First build - Sycamore tele.

Having followed this forum for a few months and in that process learning quite a bit, I've begun to build a tele of my own. In order to keep things as simple as possible, I've opted for a one-piece solid body and an off-the-peg neck. Enquiring locally for a piece of wood that would be big enough and reasonably easy to work with led me to this sawmill (www.irishwoods.com) where I got a friendly and knowledgeable reception. I bought a slab of sycamore for €85 which had enough for five tele bodies. The mill cross-cut it into three and two so that it fitted easily in my car.
The sycamore that grows in Ireland is acer pseudoplatanus which is a species of maple, believed to be non-indigenous. It has dramatically contrasting white and brown wood. I think the brown is potentially more visually dramatic, so for my first attempt I band-sawed a body from the whitest part, leaving the brown until I get more used to this.

Here's the first cut-out body, sorry the photo exposure isn't ideal:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/tele_body.jpg

That went well, and I felt confident enough to cut out a second body while I had the band saw set up and things were going right. Half-way through the second body, the saw packed it in - the rubber 'tyre' around the lower pulley of the band saw broke. Phone calls and research in the www showed that a replacement could only be ordered in England, and would be about a month getting to me, the supplier was out of stock etc. No choice but to order one and wait. Then the McGyver lateral thinking kicked in, and I thought that a big rubber band from my office might do - stuck one in around the pulley and the saw ran perfectly again. I got the second body cut out:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/tele_bodies6.jpg

That shows the dark wood body blank, the Terry Downes template, and the first white wood body blank, resting against the remaining slab of sycamore which is big enough for three more. Note the dramatic colouring of the wood. I've been experimenting with Danish oil on the off-cuts and the results on both white and brown wood are very promising.

Moving on to the routing, I did the pickup routs:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/pickup_routs.jpg

The router cutter tore out a fair bit across the grain inside the routs. I'll have to work on that - either I'm going the wrong direction, or going too fast, or both - the cutter is new. The floors of the routs were fine, nice and smooth. I'm going for a natural oiled wood finish without a pickguard, so next job was the rear rout:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/rear_cavity.jpg

That went well. I made a bigger template to make the rebate for a cover, and made a cover from an off-cut, pic to follow.

Now I've run into my first problem, and I need advice. I have a black 'modern tele' bridge from GFS:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/thumbnail.asp?file=assets/images/products/msttebrvisab.jpg&maxx=0&maxy=300

The problem is aligning it with the Terry Downes template. If I line up the string-through holes on the bridge with the hole positions on the TD template, the bridge pickup rout won't align. Since I have that rout already done, I can't do much about it, but if I mount the bridge according to the pickup rout, I'm worried that the saddle position will mean that the strings won't intonate. All advice greatly appreciated.

At this point I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to people like Terry Downes and Ed Hawley whose work putting .pdfs up here makes all this possible, as well as all the builders who share their techniques and tips.

How much is the difference? If it's not much it might not matter depending on the size of the saddle screws. If your route can be adjusted a little and still be hidden by the bridge, that's an option. Or a little from column A and B. Or possibly if you're makin the neck you can compensate at the nut.

That being said I have no idea about the template you have, and am by no means an expert. I would wait for the smart folks to chime in.

I've assembled the bridge and its pickup and laid the pickup in the rout. The string-through holes are about 6mm or 0.25" nearer the neck than they ought to be per the TD template.

Probably the right way to do it would be to plug your through holes and patch the front part of your pickup cutout with a small piece of your scrap material and then reroute and drill your holes again 1/4" farther back. Its just wood, glue and time, and you know its right then eh?

Regards,

Don

Probably the right way to do it would be to plug your through holes and patch the front part of your pickup cutout with a small piece of your scrap material and then reroute and drill your holes again 1/4" farther back. Its just wood, glue and time, and you know its right then eh?

