My Second Guitar

Guitar #2 is in its final stages of completion.  I just finished the final sand and am debating how I'm going to seal it, whether it be poly in a spray can, poly in a can that I either apply with a sponge brush or use a paint sprayer, or try this 2 part resin I found online.  Once I make my decision and actually get the guitar parts finished, I can go ahead and solder all the electronics back together and do my final assembly.

 Now that you can see how it came out, minus the final sand and shine, I'll go through the process of making it.  Not quite as detailed as the first guitar, since I basically did all the same things I did with the first guitar.  I'll spend most of the time with this guitar just talking about actually designing the guitar around a shape I was given and components.  The first guitar was really just making a new body and pick guard but remaining true to the original shape and style of the body the parts were taken from.  This second guitar was a little more on the design side as the person that gave me the old guitar also gave me a picture of a BC Rich Draco and asked if I could incorporate the components from that guitar into a guitar that looked like the picture.  Being full of confidence that day, I said that it would be no problem and started work on his guitar.

There were plenty of speed bumps in guitar #2 as I've been affectionately calling it, trying not to get too attached so that I can give it up if it turns out really cool.  Everything started out easily enough, I roughed in a shape of one side of the guitar on two sheets of paper, and once it was to my satisfaction, I traced that shape onto the piece of poplar I'd picked for the project.  Then I flipped the paper over and traced the mirror of the shape to create an entire guitar shape.  Once that was finished, I made a few minor tweaks in places it didn't look quite right and took it to the band saw.  Being an impatient and easily excitable person, I couldn't just stop there and since I didn't have my camera with me, there are no actual pictures of the body before I started routing it out.  If you can imagine it without the pen marks, routed holes and rounded edges, this was basically what I came up with.

There you have it, and that brings me into the next couple parts of the build.  I stared at the body a while trying to figure out the best place for all the parts and in the end they ended up getting moved anyway.  While I was trying to figure out the components, I figured I could at least get the neck in and with the limited space, could also fit in the bridge as I knew I wanted it as low as possible to afford myself as much space above to squeeze in three single coil pickups.  The original picture of the guitar I got had 2 humbuckers and a single knob which I assume is a volume knob.  I had to fit 3 pickups, 3 knobs and a switch into this body and although it doesn't look like it, there really isn't that much body there.  So I routed out the neck hole, drilled the screw holes and attached it. 

I then routed out the hole for the bridge in about 4 passes, then came back from the backside and with 3 more passes made the ledge so the bridge could rock a little in the hole.  This is for the tremolo or "whammy bar" action.  I also routed out the back to make room for the springs that attach to the bridge.  Then I set the bridge in and drilled the 6 holes that would hold it in place.

With all that in place, I used 2 strings from the old guitar, one on each end of the neck to the bridge, to pencil in lines so I could center the pickups and make sure once it was all together the strings would be above the proper places on the pickups.  Next was the main pick guard which would house the 3 pickups.  This was the easier of the two, since I could really only put them in one way and wanted them spread as far apart as possible.  Most pick guards mimic the body shape or at least follow it to some degree so that's what I did.  After that, I routed out the holes for the pickups and after using a dremel tool to open the holes up just enough to allow the pickup through I used one of the cases to drill the holes that would hold the pickups in place.

With that out of the way, I came to what would end up being the biggest speed bump in the build, where to put 3 knobs and a lever with the remaining available, and usable space.  I toyed with more than a couple ideas.

I started out with the idea on the left to continue following the guitars shape and then someone suggested the setup on the right to also continue the symmetry of the guitar.  I thought this looked good also, but wasn't sure which I liked more, so while I decided, I went ahead and drilled the holes for the 3 pots and cut out the line for the switch and drilled the 2 holes for it as well.

I put the secondary pick guard together and then tried to figure out how it would fit where I needed it to fit.  When it was just a piece of wood it was fine, but once it had the pots and switch and had to have a hole routed out to accommodate it, it no longer fit like it needed.  So it was back to the drawing board.  The main problem I was having was that I didn't want to unsolder and more than I already had and pulling the pots and switch apart completely looked intimidating with the capacitor and all the wires running to and fro.  I finally settled on moving the switch down closer to the knobs and changing the positioning of the knobs and created a pick guard that had a decent and almost inconspicuous shape behind all the electronics it was holding.

