Guitar Building

Schaller provide a template which they advise to tape on and mark the drill holes through (the PDF photo installation guide is available on their website is superb). As this is my first time using the bridge, I’m following the instructions exactly, with 6mm holes for the bridge screws and 5.5mm for the strings.

I got 7 holes pretty much spot on. In the picture you can see the high E hole is a touch too close to the neck (not sure how). It looks like it’ll be fine ok, thankfully it’s the narrow most string and thus the largest margin for error.

The body is too thick for the provided screws, so I’ve counter sunk the bridge ferrules on by back by 12mm instead of the suggested 6mm. It looks fine and the bridge is a nice strong fit to the guitar. I’ve yet to buy the 11mm router bit to do the string anchor block, so not quite finished on the bridge.

(When ever I shoot the pictures inside I forgot to take colour balance target pictures, hence the two whiter images. I could try and hand correct, but for clarity I’m just leaving them as is.)

The back of the body has had a 1/2″ round over bit applied using the borrowed large router. The bigger router, while really heavy to lift (7kg!), was remarkably stable and good for the job. The back round over looks nice and only one small slip near the bottom horn which should sand out fine.

I really like the look of guitars with a large round over on the edges, definitely something for me to consider for getting a 1/2″ router. Can’t decide between that and a planer/thicknesser…..

Before the bridge and pickups can be located, the next step is to cut the neck pocket. The bridge has a range of 10 – 15mm for string height, so I’ve gone for a depth of neck pocket to leave the neck 9mm above the top *before* it’s radiused.

The neck pocket wasn’t as good as the previous one, there is a little bit of play in the neck but nothing significant. First it was cut into the 6mm MDF, then copied into 12mm (on a wide piece to make it easy to clamp). Again I almost ran out of depth on the router, but it just made it. Finally, I used a chisel to square up the edges of the neck pocket.

The top has been glued, left for a few days (mainly due to lack of time) and then trimmed flush with the body. The end result is pretty good, though the centre line is a bit off at the back of the guitar. Next time I would drill though the neck pocket and bridge pickup to have two locating screws.

I’ve borrowed a large router to do the round over of the back of the guitar. I’ve been wanting to try a more capable router for a while, it’ll be interesting to see if the extra features offsets the significant bulk of the bigger router (Trend T4 left, Trend T11 right)

Now I’ve rough cut the top to size, I can use the offcuts for real testing of the dyes (as I was using different bits of wood before). The flame grain isn’t very strong to the naked eye until you add dye, at which point it’s a lot stronger than the grain! The grain runs perpendicular to the stripes. I’m testing two bits, one dyed black first and sanded back (left) and the other straight “desaturated” purple.

This is the result after two coats of the pre-mixed alchol based dyes. Left is Black + Purple, right is Purple + Purple. There is not as much difference as I’d expect to be honest, however I’ll add a second coat of purple to the one on the left. Next I’ll try spraying them with a nitro lacquer and see how they look. I may also use another scrap to try out the powder based dye.

Lacking a thicknesser / planner, I had to get the wood cut for me. In general this isn’t a good idea, as wood doesn’t stay that true for gluing up over time – especially after being posted! However, I’ve had the top under weights the whole time in an attempt to keep it flat.

I did a test clamping to make sure I had a plan and then went for it. You can see some clingfilm under the piece to make sure it doesn’t’ stick to the desk.

The end result is pretty good, with the yellow middle line being mostly down to the excess glue. I’m hoping that once the top is sanded for finishing that the middle line will look a lot tidier.

I (very) roughly cut the top to shape read for gluing to the body. Purple is the current body outline. For the cutout, I decided to go with circles, as I could guarantee a clean patter (rather than trying to come up with a free hand design).

Cutting the control cavity is far simpler when you can drill through from the front and clear out most of the wood.

I’ve reused the control cover template from the previous guitar, as it fitted, meaning it was very quick to finish off the control cavity.

It’s routed 5mm deep, though with the lack of depth to the guitar back (only 7mm of the 15mm), I’ll have to use screws over the bolts of the previous guitar.

Above is the end result of removing the wood for the semi-hollow chamber. As previously mentioned, before I stopped the project last time, I hogged out the wood to the wrong guide line – meaning I couldn’t smooth out the outside edge of the hollow without making the walls thinner than I wanted. The current result is the “best” compromise.

The body is 45mm thick, so I drilled it to 30mm using a flat bottomed bit (though it still leaves a small point at the centre) for the main hog out. I drilled through the body with a 32mm wide spade bit for the three control. All controls are 4cm from the edge of the body. The volume control is directly below the bridge pickup location. The switch is 10cm back from the volume control, with the tone at the mid point between the two.

The controls positions have been drilled all the way through.

Using the template I routed to 32mm deep, leaving a 13mm thick back (forgot to take a white balance shot for this one, hence the off colours).

With the template is finished, the next step is to copy it’s outline onto the guitar. After this, I’ll turn my attention to finishing the internal hollow sections, including drilling through for the guitar controls.

The lack of dust extraction is really noticeable, there is a thick layer of dust building up on everything (beyond the obvious mess on the floor). Now I have dust extraction on my bandsaw and sander, I seem to notice it’s absence on the router all the more. I spent some time hoovering and cleaning up, but for the next build, something to consider. It’ll come down to a Festool router next or a thicknesser/planner, and the later means I can do more projects – so I guess it’ll have to wait.

I may have to look at longer shaft router bits, as even with the template removed, the body is too thick to be done from above in two passes.