CarlosN's 2012 Challenge Build Thread -- COMPLETED

[CarlosN]

Throwing my hat in the ring here. Best Beginners category for me, going to need lots of luck. Have zero experience building guitars. I have done other wood working projects before, but have only been playing guitar for just over a year. Thankfully I have the blessing of my Significant Other, and access to my bro-in-law's workshop.

Today I just bought some MDF to start making tempts, still trying to figure out my selection of wood, hardware, design, you know, everything else. Lots of inspiration from past builds, TDPRI is truly an amazing resource fueled by amazing people.

[RogerC]

Glad to have you along for the ride, Carlos! Just remember to have fun with it. I'm pretty excited to watch the beginner category.

[crazydave911]

Originally Posted by CarlosN

Lots of inspiration from past builds, TDPRI is truly an amazing resource fueled by amazing people

The best part of this forum . You'll be fine

Welcome and good luck!

Dave

[CarlosN]

Thanks Dave,

It was actually reading your thread from last years build that inspired me to enter. So glad I stayed up late Monday reading a bunch of the build threads, great ideas and suggestions, techniques etc- seeing that they have all been temp removed during the 2012 builds. I should have been taking notes, just have to rely on my memory now.

Think I leaning towards a semi-chambered body, majority out of spruce with a 1/4 lid glued on it to bring it up to1 3/4" thick. I just found a really really beautiful 2x8 at my local lumber yard, straight grained spruce. Supposed to be kiln dried, I'll see how it looks after i joint the edges and glue the two boards together. Aside from my 2x8 and some mdf that is all the materials I have so far for my build, I guess I should post my pic. I'm waiting to see how this routers out before I order any of the specific guitar hardware. I have some interesting ideas about a finish too, shooting for a combo of dead easy and unique - I'm hoping that the 2 features are not mutually exclusive.

Good luck to everyone so far that has entered!

[flatfive]

Originally Posted by CarlosN

Thankfully I have the blessing of my Significant Other, and access to my bro-in-law's workshop.

Those are two of the most important things!

Looking forward to seeing your work.

[CarlosN]

Shots of the lumber aquired so far with the build entry page. Anyone suggest a source for a 1/4" thick rosewood plank for the fretboard? Would love a local source, but Windsor plywood only has 3/4" thick and up (lots of rosewood if you wanted the body made of it!). Anyone know of a source in Western Canada, or Canada in general? I can of course source from Stewmac, but I usually have silly issues with cross border purchases.

[tklaavo]

For rosewood fingerboard check out seller Bezdez in eBay (located in Ontario) - there's some but I'm not sure they're long enough for standard tele. I bought some there, and they're fine at least for certain guitars, like Gibson-style or shorter scale. Depends on your design!

[axedaddy]

Bezdez is awesome, you will do well with them.

Sweet Socks!!

[CarlosN]

Hidey Ho!

Progress today on my templates and the wood core of the guitar, I am amazed at the folks who are flying through on their builds, but I gotta keep reminding myself, its my first build, and measure twice, cut once. That has always helped me in the past.

Being my first build, i need templates. Figuring that it would be hard to magically route the 5/8" MDF that i am wanting to use for the templates with not much more than a pencil line, i decided to make templates for my templates. The dollar store close to where I live had foam core poster board for yep, a dollar a board, and this stuff I am finding out is a great deal. Its huge (2.5' by 3') and cheap and pretty sturdy too. For the templates i hot glued 2 sheets of the foam board together to get me a thickness of 1/2" and this was actually study enough for the router bit to follow and cut the MDF satisfactorily. I would consider these foam core templates a one off deal, but good for me because they are easy to cut, create, glue, fix, and play with before committing to the router. The foam core can compress a bit when following the router bearing (not much though), but with that in mind they worked well on the MDF.

I also worked to get a glue-able surface on my spruce 2x8" lumber that I am using for the core of the guitar. I don't have access to a jointer, so made the best with the router and sandpaper, and came back with good enough results to glue together with no horribly obvious gap.