Regards,

Don

Thanks for the replies. Reverend, your boss is smiling on me today. Maybe it's because the Pope is next door on the little island off the east coast today and the sky is clear. Anyway, I cooled down, dry-fitted the pickup and bridge assembly and took some careful measurements. The 25.5" scale length lies comfortably within the adjustment range of the saddles, so I'm out of trouble. The pickup rout is fine, the snag was caused by the string-through holes in the GFS saddle not being in the same place as they are on the TD template. I haven't yet drilled them so patching doesn't arise, thankfully.
On to the next task - attaching the neck.

The important thing there is the bridge saddle line, that is your scale length. Either your string-through holes or your pickup rout moves according to where the saddle line needs to be.

I've got a sycamore growing in our garden, they are a common wild tree. The are a rather small short-lived tree with a rather splitty grain. I think you can see why they are not used much for fine furniture but it can make interesting pieces. It has often been used for parts of musical instruments. Acer pseudoplatanus the sycamore maple is the type species of the genus, it is the true maple but it is lighter and softer than the hard e.g. Canadian maple used for necks.

A funny thing about the latin word acer, in the singular the word acer can just mean a tree, but in the plural, aceris means forest.

The important thing there is the bridge saddle line, that is your scale length. Either your string-through holes or your pickup rout moves according to where the saddle line needs to be.



Thanks jefrs, I have arrived at the same conclusion. The string-through holes have to move, the saddle line will be ok I think at this stage.
I'm getting a really nice finish on dark sycamore with Danish oil with a Georgian Oak tint, bought in B & Q, so I'll persevere with it for another while. The mill had oak, beech, spalted elm etc but their advice was learn on cheap wood, and come back for something better if it goes well. I'm really itching to finish this one and start on my No. 2 body with the dark wood, to get that nice colour and feel with oil. I might buy a better neck for that one, haven't decided yet. There's a nice cocobolo neck on Ebay.co.uk at present that would be desirable.

Ok, despite being very busy with work Ive done a little more to this build. Here's a dry-fit of everything:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/dry_fit.jpg

I aligned the neck with a laser and with fishing line stretched from the saddles to the nut slots, but I won't swear it's bang-on yet. Im happy with the rear-mounted controls. Chosing a Les paul switch is purely a personal preference, and it avoids cutting a risky long slit for the tele-type switch. It does however rule out four-way or five-way wiring options. The LP switch had to go in sideways so that its action followed the pickups intuitively, so this meant widening the chamber with my router on either side of the switch, 2-minute job. If I were doing it again I'd make a small jig to get a neater finish and to make it easier to install shielding tape later. Here's a pic of the switch, remember this is just a dry trial assembly:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/Les_Paul_Sw.jpg

I'll have more time in ten days or so to do some more work on this project.

American Sycamore is very dimensional unstable flatsawn.


Looks like you have done some good work!

American Sycamore is very dimensional unstable flatsawn.


Looks like you have done some good work!

Thanks Colt. This is European Sycamore, not quite the same I believe. I don't really care if it rolls up in a ball, I'll learn the same things building it, and there's lots more better timber out there. Good job you're not close enough to see all the screw-ups, believe me, they're there! Still, encouragement from a maestro is most welcome.

I got two quiet days last week work-wise and spent a lot of time on this guitar. Unfortunately I hadn't a digital camera available to record every detail, so these pics are somewhat after the event. Here is the finished article:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/PB020293.JPG


I made plenty of mistakes and learnt a lot, but it now plays well and sounds quite good, it's probably quite a bit better than I expected my first attempt to turn out. here are some of the mistakes. After sanding the body laboriously in stages from 80 to 600 grit, I carelessly gave a few rough spots on the round-over a quick final rub with a 120-grit sanding sponge that I had lying on the bench. It wasn't noticeable to the eye on raw wood until I put the danish oil on, whereupon it showed up as dark scratches. Also, there's a little ding just under the volume pot caused by a stray chip of wood getting under the guitar:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/PB020294.JPG

All my hardware came from GFS. Unfortunately they didn't have a black jack-cup, only a gold one, which will have to do until my next order. The intonation worked out ok in the end, even though I had to wind the saddles back a fair bit. Those bent steel saddles aren't the most over-engineered items I've ever seen, I'll go for something more substantial on the next one:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/PB020295.JPG