 With all the pick guards finished it was time to route out the body so I could set everything in place and see how it looked.  It took 3 passes in each place to get to the desired depth and a fourth in the area of the switch and once I was finished it also took a few hits with my dremel in a couple places to get the guards flush with the body.  Once I had it in place, I just took a few steps back and looked and I was excited to see that it actually didn't look half bad.  I held the guards in place while I drilled 6 holes through the main guard and body to hold it in place and 3 more through the secondary guard.  Once that was finished, I moved them out of the way and used a 7/8" boring bit to drill a large hole in the side of the body to make room for the jack and jack plate.  Once I had the hole deep enough for the jack, I went back with a drum sanding bit on a die grinder and rounded out the hole to make a hole that the jack plate would fit into.  Once I was satisfied that it fit flush to the side of the guitar, I drilled the two holes that would hold it in place, along with the holes for the two strap knobs.  I also drilled a smaller hole from the hole in the side for the jack into the lower cavity where the pots and switch were.  And finally a hole from that cavity into the main cavity that would hold the pickups so that I could wire everything together once it was nice and shiny. 

So there it is in a nutshell.  I hope in the next week or so to be done with this guitar as I've already started my next project which will be even more creative.  This time, I'm not taking apart an old guitar and using components that were already working together, but instead will be buying all the components separately and combining them in what I hope will be something cool.  There are just so many choices, it's hard to decide which components to pick and then even harder to spend the money on them while second guessing yourself as to whether or not they're the right ones.  Look for final pictures of this guitar here in the next few weeks and maybe with this next guitar I can do the blogging as I'm making it, instead of after so it's fresher in my mind.

Pick Guard, More Body Work, Putting It All Together

So, once all my holes were cut out and opened to the desired size to fit the pickups in, I drilled the holes for the screws to hold the pickups in place.  With that finished, I took the pick guard to the drill press and made the three holes I needed for the pots (potentiometers) that are the knobs that control volume and tone on the guitar.  I didn't have a small enough router bit to make the small line for the pickup selector lever so I just used a small drill bit in a hand drill.  It didn't come out perfect, but the lever fit through so it served it's purpose.  Once ALL the holes were in the face of the pick guard I put it all together with my clump of stolen electronics from the old guitar.  To my surprise it actually looked pretty good, the white knobs of the old guitar standing out quite nicely on the darker colored poplar pick guard.

With all that accomplished it was time to route out the body to accommodate the electronics.  I followed the basic shape of the holes from the old body and routed out the front for the pick guard, a rectangular hole underneath it for the bridge that holds the strings in place on the bottom and the area on the back that holds the springs that make the "whammy bar" work.  I also had to take a 1" spade bit and bore out a hole to put in the jack where you hook the amp up to the guitar and also drilled the holes for the plate that holds the jack in place and the two holes where the knobs that the strap attaches to go.  It appeared to me that I was basically finished with the guitar so I began putting it together to see how it looked.

First I reattached the neck as my frame of reference.  I then slid the bridge through the hole under where the pick guard goes.  I then put the pick guard in place.  With the front "assembled" I was able to slightly adjust where the bridge and pick guard needed to be in relation to each other and the neck to try and get everything lined up correctly.  Once I had everything where I wanted it, I drilled through the pick guard and body to make the 12 holes to attach the pick guard and then drilled the 6 holes at the top of the bridge to attach that to the body.  I actually attached the bridge but took the pick guard off to make the holes a little bigger so the screws that fastened it to the body would slide right though the pick guard.  I put the jack and jack plate together and slid it into the hole I bored out.  I realized I had no hole from this big bored out hole into the main cavity in the body to attach the jack to the rest of the electronics.  So I used a long drill bit to make a small 3/8" hole from the main cavity into the jack hole.  I then slid the jack back into its hole making sure I could get the wires into the main cavity.  I then screwed the pick guard in place.

Now that everything looked right, I took it all apart, even the pickups and pots and lever off the pick guard and spent some time sanding everything until it was nice and smooth.  I then used a crystal clear polyurethane spray and put about 3 coats on the front and back of the body and the pick guard, sanding between each coat.  Once I felt that everything was nice and dry I reassembled the pick guard.  I attached the neck and bridge.  I then attached the spring holder and springs in the back of the guitar to the bridge and pushed the other half of the wire I had snipped up into the main cavity of the body.  I slid the jack into its hole, attached the plate to the guitar and pulled the wires into the main cavity.  I used wire connectors to put the wires back together with the other halves on the pick guard where I had snipped them when I took the old guitar apart and also the wire I had pushed through from the back of the guitar.  With all that in place, I screwed the pick guard into place.  I attached the two knobs for the strap and I was finished!  I couldn't wait to get some strings and string it up.  I have since, been able to actually hear my guitar on an amp and it sounds pretty good.  Now I just have to learn how to play!!

I have already started work on another guitar and will be posting about that as I work on it and hopefully can get some pictures of it up while it is still in the building stages.

