Building your own guitar

Well Done Nialldbass, probably the first ever Irish entry in the most prestigious guitar-building competition!

Martinedwards - great post on the binding. How do you make the little thin strips of wood consistently?

Here's my fingerboard jig, mostly based on Bill Scheltema's. I added the steel rails for rigidity and consistency in the dimension and because I like steel, you rarely encounter a knot in it ;-)



That's a 9" radius on the travelling sled, rather than the 12" you'll find on Bill's drawing. My original sled was higher, which meant that the router bit was extended a little too much, which caused this interesting and potentially fatal modification:



Having had that happen, with a mighty kick from the router as you can imagine, I made the hole in the rocking part of the sled as small as possible so that the bit hasn't any avenue of escape. So far this jig is working quite well, as you can see from the cherry fingerboard emerging from it.

martinedwards wrote: »

that is a very professional looking radius jig.

VERY nice!

funny, some folks like to use a lot of jigs (and that's cool, whatever works, works) but I've never been a jig maker.

I have a curved clamping caul with cork on the lower side for gluing on acoustic bridges, and a temporary tailpiece that I use to actually get the bridge where it needs to be (really useful on fans!) but that's about it. pretty much everything else is done on the fly, preferably freehand!

for instance the explorer above, I routed the pickup cavities and cable runs all freehand..... fretshots all measured, marked and cut without any aids and tuner and bridge pin holes all measured, marked and drilled withoit any infernal contraptions....

each to thier own!

as to getting the bindings nice, I run them through a thicknesser in sheets about 7.5cm wide then set up the bandsaw to cut them into 10mm strips. I generally do them in batches if I have any offcuts from guitar sides etc, so right now I have enough walnut strips to bind about 6 mandolins and 4 guitars, and enough mahogany to do another 4 guitars.

I like router jigs, I must confess. I find it impossible to control the router usually in freehand routing. I have one simple jig that does the truss-rod slot (d/a type only though), the nut slot and the headstock thinning. With another minor mod it could do general-purpose planing. I like the radiussing jig, but it isn't 100% reliable, it occasionally chews up a board. I'm tossing around the idea of putting a powerfeed on it to provide a steady even pull to the travelling sled. I find with jigs that you spend a lot of time setting up for a cut, so it makes sense to do several components at a time. Rather than build one guitar from start to finish, I'm tending to produce a few fingerboards, a few body blanks, a few necks etc at a time and I'll mate them up at some future date.

How do you thickness the binding strips in the thicknesser, and what final thickness are they anyway? I expect you must stick them down to a carrier backing piece to get through the planer without being chewed up? I must try it.

JC

farmed apple trees generally aren't big enough to be useful.

I've built with cherry, and its almost as fragrant as walnut, but in a different flavour!

as to the binding, I'm usually looking for a hair over 2mm. the thicknesser we have in school does this fine, so long as the wood isn't too figured. the maple that I built the mando above from just shatters in it.

cena wrote: »

Have blue prints for a 59 lp. wOULD LOVE TO to get around to making it.

What's stopping you? The Gibson 3-deg set neck is quite a bit trickier to construct than Fender's bolt-in style, but if you want details of a fantastic jig to do it I'll point you to it. It'll take a day or two to make the jig but you will be set up to make all the set necks you'll ever want then. You could make a LP body with a Fender-type bolted/screwed joint too of course.

not a thing wrong with that!!

as to to the slotting templates, they're a great job if you are using the standard scale lengths.

if you go "off piste" then there's still the option of ignoring the first few slots for a smaller scale......

I have one of stewmac's fret slot saws.

Good points?

built in depth stop.

bad points? not cheap at $35 and mine could use a sharpen after 70 odd fretboards....

will have to look into the woodies ones for a replacement.... I could even drill some holes to fit the depth stop......

have to check and see if they'll post to this wild and scary area just to the north of Dundalk!!

thanks for the offer..... I may take you up on it at a later date......

in the meantime, I'll try to remember the next time I'm across the border, but we usually head towards Sligo rather than Dublin.....

I have friends in Dublin who are up here every couple of weeks, I might get them to drop in, but my saw should be good for a while yet!

JCJCJC wrote: »

What's stopping you? The Gibson 3-deg set neck is quite a bit trickier to construct than Fender's bolt-in style, but if you want details of a fantastic jig to do it I'll point you to it. It'll take a day or two to make the jig but you will be set up to make all the set necks you'll ever want then. You could make a LP body with a Fender-type bolted/screwed joint too of course.

Was in accident A few years back. So I can't really hold tools right. Damaged my good hand. May get the brother to help me some time. cousin has a saw mill so well ask if he has any nice timber. Where can I get the parts for the guitar in Ireland, without going to the likes of stew mac.

Pleases show my this jig.


