Spruce Telecaster And Other Stuff
 

Hopefully 2017 will be a productive year, trying to get non-guitar related things out of the way. To get me started again I want to finish a nylon string parlor I am making and build a cheap Telecaster to keep in my workshop for working on amp projects. The Tele will be built out of a piece of 2"X8" I came across that had enough of a clear section in it and was not all flat sawn. The neck I cut out of poplar years ago, should be good enough for this project.

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Oh, it is pretty dry in my house. The reason I am working on these and putting off the others till the relative humidity in the place gets closer to normal.

Did a two layer laminate top. Found out why they are normally made in odd number of layers.

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Not used to seeing a chunk of spruce like you've got there.

Good luck!

Wow, that's umm definetly "not flat" anymore.

Steve

I am guessing it is spruce, pine smells/feels different when I send it through my drum sander. They cut 2"x10" and 2"x12" boards from larger trees (duh) and it is sometimes easier to find clear sections in them. I also look to find the grain in the area I want to be 45 degrees to 90 degrees. Does not matter much on an electric but I am too used to looking for quartered wood for guitar tops. This is not bad for construction wood, I have some wood actually cut for a guitar that is 1" thick meant for carving into an archtop. Those will sit a while as I have too many other guitars to build first.

I have a spruce tele I put together that is my main guitar. Arm cut looks wrong on a tele to me. It would still fit you pretty well if you just did the gut cut. I finished mine with fresh-mixed shellac sprayed through a Preval and it came out looking pretty butterscotch blonde.

I know what you mean about the arm bevel. I think part of the charm of the Tele is in it's simplicity. But I have a health issue and the normal edge of a guitar can cause me pain and then I just let the guitar sit in the corner. That is part of the reason for making this one out of spruce and poplar, it should be a fairly light guitar.

I have been waffling back and forth on the color. I do like a butterscotch blond but also have a thing for sunbursts. I picked up some paint last night and will experiment with it while building this one. I really like a simple yellow and red one I saw.

Looks like Fir to me .
I have 6 or 7 bookmatched 1/4 sawn Norway Spruce blanks sitting here waiting to be rough cut to shape .
I have one completed build here with a 1/4 sawn walnut neck and 1/4 sawn mulberry fretboard .
I harvested all of this wood .
Sadly , photobucket is misbehaving for me right now or you would be seeing pics .
Oh well .
Photobucket can't beat an idiot like me .
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Cool to be able to harvest your own wood.

Not used to working with such a soft wood for a neck. For better or worse, truss rod slot and headstock milled. Will be using a piece of maple for the fretboard.

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Double posts, may as well change the pictures.

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Too lazy to make up some templates, just winged it by using a construction square as my guide.

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I guess I was too involved with the routing and not wanting to screw up I never took any pictures while making little wood chips. Just drew out a rough guide where to cur and went at her. Still have to drill between areas and do a hole for the output jack. Otherwise coming along well enough. I did not sand the body edge smooth as that only invites dents. I'll do that once I am done with the rough shaping.

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That's looking very nice.

i dint even know what to say- great job!

I put a number of coats of shellac on the body but for some reason the shellac was not doing it for me. I sanded it down and was going to soak the wood with tea to get some tannins into the wood and use a iron-vinegar solution to give a weathered effect. I liked what the tea was doing and I gave it a few more coats. Then I put some wipe on poly on it. Almost a butterscotch blond effect.

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Need to work on the neck now.

Fred, the tele looks great! Nice work.

Sam

Very nice.

I almost always have a problem with Photobucket. Drives me nuts. I just give up on it.

Photobucket really annoys me especially since my other computer blew up and I am using a slow one. Between PB and my antivirus software it is hard to get anything done.

The neck for my pine Tele is carved, still want to glue on a headplate. Have not decided what yet though. Need to get something for side fret markers. Never realized I did not have any black. Also making a lightweight combo of sorts. To be technical it really a speaker cabinet and head although the head could easily slip into a guitar bag. It will be powered by a laptop power supply, have a switchable 5F6A Bassman / 5D3 Deluxe preamp, and a switching amplifier for power. The cab is built with the lightest pine board I could find and comes in at 10 lbs. With a 5 lb Yamaha speaker it will be easy to travel with.

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Neck is all semi-glossed and sort of shinny (or was it satin). Need to drill the tuner holes, fret and set up. So what do I do?

Start a new project. It is too dry in my house right now to work on the acoustic guitars I am building, part of the reason for doing the Tele. Aww what the heck, let's make a little one. Inspired by the Martin size-5 Terz guitar, decided to make one roughly the same size. Going to be a nylon guitar. Some wood to use.

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/p...psrxqukowi.jpg

Resawed the CLR/SELECT. Got to love the 3-4 grain lines per inch.

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I figured I only would get three pieces out of the 3/4" board. So I cut three pieces as a front and half a back, and a lengthier two sides and a third to use as the other side of the back. Won't be book matched but not a concern. Also had to make a mold to bend the wood. I cut up a 2x6 and shaped them and screwed them together. My cheap and dirty side bender. Got to say that this was the first time I used SuperSoft II to bend the wood. Did some softwood sides befor and they have a tendency to crease the inside fibers at the waist. Just a nice smooth bend with the SS.

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And here is where I am right now. Bent sides, 2x3 cut in half and glued up to make the neck. The top and backs joined and braced. I did have to add little wings on the lower bout, the board was 1/2" narrower than I needed. So why did I not just use a bigger one since I have more? I wanted to use the wide grained wood and if not for this what would I use it for?

