Mini-Tele - Part 3: A splash of color

Subtle...

As previously mentioned - my son asked for a gold guitar.  

I said, "Everything gold?"

He said, "Everything!"

I said, "...okay."

I said, "...are you sure?"

He said, "I'm sure!"

(editor's note - when I told him the humbucker wasn't going to be gold - he got upset)

Okay.  Here we go!

Gold digger

Two things:

1) I've never spray painted a guitar before.  This is my fifth build (sixth if you count the incomplete Les Paul that still sits on top of my fridge) and I've finished all of them with stain, dye, or shellac under a Nitro finish.  I've got nothing against paint - it's just that all of my builds to date have been made with fairly attractive wood that I wanted to showcase and not hide under paint.  So this is new territory for me (read: plenty of NEW mistakes for me to make).

2) The medium of a blog is rife with dishonesty.  I didn't take a lot of photos of the process of painting the guitar.  So, it looks like this went swimmingly.  I can attest that it did not.  Also, time is a plaything in the blog medium.  This thing sat for months in my garage waiting for me to get my backside in gear and finish it.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

In brief:  I painted this with a generic gold color I purchased at Lowes and neither I nor my son was all that impressed.  It was only after stumbling on a really metallic gold paint (by accident in A.C. Moore) that we got to the color you see now.  Then, as I was preparing to spray a lacquer finish on it - I decided to wipe it down with some naphtha.  ...It had loads of dust (and cobwebs) on it from sitting all summer in my garage and I wanted a clean surface to spray on.  Yeah, it turns out that naphtha will strip spray-paint off like nobody's business.  So, I had to paint the guitar a third time.  Only this time the temperature had dropped and I was spraying in temps way too cold for rattle cans.  So, I'm not confident in how well the paint bonded to the previous coats.

When I finally did get to spraying lacquer - I was using a new brand - Watco - Lacquer, Gloss, Spray

...Let's just say - I'll never be using that brand again.  Stick with Behlan's Stringed Instrument Lacquer, kids.  It works!

I had already started spraying the neck with Behlans so I decided to not mix the streams with a different lacquer on the neck.  In the end, the body got 8 to 10 coats of Watco and the neck got 8 to 10 coats of Behlans.  The neck looks great (even though I used steel wool to dull the finish) and the body looks barely passable.  I never even finished polishing the body as weird black spots were starting to show up under the finish as I waxed on/waxed off.  This could have been the spray-paint I used, the temperature at which I sprayed things, or the lacquer.  Seeing as the neck had none of these issues and the only difference was what lacquer I used - you be the judge.

How you doin'?

With regards to the neck.  I did a fair amount of work to it.  I received it with a badly damaged finish (which I expected for $25).  I sanded off the existing finish and also reshaped the neck a bit.
Knowing that this will be a first guitar and not likely to be used for more than a year or two in this household - I went for comfort over perfection.  I skinny-ed down the neck at the 1st and 2nd frets
so that it would fit in my son's hand and perhaps make it possible for him to play first position (e.g. cowboy) chords.

Can't complain

I also worked on the fret ends quite a bit.  The fret ends were sticking out like barbed wire - so I filed those down and polished the frets as well.  I did a little fret leveling but not much.  If he gets to the point where he's ready to start ripping out an Angus Young solo - I'll dress these frets to perfection.  For now, the neck fits in his hand, won't cut him, and is mostly in tune.

Had some work done?

I also inlaid an Irish coin into the headstock because for some reason that has become my thing.  In this case, this is the first time I've used legal tender.  This is a 10 cent Euro coin.  I used it because it is gold colored.  It was a fabulous piece of good luck that I had a drill bit that was almost the exact size of this coin.  I'm happy with this part of the build.

So, while it's not perfect - the guitar now has a finish.  It's time to assemble it!

Mini-Tele Part 2: Cultural Appropriation

Theft

Never let it be said that a DIY blog about building guitars can't be socially relevant.

Yeah, I can't believe I typed that sentence either...

