Fun lumberyard project - a surf green Port Orford Cedar Tele with JM neck pickup

[guitargumption]

So I love Port Orford Cedar for guitar bodies. I found the local resale lumber yard selling decking grade port orford cedar in quanities I'd never seen, and I had to have some! Most of it went into making adirondack style chairs, but a couple of the boards were really high quality and a great weight so I decided to make a three piece tele body out of it.

I have always loved translucent surf green, so this is my first go at that color. I added a minimal ageing/relic kind of thing to the finish, to go with the ageing I did to the hardware, as I thought kind of a rusted ageing look went well with the surf ocean vibe.

I had a Seymour Duncan antiquity jazzmaster pickup hanging around, and I always thought that would be a good tele neck pickup. The bridge pickup I wound from Stewmac parts. They both sound great, though I need to wind the bridge just a bit hotter to match that neck.

It's a light birdseye maple neck, laminated with some rosewood I had hanging around. I prefer scarf jointed and angled headstocks, so I went that way. I don't like string trees.

The fretboard is macassar ebony, and for some reason I wanted to do some space theme inlays. Recognize the 12th fret?

It was a fun project, thanks for looking!

 

[guitargumption]

A few more

 

[Dostradamas]

Nice
Whats the weight?

I have been looking a bit for some of that very cedar for an esquire

If u have enough for another body and feel like one less pickup rout pm me

 

[guitargumption]

last one for now

 

[guitargumption]

Thanks! According to my bathroom scale it's 6.8 lbs.

I have plans for the rest of the POC, but if that changes I can let you know!

 

[Killing Floor]

Great color. Cool planetary inlays too. Is that Uranus?

 

[crazydave911]

Great color. Cool planetary inlays too. Is that Uranus?

Uh mmm, Saturn

 

[guitargumption]

I should have taken a closer inlay picture. It's the latest understanding of what a black hole looks like.

 

[oldunc]

Sigh. If I were a rich man- Port Orford Cedar is such a wonderful wood, about the only one (other than maybe Japanese Hinoki wood) that could be used for both a neck and a soundboard; I'd love to have an all POC acoustic (though I'm not sure it would make it as a fretboard).

 

[Deeve]

I appreciate OP's decision to pay homage to Paul Bigsby w/ Birdsyeye in the headstock.
Looks great!

 

[mjr428]

Nice, I love Cedar too. I mean, I don't really know what Port Orford Cedar is (guessing it's Cedar that comes from Port Orford), but I've been using Western Red Cedar for some bodies, and I love working with it. Light as well... and used to be fairly inexpensive...

 

[guitargumption]

I appreciate OP's decision to pay homage to Paul Bigsby w/ Birdsyeye in the headstock.
Looks great!

Thanks for noticing!

I always figured both Bigsby and Fender based their headstock shape on the f-hole shape. I decided to take it to the extreme, make it look as much f-hole like as I could, and used a spiral shape for the big curve instead of circular or oval. Tiny difference, haha.

 

[guitargumption]

Nice, I love Cedar too. I mean, I don't really know what Port Orford Cedar is (guessing it's Cedar that comes from Port Orford), but I've been using Western Red Cedar for some bodies, and I love working with it. Light as well... and used to be fairly inexpensive...

From what I gather it isn't actually technically a Cedar, maybe a Cypress? It's really stiff for it's weight and smells amazing, very distinct spicy smell when worked. My favorite thing to do is put a more interesting drop top on it and do a natural finish. Pistachio on top was a particularly good sounding combo.

 

[Slap Axe]

That's way cool, nice work!

 

[oldunc]

Nice, I love Cedar too. I mean, I don't really know what Port Orford Cedar is (guessing it's Cedar that comes from Port Orford), but I've been using Western Red Cedar for some bodies, and I love working with it. Light as well... and used to be fairly inexpensive...

Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana)is a quite extraordinary wood, an amazing combination of strength and lightness it has long been used mostly for shipbuilding, but is quite popular now for guitar soundboards. It is native to southern Oregon and northern California. The tree is threatened by a widespread fungus disease and the lumber has always been in short supply. I hesitate to add what is, after all, just a personal opinion, but I consider making a painted solid body guitar of it a bit of a waste of a precious resource.

 

[peterg]

Very nice! How did you do the finish!

 

[guitargumption]

Very nice! How did you do the finish!

I used Target EM6000 waterbased lacquer for the body. I first got a nice level surface after a few clear coats, then sprayed a few color coats until I liked the color. For the color I used Mixol dyes, blue, green, and white. Mostly green and white with the tiniest amount of blue. Even a little bit too much blue and it looks much more seafoam than surf. Then clearcoats on top of that.

 

[P Thought]

I hesitate to add what is, after all, just a personal opinion, but I consider making a painted solid body guitar of it a bit of a waste of a precious resource.

I didn't want to say anything either, but now that you said it. . .

This was a first-time effort at making a strat body, just for practice, and you can see that I had some deflugalties with the router. But the bod was so light, and the grain so nice (some knot so nice) that I later rounded up some "donor" parts and turned it into a nice player. And that smell. . . .

 

[Telekarster]

Nice work! I'll bet that little honey can sing too! Beautiful color! Love it!

 

[guitargumption]

Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana)is a quite extraordinary wood, an amazing combination of strength and lightness it has long been used mostly for shipbuilding, but is quite popular now for guitar soundboards. It is native to southern Oregon and northern California. The tree is threatened by a widespread fungus disease and the lumber has always been in short supply. I hesitate to add what is, after all, just a personal opinion, but I consider making a painted solid body guitar of it a bit of a waste of a precious resource.

I didn't know quite what to make of this comment. Is the problem that I put a color on it instead of leaving it natural? If so I don't find plain POC that interesting to look at, making it a perfect candidate for a semi-translucent finish imo. (That being said I've made a couple POC guitars with natural finishes too). If the problem is that I used a piece of POC at all, then I don't understand this, since it was going to be used for decking most likely if I didn't turn it into a guitar.