All done!

Well after quite a few months of work, and some big learning curves the guitar is now complete!

It has quite heavy strings on it to bring out the acoustics and it works well.  It is, as you would expect, much louder acoustically than a solid body guitar and amplified it has some wonderful warm and or bright classic tones despite being relatively cheap (£17 each or £30 for a pair) Vanson toaster PAF style pick ups - The neck is a '57 spec alnico II, and the bridge is '59 spec alnico IV with 0.022uF polypro capacitors and they are wired independent so you can blend them better when both pick ups are selected.

Here it is along side the Lils Paul kit we made last year.

All in all it has been a fab project built with only a few basic hand/power tools and it proves that if you're willing to give it ago, anyone with a bit of enthusiasm and patience can build a fab instrument!

Here's a video a quick video going through the various pick up selections both clean and dirty.   Bear in mind that it was filmed on a phone so is not massively representative of the actual tone.  My playing, like my building, is more enthusiastic than good so that doesn't really help either...

Anyway I hope you've enjoyed this blog, feel free to leave any comments and I can't wait to start my next project! :-)

Nearly there...

Okay, it's all wired up.  I pre-wired it using this ply template which I used on my previous kit builds.  I had hoped to fit push/pull pots on this project too.  The pick ups are 4 wire ones so I could have had split coil or series/parallel switches on them.  However I couldn't fit them into the acoustic chamber with the top glued down so I had to go for the basic standard wiring.

 

I then carefully fed the controls into the body through the bridge pickup cavity.  It was certainly fiddly but not as bad as I was expecting.  It only took about 10 minutes using a long screw driver through the jack socket hole and a pair of angled needle nose pliers through the f-hole.  The wire you can see in the f-hole got tucked up out of sight against the body using double sided tape.

I got the action all set up nicely and playing well but then BOLLOCKS #2 occurred...  The top E string kept jumping out of it's groove on the bridge.  On closer inspection it appeared that I hadn't quite lined up the trapeze tail properly.  I ended up having to carefully drill out the screw holes, fill them with dowels, fix the paintwork, and then carefully re-lined up the tail.  Once this was done the problems was sorted and it plays really well!  The paintwork is a bit patchy at repair site but it's well out of sight unless you specifically look for it.

Putting it all together...

Well that's the neck bolted on and the locking strap hooks fitted

 

 Bridge and tail, yeah I signed the pickup cavity, you never know I might be famous one day...

Strings are on and the nut height tweaked, although there is one slight problem...

BOLLOCKS!!!! The neck socket is too deep, I'd like to blame the issues I had with my router but I can't really, at the end of the day I measured it out wrong.  I think the mistake I made was in the blending of styles.  I measured the socket to look like it does on my Les Paul with the finger board sitting on the body.  However the bolt on socket style I actually copied off my Yamaha where the finger board sits above the body.  Ah well live and learn and it's not a complete loss as I can fix it!

Using some of the sound board off cut I made a piece to go under the neck that follows the contours of the body thus lifting it up a perfect amount.  I thought about painting it to match the body but thought that given the amount work involved in blending the colour on the body it might look patchy whereas leaving it natural makes it look deliberate.  I sealed it with the matt lacquer before fitting it.

*edit 21/11/2015* I have since found out that I didn't actually route the neck socket too deep.  In my inexperience I didn't account for the fact that a tune-o-matic style bridge is much taller than the Yamaha RMPro2 bridge, that and the lack of carving on the top.

Finishing the headstock and neck

As this is a wedding present I made their wedding date the serial number

Using a dremel hobby drill I engraved their names into the maple in an American diner font.  It's a little shaky but not bad considering I did it free hand

And then carefully, with a fine brush I painted in some chrome paint.  It looks more like silver but it still pretty against the red background.

Next job is to cut the bone nut that came with neck.  I used a pencil sliced through the middle and run over the frets to work out the string slot height.  I also leveled the frets with an oil stone and re-crowned them with a needle file.

For love nor money I couldn't find a simple chrome truss rod plate so I bought a small off cut of mirror finished stainless steel off eBay.

30 minutes of playing with hacksaw, file and drill and hey presto - one shiny truss rod cover!

Adding some colour

My brother and his wife-to-be love the '50s American diner style, hence all the chrome hardware, and have requested the guitar to be in red, they also want to be able to see the wood grain through it...

It took me a while but I eventually managed to find the right colour - Cadmium Red.  It's an acrylic paint so can be watered down so hopefully I'll be able to create a burst effect like I did with the ink on my previous build, thus showing the wood grain off without losing too much of the colour depth.

Because I will be watering the paint down one of the first jobs I need to do is seal to the end grains with neat acrylic.  Once dry it will be water proof and will stop the grain from lifting and splitting when it gets wet.

After filling the router gouges I painted a light undercoat to hide the filler.  I deliberately kept it light in order to keep the wood grain visible.  The filler was made by combining saw dust from the build with PVA wood glue.  Not strictly necessary but no harm in making good use of the waste saw dust.

And we now have a rich bright red that still shows the grain pattern through it.