The neck joint went well enough for me, eventually. I learnt that for a flat floor on the mortice you need to extend the template at least, and extend the baseplate of the router as well.The corner radii aren't a perfect match, there is a tiny gap that doesn't show in the pic. I'm going to have to think about that one too next time, maybe read around here on tdpri.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/PB020296.JPG

Pickup cavity wiring went fine for me. The guitar was dead at the first attempt, but I easily traced it to a ground solder to the rear of the pots that had come adrift. I marked all the grounds with earth tape, and all the hot wires with red just to keep a track on things since white was all I had in my garage. Note the LP switch turned through 90 deg to get longitudinal functionality. The copper shielding tape was easy to install in all the cavities. My G-string ferrule hole is off by about 0,5 mm, a right pain in the ass, it was going well up to that point.http://homepage.eircom.net/~jconsidi/guitar/PB020303.JPG

That sycamore is very soft and easy to ding, but the object of the whole exercise was to learn on easy wood before butchering something a bit better. The look I wanted was a casual/rustic unapologetically country-music type guitar that would look fine in the 'smoky old pool-rooms' I play in. I have got that so I'm happy with it. The Danish Oil finish can be reapplied anytime I want to freshen it up a bit.

The guitar plays well, I just have some further fine tweaking to do to the string heights to hopefully cure a slight buzz on the 7th fret, and to even out the string heights. The neck is the standard GFS one, no problems and no major work to be done on it. I must get some decal paper and design a logo, but there is no rush with that, it won't sound any better with a logo.


Hope to hear from you all, and thanks to all here for the encouragement and help.

looks great

Now I've run into my first problem, and I need advice. I have a black 'modern tele' bridge from GFS:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/thumbnail.asp?file=assets/images/products/msttebrvisab.jpg&maxx=0&maxy=300

The problem is aligning it with the Terry Downes template. If I line up the string-through holes on the bridge with the hole positions on the TD template, the bridge pickup rout won't align. Since I have that rout already done, I can't do much about it, but if I mount the bridge according to the pickup rout, I'm worried that the saddle position will mean that the strings won't intonate. All advice greatly appreciated.



Wish I had seen this when you first posted. You needn't have worried, here is the difference. The TDowns print is made using the "vintage" type bridge that has the string-thru holes behind the mounting holes. You used a modern bridge which has the string-thru in front of the mounting holes. The scale length and mounting holes are approximately the same, only the string-thru holes are different :smile:

Sweet looking git by the way!!!

Wish I had seen this when you first posted. You needn't have worried, here is the difference. The TDowns print is made using the "vintage" type bridge that has the string-thru holes behind the mounting holes. You used a modern bridge which has the string-thru in front of the mounting holes. The scale length and mounting holes are approximately the same, only the string-thru holes are different :smile:

Thanks CrazyDave and DTP. Crazy Dave - I eventually figured it out, but the next time I'll be more careful before routing the bridge pickup recess. I'll either use a vintage type or else re-position the pickup rout to suit. I had to pull the saddles back a fair way to get it intonated. Now that it has had a few days to settle down, the intonation seems slightly off again so I'll probably re-adjust it tomorrow. There was a comparison of the two bridges with photos on another recent thread here in the past few days, I can't find it again now.

Regards

I need to start thinking about a decal. Which paper should I get - inkjet or laser?

Laser has always worked better for me.

You've got some really great looking wood in those guitar bodies. Nice.

Thanks JKingma. I haven't done anything about the decal yet. It won't sound a whole lot worse without it.

Has anybody any comment about GFS tuners? I fitted GFS's black super-smooth 14:1 Gotoh-style tuners to this guitar and they don't seem to hold the tune very long. After maybe half an hour of playing several strings need re-tuning, and the guitar has had a few weeks to settle down, intonation etc is all ok so I think it must be the tuners. Has anybody else had any problems with them?