So what are we looking at?  It's a neck plate, dummy.  No really, it's used for screwing the neck onto a guitar body. And speaking of screwing - it is also a bit of Welsh culture and Druid mythology that I'm taking without asking.  So, for all you Welsh Druids out there - I'm gonna steal your culture.  Look out!

What you are actually looking at is the Druid symbol of the Welsh word - Awen.  Awen means "inspiration" - usually of a poetic nature.  I guess the Druids liked the word and decided it needed a symbol to go with it.  And who are we to judge?

Great Expectations

I thought it would make an interesting image on a neck plate and back in 2015 planned for it to go on the first guitar I finished that year - hence the 2015-001.

(Editor's note - no guitars were finished in 2015).

It just so happened to be a gold neck plate - so it's perfect for this build.  Better late than never!

I like the cut of his jib

Speaking of necks - we're gonna need a place to put that thing.  I routed out the neck pocket on this body blank using the process I have used on the last couple of builds that I've worked on:  Trace the outline of the neck shape on a piece of particle-board (or plywood) and cut out that shape with a jigsaw.  Then use that shape as a tracing template for my router.  What you can't see in the above picture is that everything to the left of that last fret is the overhang.  The thickness of the whole neck minus the thickness of the overhang is how deep the neck pocket needs to be routed - so that the overhang sits flush to the body.

Flush

As is quite typical at this point - things fit pretty well.  The neck fits in the pocket nice and tight and the neck is straight and level.  It's only later - when I start monkeying with things - that I'll mess it up!

"Aren't you a little short for a StormTrooper?"

 As you can see - this is a short-scale thing we're building here.  A normal guitar has a scale length (the distance from the bridge to the nut) - or total string length of 24.75 to 25.5 inches.  This puppy will be about 20.5 inches.  Also, the width and depth of the neck are much smaller than a normal neck.  Hopefully, this will make it easier for little hands to hold it.

Diggin' Holes

In addition to the neck pocket, I also routed out the hole for the pickup.  I'm going to go with a Humbucker for this build for two reasons: I already have one left-over from another build and humbuckers are quieter than single-coil pickups (as in they don't hum as much - hence hum-bucker).
I already have a humbucker routing template so this went fairly quick.

Diggin' More Holes

 I also drilled the hole for the input jack (where the guitar cable plugs into the body). If you look at the center of the hole you'll see a little light.  That's the pickup cavity in the previous picture.
The below picture is a detail shot of this.  I chose to go really primitive with the electronics for this build as I didn't want to overwhelm my Son with switches and knobs and I didn't want to overwhelm myself with soldering headaches.

Holes inside holes.

When I'm done with this build it will have one pickup, one volume knob, and an input jack.  Low-tech but just enough to do some damage.

More tools and jigs

Am I a Liar?
Yes.  Yes, I am a liar.

So, I decided to start working on the Les Paul again after a loooooooong hiatus.
I got myself all psyched up to get my hands dirty fixing the neck and neck pocket.  This morning I took the body and neck down from the fridge, took one look at it and decided, "I'm not working on the neck pocket today. " Even though I haven't touched this project in 18 months - I'm going to 'switch gears' and work on the neck.

Okay - here we go...

I had alluded to the fact that I was going to make some drastic changes to the neck in a previous post. Here's where we dig into that process.  My plan is to take the existing neck that I bought from Guitarfetish and add the following:

1. A headstock veneer to match the body
2. Binding all around the neck
3. Replace the existing diamond inlays with standard Les paul 'block' inlays
4. Install an Irish coin inlay (most likely a 1 penny piece) in the headstock

If you've been following along - I finished the headstock veneer a while back.

Today we'll look at how to do the binding around the neck.

The binding was going to be a mixture of easy and hard.  Most of the binding was going to be set in straight runs (with few curves) but I wasn't sure how I was going to route the channel for the binding as I don't own a router table.  This kind of work is hard to do freehand with a router as the neck is curved on both sides and tapered to boot.

After a quick trip to google - it became clear that I had all the necessary parts to build my own primitive router table.  So, first up: build a router table.

Kinda looks like a reject from 'The Lego Movie.'

