Mini-Tele - Part 1

Bigger isn't always better!

Like most people that have both children and guitars - I fight a battle.

I really want my son to be interested in music (and being interested in guitars would be A-Okay with me) but I also want my guitars to survive the experience.  I tried early on to demystify the instruments themselves by having him touch, hold, and play some of the more 'durable' items in my collection.  I figured the cheap and cheery Epiphone mandolin would be a better introduction than the near vintage PRS.  Fingers crossed - it seems to have worked.  He's interested in electrics and careful with the acoustics.  You can't ask for much more than that from a 7-year-old.

So, when my son asked me if I would make him a guitar - I had to pause.

Of course, I want to build him a guitar!  I've been waiting for this moment for over 7 years.  I can't wait until he's 16 and he can tell me exactly what pickups he wants in the thing.  But for now - he's 7 and may very well play it once and never touch it again.  So, how do I proceed...?

The thing about guitars for kids is that – you can’t just put a Les Paul in a 7-year-old’s hand and say, “Good Luck!”  It weighs more than he does and it’s almost as tall as he is.  Usually, guitar stores will sell ¾ sized instruments for kids taking up the 6-string but I did the math on that and it would still be pretty big on him. 

Judge me by my size, do you?

About 6 months prior to this post I saw a short scale neck for sale on GFS' factory blowout page.  It was less than $25 and a short enough scale (20.5 inches) that he might be able to play it.  So, I bought it and showed it to him.  He was excited.   I asked him what color he wanted it.  "Gold!" was his only answer.  ...like for all of it.  Gold body, gold hardware, gold headstock.

Don't stop believin', kid.  Gold it is.

So, here I am building a starter guitar for my son.  I'm going low budget on this one as it may end up being a wall hanger but let's see what kind of mess we can make, eh?

I thought you'd be... bigger...

I started with a Poplar body.  Mainly because I could get a slab of wood in the right size.  If I'm careful with the cuts - I might get four bodies out of this plank - and that'll work out to about $20 a body - not too shabby.  If for no other reason it'll be great for working on prototype body shapes - even if this is the only body that gets turned into a full guitar.  (Editor’s note:  if I do this again – I’ll use Basswood.  Poplar was fantastic to work with but it’s a bit too heavy for little guys).

I found a full-size image online for a Telecaster shape and shrunk it down in Photoshop.  I went with the Tele-style - again to keep it simple and to maybe finish the build before he goes to High School.  Tele's don't need a bunch of shaping like a Strat or a Les Paul.  And since I've already built one - it "should" be easier to build.

We'll see how that goes. (Narrator voice-over: it didn’t go how he planned).

Shrinkage

As you would expect if you've been reading this blog for more than 5 minutes.  There's tracing, cutting, and sanding in my immediate future.

Rough & Not-So-Ready

 As you can see from the full-sized template under it - the Mini-Tele body is probably 25% to 35% percent smaller than a normal telecaster body.  I forgot to note how much I reduced the original image file prior to printing it out.  I also made some free-hand changes to the design to better work with the slab of wood I had (read: I made a mistake with my math and had to fudge it a bit).

Ye Olde Schoole

 I also decided to build this guitar in the same way that I built my first one - with a jig-saw rather than a router.  There was no good reason for this - it just felt like a good idea.

"Say hello to my little friend!"

 To fix all those lovely rough edges I used a belt/disc sander.  Seriously, where was this thing when I did this the first time?  These are super-handy if you are a sloppy builder (like me).

There's a little bit of rock in there.

 And here's where I left off after day #1.  Sadly, I didn't record all the steps so the next posts may jump around a bit.

Inbound

Well, this is a fine mess...

When I removed all the tape I was left with...
Kind of a big mess.  There was dried binding goop where there shouldn't be and sadly not enough where there should be.  The horn was pretty sad looking - as I figured it would be - and there were a couple of other gaps that needed to be filled.  What to do...?

