been playing my father's 1983 Fender Bullet for about a year or so, and now I really want a guitar of my own to toy around with. So, I figured, why not build one? Shouldn't be that hard, right? Yeah, sure. We'll see how it comes out, and hopefully I can get some help from my father, Ray Hunt, who has decent woodworking skills.

I went at it on graphing paper, designing my own guitar. At first I came up with this:

Yuck.

After a while I came up with this and was much more satisfied: 

Much better. I knew I wanted a somewhat skewed guitar with maybe humbuckers or humbucker sized pickups. Then, I let the drawings be, and waited until Summer, until I would really have time for the project.