The Luthier Community

Well I'm in the mood for building electrics at the moment and my Maple turned up a couple days ago from curlymaple.com so following the sucess of the PRS 24custom build and the faster turn around time compared to acoustic builds I'm off again with a Santanaesque double cut build, I found a set of gibson plans and tiled the image and printed out the body shape to make a template from mdf I had lying around, I then modified it slightly with my PRStemplate to get the pickup and control positioning right for the 25" 24 fret scale I'm using, up to now I'm using the same head shape as the custom but may change it to look more like the Santana headstock, so I guess its time for some pics cos I know thats what you guys like! this is the maple I'm using for the neck stock... its 3"x 7 5/8" flat sawn kiln dried eastern red with some lovely figure, I re sawed it to get 6 28mm rough blanks out at 30" lengthand this is some fijian mahogany I had lying around, it was 8" x1" so to make the body depth up I used a 20mm maple cap body blank glued up and bandsawed out oversized by about 3mm all round and here it is with the routing template screwed onto it using what will be the control mounting holesand onto the contour lines, drawn freehandmaybe should have put this pic in first , routing the neck pocket and pickup cavities before carving the topthen its back to my favourite little plane to carve the topinside of the horn I did with a round surformthen onto the gooseneck cabinet scraperonce I'm happy with the body carve its time to cut the neck angle onto the face of the guitar so while all this carving was going on I glued up the neck blank and let it set, its an 11degree head angle which I find is steep enough for good string break angle over the nut and it really keeps things in tune when using a trem setup and locking machine headshttp://s1054.photobucket.com/albums/s48 ... _n.jpgneck layout marked onto the blank, truss rod slot goes in now, I use a double action truss rod which requires a 6mm slothttp://s1054.photobucket.com/albums/s486/howie12374/Facebook/Double%20cut%20build/?action=view&current=539064_2985994452434_1353021873_n.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;I use the routers edge guide to rout this slot while the neck blank is still square, the trussrod access on the head is also routed out at this point using a 3/8"ball end bittime to lay out the head veneer and fretboard blank just to see how its looking, the board has a 12"radius and is already slotted to the 25"scale, there's a description on how I make my boards elsewhere in my postsand thats as far as I've gotten in the past 2 days, what with it being a bank holiday weekend for easter....apparently that means I have to spend less time in the shop according to the litle lady ! bah....humbug

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3121" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and here's thelink to how I make my fretboards

Howie - nice build between yours and Colins build I'm taken back how talented people are who come to the forum

I really like how you do your fretboards

One day I'm going to build me an electric - one day lol

All the best
Dave

thanks for the kind words Dave

Hey Howie
Me likey alot!
I am quite interested in your top carving method. Did you use a Safe-T planer to terrace your top?
David

Very awesome.
Love everything about it so far.

Gotta build me one of those one of these days.

Dave

thanks for the great comments on this build, the steps in the body are cut with a router using a 3/4" bit not with the safe-t-planer, I just start with the outside cut in a couple passes till I get the edge close to final depth , then reduce the height of the router cutter and move in to the next set of guide lines, I usually just eyeball it and it turns out ok mostly, though I have given some thought on making a set of templates for marking out the contour lines, If I were making a few of these and wanted to keep them all the same that would be my method before moving onto a duplicarver setup, as this is the first D/C I may make a template for the duplicarver before final assembly, though I really like the whole hand carving of the top and as I have the time currently I may make a couple more before thinking about making forms for duplicarving...... so far the only thing I have made on the duplicarver is a lefthanded PRS custom body mold. As for the duplicarver I made it from an old 1/4" router and a set of 20mm cnc linear bearings and rails and I have to say it runs pretty well, I think I may end up using it more for neck carving when I decide on a couple of neck profile options for my guitars and I'm sure I'll find a whole host of other uses for it in the future too

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this 'doing everything in the correct order' my impatience raised it's head again! we all do it , so here it is yeah thats stain way too soon in the build!.... so I thought while I'm doing this ass first may as well go for it properlyand yeah I really shuld have carved these bits before the stain , but I was getting carried away with myself again! then I realised I should probably have done this bit first too....so all seems to be going ok despite the slight error in the correct order of these things.... at worst I'll end up sanding the whole thing back and re staining , but so far so good!... then the neck did this to me .... so now I have hidded the stain from sight, cos that flame popping out of the neck is just asking for it!!.... and just for good measure a few more pics... so the moral of this story is hide the stain and carve pretty wood with your eyes closed!