MyTurningShop - Part 4

Guitar – the shape

The first big step in building the guitar is rough cutting the guitar body shape. Generally, for electrics this involves two primary pieces of wood, the body and the neck which is later mated to the body.

This custom guitar however was made out of one solid piece of maple for reasons noted in other posts.

Again, the design was based on a “trademark” of my son’s design. Frankly, it was a fairly simple design luckily. However cutting both the neck and body of one piece presented some challenges.

At 12″ wide, a basic band saw was not going to enable cutting the thickness of the neck profile before cutting out the neck. However, once the neck shape was cut there was not reasonable way to cut the neck thickness on the band saw without taking risks… I took the risk cutting from the head up to the last few inches before the body.

From there it was all about shaping… let me count thy ways to shape! Chisels, hand planes, electric planes, grinders, rasps, files and sandpaper are all choices but if you are like most homemade guitar makers you may not have one of every tool. In this case you have to use what you have. In my case most of the heavy work was done with an 80 grit sanding belt on my Grizzly disc/belt sander. However the approach was a little unconventional.

I raised the belt rollers vertically. Instead of using the conventional belt top, I used the underside of the belt bed. Without a solid surface under the rotating belt, the pressure of the neck against the belt forced a natural curve that I used to an advantage. It took short work to shape the neck and most of the transition between the body and the neck.

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Guitar – Truss Rod Slot

The truss rod slot in my guitar was actually the first sawdust I created. However, after cutting the initial slot I only finished the work including the through-hole at the head after rough cutting the shape of the guitar. This is really the focus of this post.

Some guitars have the truss rod adjustment mechanism in the body while others are at the neck. The challenge with adjustments at the body is that strings are in the way if you need to make adjustments past your initial set-up.

Having the adjustment at the neck allows adjustment anytime. With these there are options as well. You could cut the truss rod slot all the way down the neck until it exits the head leaving an aesthetically difficult transition under the nut. This is why so many guitars have the truss rod adjustment cover screwed onto the neck. On the other hand some guitars have truss rod slots that end under the fingerboard, a hole is then drilled from the neck for access. This is the approach I took.

The challenge faced is how to properly locate the hole so that it lines up with the truss rod adjustment mechanism. To address this I used a piece of scrap 1/4″ plywood with a long notch cut out from one side. When the “foot” of the jig is placed in the truss slot, it overhangs the neck and a corresponding point on the other side of the cutout is used to reference both the depth and alignment of the truss rod slot. This is where the drill must begin.

Once the point is marked, clamp the guitar neck to the drill press table set at the same angle as the head was cut. Align the drill bit to the mark and drill away.

Great accumulation of guitar building resources..

More is to come on the guitar project…

For those interested in making their own, here is a great resource of information and resources all in one place.

ww.toolcrib.com/blog/2009/06/08/11-free-guitar-plans-20-guitar-building-jigs-and-35-more-resources-for-newbie-luthiers/

Guitar – Routing the cavities

Routing the cavities are straightforward. As with any work that demand precision it’s always best to work with Jigs or Fixtures. In this case for the Stratocaster styled single coils I used a scrap piece of MDF.

I began with a template for the size and shape of the pickups. Crazy, I know but I had a thin piece of padauk (the red piece of wood) which I used for the pickup template. Next on the MDF, I laid out center lines and marked the location of the back of each pickup hole. Using the padauk template I marked each cut-out, drilled and then used a scroll saw to rough cut out each shape. A little work with files and sandpaper quickly resulted in a usable jig.

The jig was clamped in place and the cavities were cut using a router with flush cutting straight bit.

I took the same approach to creating the cavity in the back for the electronics. The only difference was that I marked the location on both the front and back of the body. Using the outline on the front I correctly spaced the holes for the potentiometers and pickup switch.

The greatest challenge was cutting the narrow slot for the pickup switch. I concluded it is this challenge that causes people to use the chrome plates common to telecaster guitars.

Wanting to avoid a plate, I carefully marked the dimensions of the slot and carefully cut along these line using a fresh razor blade in a box cutter. Unconventional for sure…. but it worked. Using the blade and a dental pick repetatively I cut and scraped through the first 1/16″ or so. Then using a 1/16 drill bit I drilled several holes through the body within this channel and worked the bit back and forth like a mill to remove as much material as possible. I finished the slot with progressively finer grits of sandpaper cut into narrow long strips.

One Piece Guitar – Thickness planing

Production shops create most electric guitars out of two major wood components. The body which can be a single block machined or several pieces glued up into a solid block, semi-hollow, or like an acoustic guitar virtually completely hollow. The second major component is the neck. In many cases the neck is bolted on, in some it is glued.

My research led me to believe most luthiers like the separate neck because A) it provides the possibility of adjustment if necessary, B) it allows repair if the head or neck are broken and C) to reduce waste of wood. Personally, with an understanding of manufacturing and business, I believe the primary driving factor in most cases is C). It’s all about the money and speed of manufacturing which also equals money.

Then I found many of the bass guitars have through-body construction where the neck was effectively part of the body because it is glued between two “wings” that become the body. This still reduces the waste of material and speeds production, but it undermines the argument for future repair or adjustment.

I’m not making a guitar for sale, if money or speed were an issue I wouldn’t be making a guitar, period. So I decided to make my guitar from a single piece of Maple for the challenge, the strength and the fun of it.

The complication due to a single piece guitar is the height of the body relative to the fret board. The fret board sits about 1/4″ above the neck surface. If using a traditional style telecaster bridge this might be OK. Of course, I had decided early on to use the ABR styled adjustable bridge which sits higher. As a result I needed a larger gap between the fret board surface and the face of the body.

To accomplish this, I built a surface planing jig. This consisted of a piece of MDF to serve as the base. Mounted to the base are two fences rising 3″. This was built large enough to house the entire body of the guitar and then some.

Next I mounted a custom base on my router that would span both fences with enough overhang to allow the router to be passed from one side to the other.

The guitar body was clamped in place. Setting the appropriate depth on the router it was a simple matter of slowly working off the material. I left about a 1/2″ of material next to the neck to be shaped and sanded using various dremel bits, small rasps and files.

Guitar – the shape

Guitar – Truss Rod Slot

Great accumulation of guitar building resources..

Guitar – Routing the cavities

One Piece Guitar – Thickness planing

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