 The process is actually quite brief.  Take the bottom plate off of your router, trace the outline of it on a flat and wide board (most people use plywood or melamine as they don't warp easily. I used Particle Board which also doesn't warp easily but isn't as durable - it's what I had on hand).

Make sure to mark off where the holes go to attach the board to the router and start drilling holes.  I made a one inch hole in the middle of a sheet of particle board for any router bits to fit through and drilled four 1/8 inch holes for the mounting screws.  I also used a 1/4 inch forstner bit to countersink the screws so that they don't bump into the workpiece.

Once the holes are all drilled - screw the router base onto the bottom of the board, turn the board upside down, mount it to something (I used a black and decker workmate bench), and adjust the height of the router bit until it pokes through the hole.  Voila!

It took almost as long to write this description as it took to make the thing itself.

For any of the more seasoned luthiers/woodworkers out there - this is a temporary router table.  I'm aware that this won't last (particle board warps).  But it got the job done and I didn't have to drop $300 at Rockler.

Anywho!  This particular router bit is larger than the ball bearing on the top - so the ball bearing runs along the work piece and the blade cuts deeper leaving a channel that I can use to install the binding around the neck.

What? Me worry?

As the last several post about binding have proven - I have no idea what I'm doing!  So, we'll see how this goes.  But for now - there is a channel for binding, I have already purchased neck binding, and there's no legal or ethical reason why I can't just bind this sucker at any given moment.

Oh, look... More Binding...

That'll buff right out...

Now that the body has most of the holes routed/drilled it's time to start fixing my earlier mistakes.
When I left off with this build (seven years ago!) the binding was incomplete and in the intervening years it has developed a few additional - oh let's call them "issues."

Looks fine (if you turn your head and squint a bit).

A piece fell off around the smaller horn (and that broken piece is long gone), a couple of cracks have been there all along, a section came unglued, and I never did the bend around the bigger horn properly in the first place.  So!  There's much to do.

Don't be so picky. 

The answer to all my problems.

This binding (unlike the plastic binding I used on the Les Paul build) is made of Cocobolo.  A fabulous wood that is dense, oily, aromatic, and water resistant.  If you have ever tried to bend wood before then you know water is usually an important part of the process.  Not so much with Cocobolo. This stuff is so dense and oily it's one of the few wood types in the world that doesn't float.  You pretty much just use heat to bend cocobolo.  In this case - the same heat gun we used for the Les Paul binding.

Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot!

Also, because Cocobolo is so naturally oily you have to "degrease" it before you glue it.  So keep some Acetone on hand prior to gluing. Wipe all of the cocobolo pieces down with a rag dipped in acetone. Again, this stuff isn't the best thing in the world for you (according to the State of California) - so don't bathe in it.

Look! I found my Special-purpose!

I can't speak for other woods but with Cocobolo you really have to "listen" to the wood while you're bending it.  I usually use a stethoscope...

I'm sure there is a joke in here somewhere about men "listening" so I'll just let you fill in the blanks.

But seriously, as you apply the heat the wood will very quickly go from stiff to pliable.  It's not a specific amount of time (or heat) but usually it's less than a minute of direct heat before it starts to bend.  If you see the wood turning black or the wood resins bubbling you've gone too far - ease back on the heat.  You want it JUST before that point.

The thing about heating and bending wood this way is that you really need a third hand.  One hand to hold the heat gun, one hand to bend/reshape the wood and a third hand to tape it down.

A fourth hand to photograph it all wouldn't hurt either

If you don't tape the binding down immediately - as it cools it will start to go back to it's original shape.  It won't completely go back to it's original shape but you will lose a lot of those lovely curves you just created.

Quick tip: Don't use foil duct tape (or actual duct tape) like in the picture.  Use low tack masking tape or painters tape.

Like with plastic binding - you can use a bunch of different things to glue the binding down with.  On this particular evening I used medium viscosity super glue.  Since this is a wood binding being glued to a wood guitar body - you could use PVA (Wood) glue and it would give you more working time.
I wanted to scrape and sand the body in the same night as gluing the binding down - so I chose superglue.  Also - it's supposed to work better with cocobolo.   I'll let you know.

