Malificent Progress

Remember this lunchtime project I started. Yeah this is taking forever... BUT I promised myself NO Power tools. Most of the Depth cuts have been made and I've started to work on the detail...
30 minutes a day 3 to 4 days a week just doesn't seem to be enough time... every time I get rolling I have to get back to work... erk!.. little by little... after all, it is a distraction from the computer screen.

Kenny's Kay

The story here is that Kenny's Dad bought this Kay guitar New when he was a teen sometime in the 30's. He then passed it on to Kenny when he was a teen. And now Kenny wants to pass it on to his teen son. The Bad news here was that the guitar was pretty much unplayable for years.
the action was about a half inch off the finger board, the neck was separated at the heal causing the belly to dip, the bridge was lifting and pulling away from the top and because of all this... Staying in tune was not an option.
Here you can see where the neck was separating from the body and the extreme lift of the bridge.
If you look closely you can also see how the holes on the bridge don't align with the holes in the body. What this means is someone attempted a repair in the past and didn't quite align the bridge with the existing holes.

First things first. I remove the neck and start cleaning up the neck pocket and all gluing surfaces.
When removing a neck you use heat. Either steam or special heating blankets. I like the heating blankets, not as messy. You can get them from most guitar supply shops. They are silicone coated so nothing sticks to them and they can reach 500 degrees in minutes. Where as the old school steaming method can be a bit slow and on the messy side... as well as dangerous, hot steam burns as bad as hot oil from a frying pan.
My next step was to remove the bridge, level the bottom and re-attach to the body. Before I removed the bridge (again using heat to loosen the glue) I masked off the area where I would be re-gluing the bridge back on. I do this to so I can run a spatula under the bridge as the glue loosens, the tape prevents the spatula from scratching the top. You can see from the pics I had to take a little over 1/16th of an inch off the bottom of the bridge to get it level and flat (that's a lot of material). I did this by laying a piece of 220 sand paper on my flat work bench and rubbing back and forth until it was flat. Using a razor blade and a flat chisel I cleaned the glue area removing old glue and finish so there would be a good wood to wood glue surface.
The above image shows my clamping process to get the bridge back on the body and level.
The Bolts are the exact size of the pin holes so the alignment to the existing holes will be dead on. I wipe the squeeze out constantly as pressure is applied so there is no excess glue visible.
Now to the neck. This guitar was built without a truss rod, so to straighten the neck a good amount of heat is needed. In this case I used a heat lamp and clamped the neck to a flat surface.
I applied the heat lamp to the neck for short periods of time letting the neck flex a bit until I was happy with the flatness of the fingerboard. After the neck was flat, I test fitted the neck to the body and found a gap where the fingerboard attaches to the body. As you can see from the pics, a shim was the answer for stability. This shim was made from some scrap Cherry that I had laying around the shop. I eventually stained it to match the rosewood.
The Glue Up went smooth and after sitting for a couple of days I was ready to string her up and see how she does... Wow! Per Kenny's request I added some vintage tuners, and a Schatten under saddle pickup to bring her into the new millenium.
Next on my list of renovations was a vintage pickguard... Not an easy task as .125" tortoise material is not an easy find... but I found some. Using an old photo of a matching guitar I created a template, cut, polished and mounted using vintage brass flat head screws.
Then came the vintage logo and walla!
She sounds Fantastic, both acoustic and plugged in. And Best of all... a low action and she stays in tune for days.

Happy Holidays!

Body Contouring

When building custom bodies from scratch you don't normally have a template. In this case I have a prototype that I'm working from, but I don't have a duplicating routing machine for cutting the body contours. So it's all by hand and by feel.

I'll start by drawing my limit lines (a visual safety net) in pencil. Both my depth of cut and max cut into the body itself. Using a Rasp file, I'll work the deepest section first, working my way back to the thinnest cuts. Next I'll use a Bastard file to smooth out he heavy cut marks left by the Rasp file. And finally 120 grit sandpaper to get the final smooth surface.

From the images above you can see I needed to contour the forearm and belly cut on these bodies. Total time for each body was about 30 minutes. The file I use is double sided, Heavy Rasp (depth of cut is 1/16") on the front and Bastard on the back, see pics. Leather Gloves are a must when working with Rasp files... Start with Ten end with Ten that's my motto.

Dragons Claw

I've been working a bit this week on my lunch hours trying to move forward on the Dragon guitar. Here you can see me trying to sort out the Claw that is holding the crystal ball.

In the Shop

In the shop this weekend I had 3 projects in progress. I was color sanding and painting the final color coats on Mike's Jaguar and Andy's Strat. I was also rough cutting bodies for some custom guitars.

To better explain rough cutting. I start with a Plywood template and route about a .25" deep around the template on the wood blank. From there I hit the Band Saw. Using the routed channel, I'll cut the body out, right down the middle of the route. Once cut out, I'll break out the router again. Using the previously routed channel as my template I'll gradually take off the remaining stock until the route is consistent all the way around the body. Unfortunately I was in a hurry so I didn't take enough pics of the process but I have more Alder on the way so I'll have another chance to shoot pics and post.

