First Build

Ok,

Thanks to all the fine people here, I got bitten and started my first build.

Making the body was not that difficult but I have a question that I can't find an answer for in the dxf files or this forum.

Can anybody here tell me at what thickness I should plane the neck blank? I'm having a piece of maple and a fretboard so a hint for the thickness of the fretboard would be much appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance,

Erwin.

sizes can be in inches or mm I don't care either way.

 

Ok Thanks let's go with that than.
Over the week end I'll have some time to put up some of the mandatory pictures.

 

body

This is a picture of the body so far. According to the guy I bought the wood from it's wenge, all i know it's ####### heavy and that the grain is kind of beautiful.



It still needs to be rounded over, have the pickups, neck pocket and the electronics cavities cut and a lot of sanding.

 

Ok I finally picked this up again and I router planed the neck blank to 22mm but it seems to have a twist in it so I need to find some one with a thickness planer / jointer so I can get it flat.
The fretboard I have is 9mm thick so I would have some leeway.

 

by the way thsi is what it's suposed to look like when it is finished, somewhere around July 2045 at the speed I'm going ;-)

 

managed to finish the neck template today:



and a view of my mess, errh workshop:

 

resurrecting this thread after all this time. I finally picked this build up again. Not that much has happened in between. The house got a bit rebuilt. Changed jobs twice. Wife got pregnant. We got a kid that is 3 and a half now. I got a friend that built a band saw to slice of a 6mm part of the body and that is pretty much all. Last week I started working on it again and routed out the bottom part of the body for weight relief and I started mking the f-hole. I hope that this time I can work on it to the finish.

 

Another day and a bit of progress. I know we have to refrain ourselves from using profanities here but let me tell you; making that F-hole was a real F***** . But it really helps to have a few good files and very sharp chisels.
In one of the posts from so many years ago I discussed the species of the wood, thinking it was wenge. Over the years I gained some knowledge about wood. What? I didn't waste my time completely, geez, what where you guys thinking of me? Amd I've come to the conclusion that it must be bubinga. What you see here is an old oxydised cut but the parts where I have passed with the router are a fiery red to orange. I someone has a better idea please let me know.

 

Sometimes things go at a faster rate than foreseen and so I was able to finish the weight relief routing yesterday. This will leave today for creating 20 or so spool clamps and do some other stuff around the house.
Tomorrow I will only be able to let the glued-up top and body dry as my son is home and it is not a good idea to start using routers and stuff around a 3.5 year old. I know it is not the the cleanest routing work, but I'm on a bit of a schedule here. I'm off from work until the 2nd of September and from next week on there is no day-care for the kid, so that I have to have the big works that involve routing finished by the end of the week. The rest of it like installing the picups and so on I can do on "stolen" moments as these do not require me to dragg out the tools and setup on the driveway.



I forgot to weigh the body before routing it out but I did after and these are the results. 2.8 Kg is a tad on the heavyside but still a long way of those 70's Les Pauls. With a bridge, pickups, electronics a neck and all other hardware I should end at around 4, 4.5 kg so that should still be a comfortable instrument.

 

I glued up the top and body tonight after spending most of yesterday making violin clamps. I found a way to make them on the interwebs that said I could use some ikea cutting boards to make the plates. It didn't work out. First of all the material is too slippery to bite when closing the butterfly nuts so they keep on coming loose. Secondly I messed up in getting M6 (6mm) threaded rods and nuts and so on where the holesaw that I used uses an 8mm drill so the disks are too loose which does not help either.
In the end I assembled all the clamps I have and made it work that way. Meet the industrial hedgehog:

 

Well still might be pushing the truth somewhat. 'Again' maybe a more correct description.