Neck, Pick Guard and More Body Work

Once the body was smooth and shaped to my liking I felt the next thing was attaching the neck to make it look like a guitar (just to make me feel better that it looked like a guitar) and also as a reference for where the rest of the guitar would fit into place.  Fortunately, the old neck still looked bright where it was connected to the body so I was able to use these bright spots as a reference.  I penciled in the lines to route out a cavity for the neck.  I took 5 passes to get the cavity to the proper depth for the neck, but with each pass (I didn't know at the time I was doing it) I was making the hole a little bigger.  I thought the bit I was using would basically follow the hole I cut out on the first pass, but it was also biting a little deeper into the sides with each pass.  After the cavity was finished, I determined where the holes needed to be to use the existing holes in the neck to attach it to the body.  I drilled the holes and attached the neck to the body using the old screws from the broken guitar.  To my surprise, it did actually look somewhat like a guitar!

With the neck on I decided I needed to work on the piece that was going to hold all the guts inside the guitar and also hide the large hole I was going to have to make in the body.  I wanted something that would contrast with the grain and texture and color of the oak, so I decided on a piece of poplar with some mineral stain in it.  For those that don't know much about wood, poplar is a relatively soft, light wood.  It's easy to work with, doesn't have much grain to it, and it gets some pretty electric colors across the face of the board sometimes known as mineral streaks.  The colors on the boards can range from blue, purple, green, pink, to almost black and it changes and stops and some boards look like they've been tie-dyed.  I took my piece of poplar and ran it through the electric planer as low as it would go.  I got it to about 1/8" or slightly less.  Before I cut it out on the band saw, I experimented with a couple different shapes for the pick guard but ended up sticking with the basic original shape from the original guitar.  It finally came down to deciding this guitar was mostly practice and learning and once I built one, then I could "break the mold" and start creating more unique patterns.

With the pick guard cut out, I got to work laying out where the pickups, knobs and lever would go on the guard.  Again, I decided to leave everything in it's original location, not just for continuity, but it also saved me from having to rewire the pieces, which for the most part I left in one big electronic clump until it was reused.  I dressed up the edge of the guard with my dremel tool, rounding it slightly to keep the edges from being sharp.  I penciled in all the holes that I needed to make in the pick guard and clamped it to the body to have something underneath to support the thin piece of wood as I routed it out.  Once I knew where the pick guard was going and it was clamped in place, I removed the neck, so it wouldn't interfere with the router and to make maneuvering the body a little easier.  On my first try, I actually broke the pick guard routing out one of the pickup holes too close to the edge of the piece, so it was back to the band saw.  Thankfully, I had planed a large enough piece for two pick guards.  The second time around, I also cut out the top pickup hole that was against the outer edge of the guard so I didn't have to route so close to the edge.  With the new piece cut out, I repenciled my lines, reclamped onto the body and routed everything out.  I tried to make each hole just a little small, so I could go back with my dremel tool and open each hole up a little to make a snug fit for the pickups.

Back Story and the Body Shape

Alright, first the back story. I've been working around wood for over 15 years.  I've been grading lumber for over 14 years.  The longer you do it, the more you notice the wood with the unique characteristics that you don't see every day.  Sometimes you see something that you've never seen before, even after all those years, so you have to set it off to the side and try and figure out something to do with it.

That is what brought me to creating my first electric guitar.  I was grading lumber one day and saw some nice wide pieces of curly quarter sawn red oak.  I'd seen quarter sawn oak before and I'd seen curly oak before but both together on such nice wide clear pieces of lumber was interesting.  I cut two feet off the  two boards I saw at the time and set them aside.  I stared at them over the next few months and had finally decided to use them for a coffee table as two center inserts around some other oak.  Thankfully, before I got started, my mind changed and I just kind of saw the guitar body sitting in the wood.  So I took the two pieces and glued them together.  A friend of mine gave me his sons old busted electric guitar so I gutted it to use the old body as a template and the rest of the pieces to rebuild a new guitar around this beautiful oak.

The entire process was actually pretty fun for me.  I hadn't used my router in a good long time and got plenty of chances to practice with it.  I traced the old body onto the oak and cut out the shape on a band saw.  I used some little drum sanding bits in my drill to smooth around the edges.  I used a belt sander to knock down the back of the body where it sits against your stomach and the front corner where your arm runs back and forth while strumming the guitar.  Then I was stuck.  I couldn't figure out how the guitar manufacturer rounds the edge of the body of the guitar.  If it was flat it would be as simple as throwing a roundover bit in the router and a quick pass around the edge, but now that there was a depression on each side, the router would miss this part if I kept it flat on the top, or bite into the side and change the angle of the rounding if I let the router drop into the depression.  I asked a couple millwrights at work and they couldn't figure it out either so I decided to just use those drum sanding bits and try to round out the edge as best I could.  I'm hoping to find a better way with future guitars, since that is very time consuming and you just can't get a consistent edge.