# Budget guitar build



## Trizza (11 Sep 2010)

Another forum is holding a $100 instrument building competition, so I thought I'd give it a go! I figured you lot would be interested to follow this, so I'm posting here about it as well.

My build is being done entirely with hand tools, on my balcony.
Its going to be a 25" scale 7 string electric.

The plan - this is what happened when I stuck a picture of a Breedlove CM acoustic and a Rickenbacker bass into a bag and shook it for a while:






I milled & prepped the neck blank from maple:





Then I marked out and cut the headstock scarf joint - here I am establishing an accurate kerf. After getting in a good 5mm or so I shifted to a more normal ripping position and cut through:





A few swipes of the No.6 (Quangsheng - an excellent plane!) cleaned up the face of the headstock:





Plowing the truss rod slot took no time with my Record No.43:


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## AndyT (11 Sep 2010)

Now that does look interesting! I'm not a guitar player or builder, but whenever I've strayed over to look at any builds they've all been done in something like Norm's workshop, with never a hand tool in site.

This could be inspirational!


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## Ironballs (13 Sep 2010)

Is that one of the MIMF competitions Trizza? Look forward to seeing how you get on


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## Trizza (13 Sep 2010)

Right you are Ironballs. I slapped together something crude last year as a first attempt but this year I'm aiming a bit higher


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## Setch (13 Sep 2010)

Good to see another mimfer here - I built one for the $100 tele contest last year, it was great fun banging out something quick and dirty!


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## Trizza (16 Sep 2010)

For most of the body I'm using cheap heat treated alder made for saunas. Here's the stock I'm using, I picked these pieces for their interesting grain (for alder, that is):





I set my No. 6 for a coarse cut and hogged off the radiused edge:





Then jointed both faces of each joint simultaneously for a perfect fit:


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## Trizza (16 Sep 2010)

Kitchen table glue-up proceeded to plan:





Its a bit skimpy on the clamps, but the joint is so tight anyway that they're only there to hold everything in place. Surface tension from the glue was holding them together effectively.


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## Trizza (18 Sep 2010)

Today I resawed the maple for the body cap:






Initially I wanted to just bookmatch two slices of the 15cm-wide maple, however there seems to be some serious tension in this board. The slice took on a serious cup after resawing, so I ripped it down the center to save wood. I cut the rest of the top similarly, planed them all to about 1/2" thick and played around with arrangements to find a nice look:






Theres something magic about a really sharp and waxed plane gliding off nice ribbons of wood, revealing hints of figure underneath. As you can just make out in the picture the wood is very lightly curly, hopefully I can emphasize this with the finish! Tomorrow I'll match joint the edges and get the glue-up proceeding.


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## Trizza (24 Sep 2010)

This week's progress: Glued up the maple cap, flattened both sides of the cap and the body blank. Good exercise 

Top cap glue-up:





I'm getting some gnarly tear-out on the maple so I'll have to hone my scraper skills a bit I think!
I'll have to add a Krenov-style high angle smoother to my project list I guess


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## MickCheese (27 Sep 2010)

Following this with interest.

Mick


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## Trizza (2 Oct 2010)

First there was some gluing:






Then there was some jigsawing (jigsaw and drill will be the only electrons burned in this build):





A coping saw works nicely for the tighter curves:





Rasps and surforms are great fun to use - here I'm starting the belly carve:





Here is the belly carve fully rasped, before starting any sanding. Yep, those are some dents in the back - I've got some work ahead of me eliminating those.



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## Trizza (2 Oct 2010)

Next I moved onto the neck & pickup pockets. I wasted away most of the wood with drills:





Then finished them off with chisels. Here's a mockup of how it might look:


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## Trizza (2 Oct 2010)

I used a 20mm Forstner bit to drill the hole for the jack:





Followed that up with a super long 1/4" bit to give me somewhere to run my wires:





I marked a line showing the path of the drill:





Then I cross-drilled straight through the body with a 3mm bit at the position where I wanted the volume knob. This showed me where to drill & chisel the control cavity pocket from the rear.


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## Einari Rystykaemmen (2 Oct 2010)

It's coming up nicely, Trizza! 8) 

Btw... My god I hate those Biltema's clamps. They are so badly made. Last couple of weeks I have broke three of them, even without too much pressure or other abuse... :lol:


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## Trizza (2 Oct 2010)

Yeah, I'm just waiting for the day mine die. The price was right, though..

Where are you located? I don't know too many local woodworkers. I'm still learning Finnish so I haven't really dug into the local forums yet.


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## Einari Rystykaemmen (3 Oct 2010)

Trizza":2eesbmkx said:


> Yeah, I'm just waiting for the day mine die. The price was right, though..
> 
> Where are you located? I don't know too many local woodworkers. I'm still learning Finnish so I haven't really dug into the local forums yet.