This post and pics don't really represent all the mental work i've put into selecting what kindof machine heads, bridge, pickups, etc to order (not ordered yet). Also, still debating to hollow out the spruce core to lighten the body up, or to make a belly cut in the body for my nice belly. I have seen a build where the builder accomplished both (actually there was even a f-hole, so the inside of the guitar had to look nice too, and it did!) - thinking that it is doable, but also weighing this out because this is my first build, and I don't want to set unrealistic goals that will never be met, or met quite crappily with the obvious crappy results. I'd rather have a nice (maybe sightly heavy, maybe not so ergonomic-thus classic) guitar than to try too much too fast.

Spruce should also be pretty light too, so maybe weight relief gutting of the guitar wont actually save me much weight. The body will be 1 1/4" spruce, with a 1/2" maple cap (more or less). Materials selected based on budget - trying to see how cheap I can be in building my own.

[RogerC]

foam core poster board, eh? Most people use 1/4" mdf for their master template. I used 3/16" tempered masonite for mine. The trick is to spend most of your time getting a really nice master, and then use that to cut your 3/4" mdf working templates. But if you don't plan on building any more (which I doubt ), then a disposable master template should be fine.

[guitarbuilder]

Don't rush it....there is no need to.

[CarlosN]

Good idea RogerC. Right now I have some really nice 5/8" mdf templates made up (working templates). I could cut some 1/4" templates from those and keep them in a safe place so they don't get all dinged up. This probably will not be my last tele, I am enjoying the work I've done so far.

[CarlosN]

Did more work on the body this week, pretty standard stuff compared to everyone else's builds. Pics below to show the progress, nothing too exciting however - although that is a goal for my first build~! Pics show my 2x8 spruce body shaping up like a tele, and my 1/2 maple top being cut and shaped.

[CarlosN]

Pics showing the work done in removing some of the weight from the spruce body and making room for the electronics. I'm leaving some room at the "top" of the guitar for a belly cut. Overall this spruce body will be 1.25" thick, with a 1/2" maple top on it for the 1.75" total thickness. I have also routed 1/4" in select areas from the back of the maple top to remove some of the weight, but mostly so that the pots and switches don't have to go through 1/2" of maple. Still undecided as to what kind of electronic layout I will be putting in, the rational part of me says to keep it simple (stupid) and stick with the conventional switch + 2 pots of the regular teles - the other half wants push-pull pots, mini switches and a 5 way switch... probably not a wise thing on a first build.

[junk mutt]

Nice going CarlosN!! are you going to do an f hole?

[CarlosN]

Showing some pics here on me playing around trying to make an adjustable truss rod out of 3/16" stainless steel rod, a 1/2" scrap bolt, and a 10-32 nut. This thing actually works, but I am really not sure if I want to install it, or to make a more simple and conventional one-way adjustable truss rod.

This truss rod I made would be adjustable by removing the neck: the positive is that I would only have to route a straight channel in the neck right underneath the fretboard. Part of me is really trying to avoid a) a curved truss rod channel in the neck (hard to route without adequate templates) and b) lining up holes in the neck to have a neck adjustable truss rod.

(More pics to follow, how do you upload more than 5 at a time?)

[CarlosN]

More Pics

[CarlosN]

No f-hole for me on this build, debated, but decided to go with a belly-cut, and no f-hole. I know both can be done, but I didn't want to risk potential disasters with this build. Having a really nice inside surface is a prime consideration with an f-hole (I think), and that would be hard to achieve with routing for a belly cut.

[CarlosN]

Snapped a few more pics last night. One shows the routing for the pickup wires in the spruce body, and some others of the rough maple cap that is now glued together.

The maple cap is in no way bookmatched or anything, but I did try to find the "neatest" grain on the maple and worked that into the natural shape of the tele. Still not sure what kind of finish I will use. A stain of some sort to allow the grain of the wood to show through, but still deciding on an oil finish, or a blue sunburst, or more of a see-through vintage white. The benefit of a sunburst would allow me to have the sides and back of the guitar black, and that would hide most of the plain grain of the spruce body. I will probably go with a combo of whatever is a) easy and b) cheap.

The last pic shows the stainless steel 10-24 bolts and blind nuts that i will be using to secure the neck - the trick here is to remember to imbed the blind nuts into the neck before the fretboard goes over top. Part of me just does not trust screws going into wood, even though it has been proven for 60+ years to work very well.

Tomorrow off to go find a nice cheap belt sander - this is one of the tools that I am missing that would help sooo much.

Carl

[Joe Sailor]

Looking good!