Was next door a few hours ago. was told by a friend her has a lovely guitar that he made. Asked if I could see it. Man this guy mad a real nice acoustic.
He teachs wood work in the fas and A.I.T.

cena wrote: »

Was in accident A few years back. So I can't really hold tools right. Damaged my good hand. May get the brother to help me some time. cousin has a saw mill so well ask if he has any nice timber.

Pleases show my this jig.


Was next door a few hours ago. was told by a friend her has a lovely guitar that he made. Asked if I could see it. Man this guy mad a real nice acoustic.
He teachs wood work in the fas and A.I.T.

Sorry to hear about your personal circumstances. I absolutely dread any accidents with my powertools. I'm not a pro woodworker, just a hobby wood butcher, and I'm usually on my own so I try to take every precaution. My father (rip) was a woodwork teacher in a tech, he drilled lots of safety into me, like no rings or long hair, ties, floppy sleeves etc so I try my best to work safe.

Anyway, this is the jig. If you build it, you needn't make it as snazzy as that one, all the nice finishing does nothing for the functionality. If you need odd-ball bolts or fasteners, Hassetts in Limerick are very good specialists, and they'll sell you one if one is all you need. Wurth will sell you 500 if one is all you need. I buy frequently from Ebay.de - you cannot beat Germany for engineering products.
On the subject of odd-ball fasteners, I'm slowly developing a project to attach tele necks with machine screws rather than wood screws, using threaded steel inserts in the heel of the neck. I want to use countersunk torx screws on the neck plate for the modern classy look they have and the superiority of torx over traditional phillips. I've assembled all the hardware to try it from ebay.de, and I'm presently trying to develop a reliable method of inserting the insert perfectly vertically, it's no good if it goes off-plumb.

JC

Oh dear.

Ah well, he's being creative, can't knock that!!

just shame he's not being musical!!

JCJCJC wrote: »

Sorry to hear about your personal circumstances. I absolutely dread any accidents with my powertools. I'm not a pro woodworker, just a hobby wood butcher, and I'm usually on my own so I try to take every precaution. My father (rip) was a woodwork teacher in a tech, he drilled lots of safety into me, like no rings or long hair, ties, floppy sleeves etc so I try my best to work safe.

Anyway, this is the jig. If you build it, you needn't make it as snazzy as that one, all the nice finishing does nothing for the functionality. If you need odd-ball bolts or fasteners, Hassetts in Limerick are very good specialists, and they'll sell you one if one is all you need. Wurth will sell you 500 if one is all you need. I buy frequently from Ebay.de - you cannot beat Germany for engineering products.
On the subject of odd-ball fasteners, I'm slowly developing a project to attach tele necks with machine screws rather than wood screws, using threaded steel inserts in the heel of the neck. I want to use countersunk torx screws on the neck plate for the modern classy look they have and the superiority of torx over traditional phillips. I've assembled all the hardware to try it from ebay.de, and I'm presently trying to develop a reliable method of inserting the insert perfectly vertically, it's no good if it goes off-plumb.

JC

Looks good. Injury isn't from power tools. I too went to a tech school. But the teacher died during my time in fourth year. Wonder if we went to the same school. It was in galway

power tool injuries?

I took the end off my left middle finger with a circular saw two years ago.

thankfully, not as far as the bone, just the fleshy bit at the end......

it took 6 months before I was able to fret a string with it again, but on the bright side it really encouraged me to learn to play bouzouki with those 4 courses of strings and the easier to form chord structures!!

there are pics available if anyone is that sick!!

UserName 217 wrote: »

Does anyone know if you can use car primer and laquer on the body of the guitar and use guitar paint for the colour?

Or would I be better getting guitar primer and laquer? Car primer and laquer would be easier got, thats why I questioning this.

It should work - if you have the car paint, try it on a scrap. If not, maybe you could ask a bodyshop to spray primer-paint-lacquer on a sample of wood, using whatever colour they happen to be using on the day? I can't see why it wouldn't work.

jc

Made this for the leaving cert. First time doing it.

9629_1220253660433_1051667177_1934143_5338479_n.jpg

martinedwards wrote: »

I'd put strings on it, but other than that, it looks great!!

I would but the neck is bent from falling a very times when kids got in the room

Has anybody tried to use threaded metal inserts and machine screws rather than traditional woodscrews for a tele neck-to-body joint? I've been thinking about it for a while, so I've had a go in the past few days and I'm well pleased with the result so far. I got the inserts on ebay.de - 4-millimetre metric thread, on the basis that 4mm is the diameter of standard neck screws in any case. The big advantage is that the screw holes won't wear and loosen as wood will if the neck is dismounted a few times. The difficulty is getting the inserts installed perfectly plumb and square, it took a bit of thinking to devise a method to achieve that. Simply winding them in with a screwdriver or allen key won't give square results, good enough maybe for building a bed but not good enough for a guitar. I've ordered torx-headed countersunk screws this evening to put a smart finish on the job, I'll upload a pic in a day or two.