I made a second batch of binding paste and let it sit for 24 hours.  So, by the time I got to it - the goop was pretty goopy and perfect for applying to all of the mistakes.

I pretty much bathed - nay, marinated - the body in binding goop to try and cover my mistakes.  I let that sit for another 24 hours and here's what we've got:

Mistakes?  Where?

An even bigger mess...

There's a lot of extra sauce on that pasta

That'll buff right out

It's time to scrape off all the excess binding and see where we stand.  Will it clean up all nice-like or will we be in some deep yoghurt?

...I will tell you one thing.  I regret laying the goop on as thick as I did....

I do not think that word means what you think it means...

I know what you're thinking...

"What kind of a flim-flam-scam are you running here? That's not a Tele!"

This is true.  The shape drawn on that body blank is not a Telecaster shape.  It is an altogether different animal.  It is, in fact, not even in the correct Genus (Fender).  That is a Gibson Les Paul body shape.

I have turned this blog into a Den of Lies!

Come along with me - let's have some fun...

For those of you coming here for the first time - the original Telecaster build can be found 'below.'

By that I mean - see the older posts from 2008.  For those of you who have not closed your browser window - let's see what's going on here.

First, why am I building a Les Paul?  The easy answer is, "Why not?"  The slightly longer answer is that it is more challenging to build a Les Paul than it is a Tele because of the carved top.  It's also usually harder to build a guitar with a 'set' (e.g. glued-in) neck.  ...but I'm not doing that.

I'm building this with a bolt-on neck (as I'll explain in a later post).

So, because it's not a real Les Paul - I don't have to worry about copyright (or is it trademark) infringement then - now do I?  Fingers crossed!

There's one guy in the peanut gallery shouting, "Why don't you just carve the Telecaster top?"  

I'm ignoring him.  La la la la la la - I can't hear you!  

Enough with the 'why' let's move onto the 'how.'

I own an Epiphone Les Paul - so I used that to trace the shape onto the body blank.  In this post I'm just going over the first pass of creating the body outline.  There are two steps when doing this with regular tools.  I say 'regular' because the major guitar manufacturers have specialized tools that do this process in a few minutes unlike the below process which is measured in hours.

The first pass it to remove 90-95% of the excess wood.  You can do that with a band saw, jig saw, or even a hand saw if you have that kind of time (I do not).  The idea is to get close enough to the final shape that you can easily finish it (smooth it out) on the second pass with a router.

I'm using an inexpensive jig saw to remove all the excess wood.  The process for a band saw is different (but as I don't have a band saw I'm not qualified to tell you how).

My process (stolen from somewhere online) is to make multiple cut-ins so that I'm making a series of small cuts.  See the above picture for what I mean.  I then cut along the trace-line with the jig saw - going from cut-in to cut in.  It makes the process slower but much more accurate.

For the first build I did (the Tele) I just went around the whole body in one go - right up against my traced line.  Let me tell you why that was a bad idea...

It's called flex.  And jig saw blades have it in spades.  If you try to make sharp turns, corners or switchbacks with a jig saw - you end up with ridiculously sloppy cuts because the jig saw blade bends as you cut.  It's very difficult to keep it straight (or square).  On the Tele I was very close to the line on the surface of my cut - but the back (or bottom surface) was 1/4 of an inch bigger or smaller.  Because of that I had to modify the body shape a lot with the router.  So now I do it this way.

What you see there (above) is not the top of the line tool for this job.  It doesn't need to be.  Take it slow and it'll be just fine.  You may be able to see that I didn't go right up to my trace line with the jig saw cuts.  That's because I'm not going to go that close to the line on this first pass.  My goal is to get about 1/4 of an inch from the line and use the router to clean it up.  It would probably be better if I got within an 1/8th of an inch - but I have a better router than jig saw - so that's how roll.

Well, what do you know.  I think there's a guitar in there after all.