After a month of layering, blending and layering, blending again and again the front hasn't come out quite as well I was hoping.  Whilst the acrylic watered down easily enough and definitely allowed the wood to show through towards the centre, it didn't blend so well towards the edges.  It doesn't look bad, it's just the transitions are not as smooth as I was hoping for.  Anyway I'm still loving the contrast of the chrome fittings when they are in place!

Once I was as happy as I could get with the paint I sprayed ten coats of a clear matt lacquer on to protect the finish.  I opted for matt spray over gloss as I wanted it to contrast against the shiny chrome.

Fixing the soundboard to the body and shaping the headstock

Well it's certainly getting there, and this was probably the most nerve wracking bit of the whole project to date - gluing the soundboard to body, there really isn't any going back after this if it's wrong!

Using all the clamps I posses and some bricks to weight it down I glued the soundboard on to the body.

Phew, it's perfect and has a nice acoustic ring when it's tapped, so hopefully this might sound good!  Thankfully I remembered to route the earth wire into the bridge post hole before I glued the top on.

Using a drill mounted drum sander I trimmed the soundboard flush with body and sanded out some of the gouges caused by my wobbly routing, the deeper ones will have to be filled before I apply the finish.

Headstock cut out, I made a paper template and carefully marked out where the tuners will go first.

Off set tuners fitted, I quite like this, it is (as far as I know) a unique  shape which I may adopt to any future project I embark on.

 Bolted the neck on and checked the alignment, seems to be okay

I love these individual neck bolt ferrules, the holes need tidying up and I need to cut the corner off.  I ripped this idea off an old Yamaha RGX that I have, it looks nice and makes accessing the upper frets easier.  I will also be adding a chamfer to the front and back of the cut away.

Routing the pickup and wiring cavities

I didn't get any pictures of this during the process.  After modifying my cheap router to "fix" the broken plunge depth lock (used a small set of mole grips) I successfully routed the cavities using an acrylic humbucker template from Amazon.

It's not the neatest job in the world but again, it's only my fourth time using a router so not too bad for beginner.

 

Then routed out a small wiring channel between the pickup cavities, made openings into the acoustic chamber for the pickup switch and the volume/tone controls.  Looks like I could have gotten away with not adding the bridge post supports but I'm glad I did.

Drilled the hole for the jack socket.

 Test fit to see how everything looks...

 Well, it certainly looks like a guitar now!!!

Cutting the neck socket

Okay, this was a right royal pain in the ass!  First of all as with the acoustic chamber I drilled most of the wood away.  I then managed to securely wedge the neck template at about a 3 degree angle using some of the spruce soundboard off cut and tape however due to me being a skinflint and only having a cheap router the plunge depth lock broke and kept slipping meaning I nearly wrote off the project.

 

After a bit of fannying about with the router I finally managed to get the neck socket cut.  Thankfully I under marked it meaning that when the router slipped and it went too deep I was able to stop it going too deep and writing off the project.

I used a sharp craft knife and cut the neck socket out of the soundboard by hand

Now the neck is fitted I got the exact bridge and pickup positions marked out and the soundboard taped securely to the body.  I will be routing the pickup cavities and drilling the bridge posts before gluing it down to make sure I can sufficiently access the acoustic chamber from the pickup cavity to feed the wiring components through.

Cutting out the f-holes and contols

 Okay, so I got the top cut out roughly a little whiles ago, now I need to mark out where everything's going and cut the f-holes and controller holes.

 Everything marked out, holes drilled for the switch and the volume/tone pots and starter holes for the f-holes

 f-holes cut out, this was done very carefully as the 4mm spruce likes split and break if you're not careful!

I glued some more of the sycamore veneer to support and brace the holes.  This should help to stop the spruce from splitting under vibration and will support it where the control components get fastened.

All done and I'm really liking the look of this, I can't wait to get it glued on to the body...

Neck socket template

 Using a piece of the left over 12mm ply I marked out a router template for the neck socket.

As with the body template, this took only a few minutes to cut out but a good hour or so to sand smooth and square until the neck fit nice and snug but not too tight.

Bracing bits and making the top

Just added a little bit more reinforcement and strength by gluing some sycamore veneer along the joints

 

I also realised that I may not have made the centre block wide enough for the bridge posts so I glued on some small blocks to reinforce them.

4mm thick spruce sound board ordered off eBay, getting glued up.  I did have to plane the edge square first.

 And then cut roughly to shape

Making the body...

I cut the router template out using a jig saw, this took about 10 minutes.  Sanding it smooth and getting the edges square whilst keeping the shape right?  That took about two hours!

I then cut out the middle, this is to form the chamber of the guitar.  The solid block in the middle is for mounting the neck, pickups and bridge.  This should also prevent feedback from occurring.

The body plank ready for rough cutting out.  I don't need to worry about the knot as it doesn't go all the way through and will be removed with the router.

Rough shape cut out, now to screw on the template and let the router do the neat work.

 Template screwed in place, now for the router - this is the first time I've ever used a router...

Drilling out the acoustic chamber, this removes a lot of wood very quickly and makes the routing a lot easier.

Routing done, didn't go exactly to plan.  I got a little bit of tear out and also managed to wobble a bit in a few places.  I future I will probably make two templates, one for the outside and one for inside that way there router will have a bigger surface to sit on and be more stable.  Still it's the first time I've used a router so not too bad, and certainly nothing a little filler wont fix!