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The piece for the neck turned out shorter than I thought it was. I still might get away with using it, if not I'll have to find another to use. Maybe a 2x4. :)

Just some pictures from my tablet.

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Maple binding.

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Binding is not perfect in a couple of places.

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Want to try a dovetail for this build. Could not find the plate for the bottom of the router, it will show up yet.

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Not too bad, need to make a template for the body next.

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Really nice work!

Nice dovetail jig you made there.

Took my inspiration from Bruce's (Sexauer) photo documentation. I was considering making a jig for doing the neck joints but the simplicity of his method is too hard to ignore. Bruce's jigs.

http://mojoluthier.com/lpics14/241ES/dovetail6.jpg

http://mojoluthier.com/lpics14/241ES/dovetail2.jpg


I have a few more choice hardware store boards to sculpt into guitar shaped objects. I find it fun building with it as other than my time there is not much cost involved. I can also justify giving them away or sell them for enough to cover the costs to people I feel would appreciate them. If they do not last forever at least they could be hung up on a wall some day.

I have been doing a lot of trial and error getting the feel of the dovetail joint. I finally got up the nerve to try it on the body.

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Simple jig clamped on the top, I checked the center of the top, not necessarily where the sides join. Used the square to determine the outside positions of the upper bout and used the caliper to adjust the jig till it was centered.

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As I was cutting the joint I noticed the guide bushing move a little. Crappy router but the only one that I have a insert to use the guide bushings. A bit of a rough spot on the left hand side but otherwise worked out ok. Notice how wide the grain is, on the opposite end of the scale from another board I have.

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About 22 grain lines per inch on the wide end to 34 on the left.Another Home Depot buy. It'll make some nice 00 sized tops one day. Oh yeah, got my computer to recognize my camera so picture quality is a little better.

I know I am going to get a bad reputation for not finishing projects, but... ...I'll get back to them. I promise, really. It is just that I saw some people having a contest and I thought it seemed like an interesting idea. It is from a cigar box guitar forum and the requirement is to use a paint can lid as a resonator. I do have a few cigar boxes downstairs but that would be too, expected. I did have the idea of making it out of door skins of a mahogany door but that will have to wait for another day. I decided to use a set of sides I had bent up and joined that I did not plan on using any more. It was a rather wide and squat body shape, I have moved on to more normal dimensions. But if I take the set back to my bender and reshaped them they should do. Oh yeah, the time limit on the contest is the end of the month (a month long contest) and I am starting two weeks late. Oh I hope everything goes right.

So first, the raw materials. Neck wood is sugar pine I pulled off a pallet.

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Paint can lid seems to fit. Baltic Birch for the top and back.

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Routered out a soundwell for the lid out of some plywood, no shortage of clamps.

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Decided to cut the neck slot by not using a router to show you can get away without one.

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Seemed to fit well enough. Braced it and a back to go with it.

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The F-holes were fun. Took about half the time to do the second than the first. Added a pickup between the F holes. Found a piece of walnut for the fretboard.

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Spent quite a while getting the neck joint to the body right. The sugar pine has wide soft and hard grain lines and you end up removing too much of the soft when you want to get rid of some of the hard wood. Also in the picture is a piece of aluminum that I want to make a resonator cover out of.

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I had the idea to hammer form the resonator cover out of the aluminum. Seemed like a good idea, would have been easier with thinner aluminum. Had a piece of fir plywood that I carved the dome shape out of, used a hand plane and worked up a sweat. That was premium old growth fir ply. It was easy enough figuring out if I needed to take off more from one side or the other. Just make nice little circles, sand it smooth.

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/p...psldgu3lc3.jpg

Doesn't look much like it but there is a dome there. Next file and sand it smooth. Need to figure out some type of hole pattern to let the sound out.

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/p...pswewtay5i.jpg

I am just catching up on posting although the pace is crazy. Not much time for reflection and determining if my next action will work or not. Speaking of.
I had the painters give me some raw tint to put int paint, was suppose to be good for water based and oil paint. It didn't seem to like the wipe on poly and instead of mixing stayed as mini globules as I mixed it. I went with it anyway , first doing a yellow coat and then when dry doing an halo orange coat. I could see it wasn't going to work, was not sure how I was going to get my sunburst. I stripped the paint off and started over. Instead of mixing the tint with poly I added water to the tint and applied it to the guitar. When dry I wiped on a layer of poly, did the same thing for the orange and black coats. I sure hope this was going to work as it is Thursday and I have till Saturday afternoon to get the guitar finished. I asked my brother to take pictures of it then.

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While paint dried I continued on with the cover plate. I should have used a smaller drill bit to drill out the numbers, live and learn. Definitly a hand made look, need to figure out what paint to use on it also. Gluing the 'handle' of the cover. Using flamed maple for it also.

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That is all for now, a bucket full of work to do this morning.

I left everybody with an unsightly mess on the guitar. But there was a method to my madness.

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Here are some of the last bits and pieces, the bridge and the tailpiece.

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Ran out of time so the bridge is not set up for intonation, I'll need to play with it a while. The frets have to be done and the pickup is not connected to anything. I have some ideas how I want to do the volume and tone control, the output jack I still am debating on.

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And I am taking a break for the next few days. This was a lot of work in a short period of time where I ignored everything else. Going to do some dishes, laundry, dust, normal stuff.

Just want to post one more picture.

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/p...ps9mzr9pnq.jpg

Thats a sweet looking little tenor resonator...

How long did it take you soup to nuts (calendar wise?)