Remember to use just enough to glue your fingers together but not enough to glue what you actually wanted adhered.

Mmmmm... Toasty

So, remember when I said use enough heat to bend the binding but not enough to cook it?
Yeah, "Do as I say.  Not as I do."  This is a little cooked.  I'm hopeful the charred parts will scrap off.
Patience is a virtue.  Just not one of mine.

The glue on the above piece of binding has dried and this little section is ready to be cleaned up.
You use a similar process as you would for plastic binding: scrape the sides with a card scraper (or small plane) and sand smooth.  One thing that is different about using cocobolo is that the oils can stain adjacent wood while you are sanding (which it did for me).  I also used a utility razor blade as a card scraper as it is good for detail work.

Pictured: A lack of virtues

You may be able to see that in the picture above the bit on the end is broken.  I tried to force the cocobolo to bend too much too soon.  Take your time and this won't happen.

Oh look!  New problems.

One of the things that you learn working with wood bindings is that if you heat up an old section of previously glued binding for too long - it may come UN-glued.  I'm not sure how you would avoid this (tape the old binding down?) but thankfully it's an easy fix - and in this case not completely unhelpful.  I plan on trimming the two pieces of binding until the meet in the middle. Having them free like this let's me test the fit as I trim them to the correct size.

In process...

 I was able to clean up quite a few of the binding issues but not all of them.
...and I was starting to get sloppy - so I stopped for the night partway through the process.

I'll be honest - probably the most valuable lesson I've learned from building guitars is knowing when to just stop for the night and pick it up the next day.

There is more fiddly work to be done but this body is one step closer to being a guitar than it was yesterday.

Not quite there yet...

Lessons learned?  For those playing the Luthier Home Game (or anyone who works with wood) some people find the sawdust of Cocobolo irritating to their sinuses.  I did. Wearing a mask when using it is probably a good idea.

Cocobolo is still one of my favorite woods to look at.  Maybe not one of my favorites to make bindings from.  But as it's the only wood binding I've tried so far - I have no basis for comparison.
Still, it cleans up real nice.

Getting purdy.

You know what this guitar needs? Holes.

Looks like it's got plenty of holes to me

Here we are again.

That magical time when a man and his router think toward guitars.

I mean, I could just sit here and fiddle with bindings and chip out ( by the way - at some point we're gonna need to deal with those bindings and chip outs) - but where's the fun in that?

No! It's time to dig some holes!

(For some reason I have Craig Ferguson's voice in my head while I say this.  ...and now you do too.)

As you can see - holes were dug. Here's how it all went down.

A guitar needs a certain amount of holes - a semi-hollow guitar more than other types. 

You need the holes for the pickups, the tone and volume controls. You also need the hole for the input jack and the pickup selector switch.  Some of the more esoteric orifices you will need are holes in the pickup cavity for the wires to the volume/tone knobs.  In a sense - you need holes within holes.

As it happens I have already made the holes for the bridge (for the screws that hold it down and the holes for the strings to thread through the body).  I also made the neck pocket and the sound hole.

So, what I'm saying is - there are a bunch of holes in this thing.

This was my iPhone's "Yellow Period"  Kind of like Picasso's Blue Period but dumber.

On this day I started with the tone/volume/switch controls. 

Here's a thing you should know if you are just starting out in woodworking - wood splinters.

No, seriously, if you drill through a board (or in this case a guitar top) the top of the hole will look nice and neat but the other side of the board will look like a splintered mess - unless you brace it with something.  The easiest way to do this is to put a piece of scrap wood under your workpiece and drill through both.  The thing you care about will look good and the scrap will not.

Yeah, I kinda screwed myself on this one.  There's no way to brace the underside of the top while I drill through it as I can't get any wood into the body of the guitar and under the top to brace it.
What's the take-away?  Pre-drill stuff like this before you glue the top down.

"What's the difference?  No one can see it."

True.  But, if the top splinters like that it becomes weaker at that spot.  Also, I have to put a control potentiometer (pot for short) under there.  It'll be easier to attach to a clean (non-splintered) surface.

