2 Carve tops (very different)

[CptRyg]

Here are my latest projects. Both carve top quilted maple.
One will be purple burst with ebony fretboard, pickup ring, and control cover, with a laminate head.
The other will be natural with a B bender, flame maple fretboard, laminate face, and a wood inlay saddle. That will go to my uncle the saddle builder.

[flatfive]

Nice flame maple fretboard! I haven't seen many of those.

[grinchmonkey]

Man, those things look nice!

[oramac7891]

I agree with Flatfive. That fretboard is cool. keep us posted.

[hockeygoon]

Drool worthy wood. I am interested in the wood saddle, have been kicking around that idea for a future 'budget' build.

[CptRyg]

Here is the result of my first carve top job. This is the non saddle inlay guitar. First picture shows the contours with 3/32" steps. The second shows the final result.

I started with Guitarnuts method of using the finger planer but quickly abandoned that for the dewalt random orbital sander with a 60 grit disc. It took about 15 minutes. I wish I could photograph how nice it is!!

[CptRyg]

@hockeygoon
Here is a really good tutorial that I'm following for the inlay.

[flatfive]

Originally Posted by CptRyg

Here is the result of my first carve top job. This is the non saddle inlay guitar. First picture shows the contours with 3/32" steps. The second shows the final result.

I started with Guitarnuts method of using the finger planer but quickly abandoned that for the dewalt random orbital sander with a 60 grit disc. It took about 15 minutes. I wish I could photograph how nice it is!!

The final result looks great!

It sure would be nice to see a video showing how you did the
carve with the orbital sander. Did you first draw lines showing
the boundaries between each "elevation"? How did you get the
steps of equal height? And what exactly did you do between
the first two steps?

[CptRyg]

I'll do a video for the second guitar. Unfortunately I will be doing Army stuff out of town for most of November and then taking a Thanksgiving holiday for the rest of the month.

I started by drawing lines. I first drew the iner most line which is my maximum height. I used my french curves and aimed for a tear drop shape. The key think here is to stay off of the neck pocket. You don't really want to carve into that.

Next I bisected the difference between the edge and the max height. That was all eyeballed. Then I bisected each of those segments.

Then I started with the router. The target for the final thickness was 1/4 inch so I adjusted the bit accordingly. Starting from the edge I free hand routed to the first line and then raised the bit 3/32" and routed to the next line etc.

As you can see, my routed lines aren't too pretty so I don't think that will affect your final outcome.

When sanding you have to pay attention to keeping the sander flat against the ledges of the contours. Also very important is to not sand against the edge level because you want to keep the landing flat.

Don't bother sanding the contours on each side of the neck pocket. I used my rat tail rasp to shape those and then I hit it with the edge of the disc sander.

That should cover it.

[flatfive]

Thank you! I didn't realize that you'd routed the steps -- I wondered
how you got what what pictured with a sander!

I see that by routing from the outside to the inside you also have a
large surface for the router to side on. Seems like this would be a
good job for a laminate trimmer, based on what I've heard.

I'm itching to try this at home!

Originally Posted by CptRyg

I'll do a video for the second guitar. Unfortunately I will be doing Army stuff out of town for most of November and then taking a Thanksgiving holiday for the rest of the month.

I started by drawing lines. I first drew the iner most line which is my maximum height. I used my french curves and aimed for a tear drop shape. The key think here is to stay off of the neck pocket. You don't really want to carve into that.

Next I bisected the difference between the edge and the max height. That was all eyeballed. Then I bisected each of those segments.

Then I started with the router. The target for the final thickness was 1/4 inch so I adjusted the bit accordingly. Starting from the edge I free hand routed to the first line and then raised the bit 3/32" and routed to the next line etc.

As you can see, my routed lines aren't too pretty so I don't think that will affect your final outcome.

When sanding you have to pay attention to keeping the sander flat against the ledges of the contours. Also very important is to not sand against the edge level because you want to keep the landing flat.

Don't bother sanding the contours on each side of the neck pocket. I used my rat tail rasp to shape those and then I hit it with the edge of the disc sander.

That should cover it.

[macaroonie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax0ZF...eature=related

[CptRyg]

Look what I did!


17 pieces of ebony, maple, babinga, rosewood, and oak.
I've got the step by step pictures coming later on.

[CptRyg]

In case anyone is interested I took a picture as each new piece was installed. For a detailed description of how I did it check out the youtube video that I posted a couple post up.













Here I cheated with the super glue and ebony dust method.

Pretty close if I do say so myself!!

With a bridge...