Hey! Long time lurker, first time posting... I'm gonna try to make my intro here quick, then get on with the retsaceleT.
I JUST started building guitars maybe 3 or 4 months ago. I saw a guy on this forum build one out of a 4x4, and something snapped! I took savings I had for a Jazzmaster, and ended up buying a router and drill press instead. My first body was okay, but I sold it and tried to do a better one. Same story for my next 2 or 3... Next thing I knew, I was making and selling them to every musician I know, to buy new tools so I could make even more!
Somewhere along the way, I wanted to build a left handed guitar that I could play upside-down, like so many great guitarists have. I wanted the upside down guitar to be a real statement about my taste in music; I'm not a shredder, and I wanted a body that would be IMPOSSIBLE to reach the high notes. So I made templates by tracing my G&L Asat Classic...
I got some ash boards on eBay for dirt cheap and ended up doing 2 builds simultaneously, so you'll see a Jag Stang hanging out with this guitar in some pics...
Hmmm... I seem to have lost a lot of the pics of this process...
anyways, I flipped the body template to make it left handed, but I kept the pickup and control template in the right handed orientaiton. I did this build before I learned about forstner bits, so it was hogged out poorly with a regular drill bit...
Here it is all cut out (next to a walnut Les Paul type body I made).
And here next to that Jag stang...
I got her all sealed up:
And started primering it in thin coats.
Then the Duplicolor metal specks burnt copper started to go on.
And I test fit some parts.
HOOOOLD it! I can still see the grain through my 17 coats of sealer, 3 coats of primer, and 10 coats of color... And man was it pretty grain... Time to sand it back down and give it a finish it deserves!
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I sponged on some olive green stain. After it dried I sanded the raised grain until it was basically white again, but the dark wood was still green. Then I watered down some of the same stain and sponged it onto the wood again. After it dried I sanded the raised grain again, and applied even more watered down stain. I don't know if my techniques were right or wrong, but I'm very happy with the result.
After all the stain was dry I brushed on a "Golden Oak" tinted water-based grain filler. When it was dry, I sanded off the brush marks, and started layering up a matte clear coat. I wanted to shoot for an ulgy-is-beautiful kind of color. The guitar looked like it was made from boogers wiped on a saguaro cactus. I made the pickguard from a $0.99 sheet of acrylic plexiglass, painted white from behind. I used a Fender Highway 1 bridge, and some pretty cheap pickups that I found with very high output for single coils. the neck is a left handed mighty mite. This guitar cost me $200
PS: The neck pickup was duct taped into place for these photos. I was waiting for the mounting screws to be shipped...
I still have plans for it in the future: I want to throw on a Bigsby, and put a humbucker in the bridge position... And I need to get up the guts to slap this decal on it (but I'm kind of a sloppy idiot and am worried I'll screw it up)
Thanks, I hope you like it!
-Andrew
myspace.com/garagetone