So, what I did to mitigate the splintering was to drill a small hole and use a reamer to make the hole bigger. The reamer cuts "out" not "down" so there is less splintering.  And that worked - to a point. Specifically the point of the reamer touching the inside of the guitar preventing me from going any further.
From there I used three or four drill-bits of ascending sizes to 'ream' the hole.
Yeah, I thought that was going to be easier too.  Murphy was an Optimist.

By the way - I'd love to tell you what size these holes should be but as the four different Pots that I used as guides all had different diameters - you should probably measure yours if you are playing the Luthier Home Game.

Just airing out my bits...

Next came the input jack hole.  Again - another learning experience.  What I should have done was to use a forstner drill bit of the correct size and drill the hole once.  Instead I ended up using two standard drill bits and two paddle drill bits to 'step' my way up to the correct size. Yes, it was messy.
Listen to me:  Don't do it this way.  It's a waste of time.  Use the right tool for the job.  Especially when you HAVE the right tool for the job.  Luckily I also had a drum sander bit (man, I have a lot of drill bits...) and was able to sand the hole clean.

I think I've seen this image somewhere before...

The pickup cavities:  This actually went pretty well.  Eight years ago (good gravy!) when I started this build, I bought the pickups and made a template out of them - just for this occasion.  So, I was ready to go.  See that kids? Planning ahead can have positive effects.  If you've been reading along - you get the gist.  There was a router bit with a pattern tracing ball-bearing on it and I traced the pattern with the router.

Might be time to sharpen this guy

The toughest part about this process was drilling the holes in the pickup cavity for the wires to connect to the switches and knobs. After my first build I bought a super long drill bit (again, more bits) just for this job.  But somewhere along the way the bit snapped in two.  I tried using the remaining piece (and it DID work) but it wasn't a clean cut (as you can see) and I'll be getting a new one of those bits soon.

We're in a hole to nowhere.  Come on inside.

I do still have some shaping to do on the pickup cavities as the pickups don't fit as nice as I'd like - but that's just a few minutes work with a chisel.  For the most part - this puppy has all the holes it will need.

Okay, maybe not all the holes.  There's the strap holes, mounting holes for the pickups, and then there's the holes for the tuning peg screws, a hole for the neck adjustment screw...

Strata

How about we put some of these templates to work?

I used some double sided tape and one clamp to attach the first template to the body blank.

Keep in mind this is the deepest cut.  Each successive cut will be shallower and each successive template will be smaller (see pictures below).  Because this cut was so deep (about 1/2 an inch) - I made it using three passes.  Same as when I was routing out the body shape - I used a template tracing bit.

My process for each of these templates/layers was the same - trace the template until I bumped into the clamp with the router base - then turn off the router - move the clamp and then finish the cut around the body with the router.  Because I made three passes on this first one at different depths - I completed all three passes and then moved the clamp.  It just seemed easier.  All of the other templates got one pass because the cuts were so shallow.

Let's be clear.  This process was not without issues and errors.  I ended up going over my work (ostensibly to clean up my cuts) and ended up making bigger messes.  See below for what happens when you tilt the router a little bit.  Those should be fine seeing as I started out with a body blank that is so thick.  But it's adding more clean-up work that I didn't need to do.

Just a little slip of the wrist

Just a little...
...oh bugger...

The below picture is after using five of the templates (only two more to go!).
It was at this point that I realized my math was a little faulty.  Each stratum is supposed to be about 1/16 of an inch.  The first (lowest) one should be a little bigger (maybe 1/8th of an inch).  Mine were all over the place.  I did use a Profile Copy Gauge to measure the heights of each layer - but I didn't start using it until the third stratum - and that made all the difference.  Long story short - I only used six templates for this build instead of seven.  At the end of the day - it shouldn't make too big of a difference - these were just to help me save time.  There was always going to be some serious sanding and scraping in my future - with or without using all seven templates.

Raggedy Man

It looks like I sneezed.
...a lot...