Until next time...

Dragons

I've begun a new project to keep my lunches at the House of Mouse a bit more Zen.
I started with a nice big piece of Bass wood, thickness sanded it down to 1.75" using my new favorite tool (see last post). Then using a standard Strat as a template I cut and routed the body.
I took my sketch and transposed it onto the guitar body. Now I've begun depth carving to find the correct feeling I'm looking for. About an hour a day for about a month or so and it should be ready for finish... we'll see!

New Tool

I've been waiting a long time for this. I finally got myself a thickness sander.
No more paying someone else to do it for me... Now I just need a dust collector so I can keep breathing properly!

Cigar Box Uke

I signed up for a beginner Ukelele class at work.
But with all the cigar boxes I have laying around do you think I'm going to go buy a Uke?
Heck NO! I built one.

So I got home early on a Friday and whipped up a scarf joint neck and a set of tuning pegs in a couple of hours. I made this from old Oak flooring I found on the curb in my neighborhood. You can see the nail holes in the back of the neck if you look real close. While the glue was drying I fretted a piece of maple (using the Tenor uke 17" scale) and glued it on as the fingerboard. While all this was drying I cut a bridge, bone nut and saddle from scrap. Glued the bridge to the cigar box and reinforced the box to hold up to the string tension using scrap dowels.

On Sunday I sanded the profile and neck stack, assembled and strung her up.

The finish project is a Tenor Uke on a Vegas Cigar box.
Total time to build and tune up, 5 hours.
Built and completed in one weekend, just in time for the Wednesday night class.

And she was the best sounding Uke in the class... except for the instructors Banjo Uke...
That was cool.... Maybe for the next project...

Rescue Part 2

In the first part of this rescue you saw how I reattached the headstock. In this part you'll see how I replaced the missing pieces of wood and reinforced the break so it will never happen again...

As you can see in the first image I glued in some wood with similar color and grain characteristics. Once the glue dried I chipped, sanded and scraped away until the patch was flush on all sides with the original wood.

In the second image you can see where I have routed grooves to fit the shims that will reinforce the neck. After gluing in the shims and grinding them flush with the neck I lightly sanded the overall area to make sure you couldn't feel them.

I then applied a coat of sanding sealer to the exposed wood, sanding this flush once dry.
Next I brushed on a couple of coats of Lacquer to build up the repair and fill any leftover cracks so it will be undetectable to the touch.

At this point I will be experimenting with the finish. My goal is to have an opaque faux finish that matches the surrounding original finish hiding the repair as much as possible.

More to come!

In The Shop

I've got quite a bit of work right now, so I haven't been posting.
Here's some of the stuff I've got in the shop;

That's Mike's White Jag in the background ready for final sanding, he wants a classic blue for the final finish.
Kenny's acoustic getting it's neck set, this is a partial restoration, He likes the worn look but want's it playable.
Andy's Strat body top stripped for inspection, he wanted to see if there was a nice grain under the color.. Not.. so were going with a gloss black.
Steve's prototype wrapped up and ready for CNC scanning.
Joe's broken headstock getting the cracks filled, and last but not least under the white rags, Jason's Les Paul waiting for a setup. Oh and that other acoustic hanging in the background is a Rose Bowl find waiting for my attention.

More to come...

Rescue

I rescued this guy from the Rose Bowl swap meet. One of the vendors was trying to get rid of it so I offered him $20 and he accepted. The history here is that the headstock broke about 4 years ago and it just sat in the back of the truck bouncing around ever since.

Let me start by saying the longer you wait to repair a break like this, the more tips and chips are lost. You can see there are some really big chunks of wood that are missing. These chunks are going to have to be replaced with some wood with a similar grain.

The grain is so worn down in the inside of the break that there is really nothing for the glue to stick too. In the initial shots you can see someone tried to re-glue the headstock back on using something like standard wood glue or a cheap polymer glue. It chipped off like it was nothing.

I'm gluing the headstock on using a Premixed Hide glue. Since the grain is so worn down I will go back and install bracing to keep the headstock from breaking again. After the glue up and bracing is installed, I will attempt to hide the break as much as possible using a bit of faux finish.
There really is no way to hide a break like this but it's nice not to see it unless your really looking.

Stay Tuned!

Primer

I'm experimenting with a new primer... well its new to me. It's workable, which means you can build it up and sand or scrape it down. This is good when you have grain warp that won't go away. So far it's working great, just a bit difficult to use. I'm used to a one part primer that just needs to be thinned a bit before spraying. This stuff is two part, which means I need to add a hardener and then thin it out for spraying. So the mix is in ratio's not exact numbers. So far so good.

The Only complaint I have thus far is it STINKS... I had to buy a new respirator so I could breathe (The old one was 20 years old). And it lingers as it gasses out, so fans are a must.

Let's see how long I'm willing to deal with this.