You may have noticed I drilled the holes for the volume pots, tone pots, and pick-up switch.  I did those on a whim.  They are in the right place - but on the next Les Paul I build - I'll wait until after I have finished the top carve before I drill them.  They didn't get in the way - but there was a chance I could have created a tear-out when routing around them.

Just remember - none of this will be here soon.

I'll be honest.  This was a bunch of work - and it didn't look all that stellar.  I walked away from this day feeling a bit down.  I was having a hard time 'seeing the whole board' and was focusing on how poorly this particular move had gone.  It's good to remember - we're working with wood.  Most mistakes are fixable.

That's some quality work right there.

And the mistakes begin! (Part 1)

Pictured: How I probably should have been doing this all these years.

I like the new template.  And I like the new process I've started using for routing body blanks.  Because I took my time (and used the disc sander) while making the Les Paul template it is probably the best one I've made yet.  In addition, taping the template to the body allows me to use just one clamp - so, I can go half-way around the body, move one clamp, and do the other half.
That's a lot faster and easier than my previous multi-clamp process.

Switching up the router bits takes time but makes for a smoother finished product.

Pictured: a couple of passes. Not pictured: a slap in the face.

The above image is after two passes with the 1/4 inch router bit (seen below).

Judge me by my size, do you?

Take a look at this bit for a sec.  You will notice that the blade is the same width as the ball bearing beneath it.  That's how this whole template business works.  The ball bearing follows (is pressed up against) the template and the blade (aka bit) cuts the wood beneath to match.

(fyi - the above router is upside down)

As long as the blade and the bearing are the same width - all is right with the world.
Remember I said that.

If you look closer at the base of the router bit you see where it enters the router collet (it's the part that holds the bit in place).  If you lower that collet too far down  it starts to rub against the template - usually burning it or deforming it in the process. If you are truly not paying attention - it will do both.  I speak from experience as at least two of my previous templates have burns and/or gouges from that particular mistake.  This is the service I provide.  I make these mistakes so you don't have to!

With the above router bit I can only make two passes on the body before I have to switch out the bit for a longer one.  So, in went the 3/4 inch bit and I made two or three passes.
...and things were looking good.

Pictured: Looking good.

As I said in a previous post (and as you can see below) at some point you can remove the template and just use the body blank as your template.  When and how you do this is based on how long your bits are.

...and now get your mind out of the gutter.

I made a total of 5 or 6 passes with the 3/4 inch bit - until there was 1/4 of an inch (maybe 3/8 of an inch) left on the bottom to remove.  Then I moved the clamp to the other side of the body blank to make the same 5 or 6 passes on that side.  And I don't mind saying that things were still looking pretty decent.  I was really happy with how this was all working out.

Pictured: Happiness

I was ready to switch to the last router bit.  Go back up again to that picture of the router bit above.  Now imagine the blade and the bearing are reversed.  That's what the final bit looks like.

You flip the body blank upside down (so the stuff you are going to trim off is on top), put the router on top of the body blank, and now the cutting edge is between the router base and the bearing.

And that's about when it all went to bollocks...

Pictured: Bollocks

Where did I go wrong?  Happily it was not my technique.  It was my organization.

I have about 20 or 25 router bits.  Most are in plastic boxes that are labeled with descriptions of what the bits are.  Some even have pictures for the drummers in our midst. But I also have a bag of loose router bits.  There are no labels or descriptions on these bits.  It appears that I have purchased a "binding" router bit at some point.  More important, however, is that I forgot that at some point I bought a binding router bit!

A binding router bit is one where the blade is wider than the bearing.  It is used, funny enough, when you want to inlay binding on a guitar.  So when you lean that bearing up against your template (or body blank) it digs in about an 1/8 of an inch deeper than the bearing.  And that's how you get the mistake above.

I know for a fact that this isn't the last mistake that will be made on these builds.  My hope is that when it comes time to actually put binding on this guitar that I've just made my life easier instead of harder (a man can dream, can't he?).

Thankfully I realized something was amiss fairly quick.  I switched to the correct router bit and was left with the below final product from todays routing adventures.

Dig.

I think there's hope for these two yet.