Price was good, that's why I bought half dozen of those. Handle's pressure mechanism will fail very easily. I have repaired few of them replacing plastic handle "hinge" with steel bolt... :wink: 

I'm located in northern Finland, just outside of Oulu.

Biggest (and maybe best) Finnish forum is kotiverstas.com.


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## Trizza (7 Oct 2010)

Next up was the neck glue-up. The truss-rod here is made from 12mm*10mm aluminium channel, 6mm threaded rod, a washer, a 6mm furniture joining nut thingy (barrel nut?) a spacer nut, an M6 bolt, and some irrigation tubing. I first masked off everywhere I didn't want the epoxy to go:






Then I slopped some 5 minute epoxy around and clamped the truss rod in real tight with some scrap as a caul:






I then glued on the maple fretboard blank (cut from the same stock as the neck) - I forgot to take any pictures of this step.

Once that was all good and dry I radiused the fretboard to 15" using a plane:





Then I flipped the neck over and planed in the taper to each side:


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## Trizza (7 Oct 2010)

I marked out the fret locations by printing off a fret chart and taping a rule to the centerline of the neck. I made little cuts with a knife at each location and filled the cuts with graphite so they'd stand out better:





I planed a matching taper into some scrap pine so that I could wedge the neck square in my miter box, where I slotted it with a fine cut blade in a coping saw 





Next up I measured the thickness at the 1st and 12th frets of my favourite guitar neck and rasped the new neck to thickness at those points. Then I used my Mujingfang spokeshave to shape the basic neck profile (yet to be sanded):





Then on went the headstock ears:


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## Trizza (7 Oct 2010)

This evening I first flattened & thicknessed the headstock (again by hand), and cut the shape with a coping saw:





Then I set about tackling the tearout on the maple top. I decided to try my block plane out on this, so I honed the iron a bit and tightened the mouth up real close and the results were great - peeling off fluffy shavings without tearout no matter which direction I planed. With just haphazard planing only intended to work out the severe tearout I achieved a surface good enough to see the plane's reflection:





The alder back planed even easier, giving me wonderfully fluffy shavings:





Boy am I glad the block plane performed so well on that tearout - I was dreading the amount of sanding I'd have to do!


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## Bkn (8 Oct 2010)

This is looking great.

Radiusing a fretboard with a plane - much braver man than I


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## Trizza (10 Oct 2010)

I chose to finish this guitar with Tru-Oil in the end, and boy is it a nice finish. Just rub it on with some paper towel and leave it 24 hours and it looks spectacular. It brings out even the most subtle 3D grain:







From another angle:





The alder on the back took on a lovely rich warm tone, and the grain is quite fascinating. Here the "itteh bitteh kitteh inspection commiteh" is doing some quality control:





Treatment of the cutaway to assist high fret access:





Rear of the same - I had to carve away a lot here, the cutaway really should have been bigger!


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## Trizza (7 Nov 2010)

I finished the guitar a month ago but I've been away on honeymoon since then so haven't had a chance to update this thread.

I tried hammering the frets last time I made a neck and I hated it, a miserable experience. This time I made a fret press out of a welding clamp, a few blocks of scrap maple and a strip of suede. The frets went in a whole lot easier and gave me a much more consistent basis to start fretwork on:






I levelled the frets by flattening a length of alder and attaching a piece of 320 grit sandpaper and stroking that up and down until all frets had been worn on the top. This went quickly. After that I polished them up to 12000 micromesh.

I used a zero fret this time around, and I'm really happy with the result. I used unbleached bone for the nut, and cut the slots with a simple triangle needle file - with a zero fret they just act as a string guide, so accuracy is far less important!

Back to the body, I used a 5/16" auger in a brace to bore the string ferrule holes in the back:





I get these all lined up by first drilling through the body from the top for the two farthest apart strings, then divide them evenly on the back for a neat look. The result, entirely drilled by hand, looks like this:


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## Trizza (7 Nov 2010)

I superglued some M4 nuts into those holes to act as string ferrules.

Next up I masked off the headstock and located my tuner holes. I drilled those out with an auger as well, starting from one side and switching to the other once the leadscrew was coming through:






The rest of the process was pretty uninteresting so I didn't take any shots - it was basically just installing all the hardware and soldering the electronics together. I made up a truss rod cover & electronics cover from some wood that is sold here by the kilo to help you start fires - they're all a uniform 3mm thick by 16mm wide, and all are very dry hardwood. A very cheap and convenient way to get sticks to mix glue, paint, etc.

The finished guitar:





A close-up showing the figure in the top:





And a shot of the headstock:





All in all I'm super happy with the way this guitar turned out, its really great fun to play! Thanks for watching


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## xy mosian (7 Nov 2010)

Nice looking guitar, especially for a 'Budget' job. By the way on the drive-by "I've been away on honeymoon", congratulations on the preceeding wedding. Long may it continue to be a happy one.

xy


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## jimmy rivers (7 Nov 2010)

Sterling work Trizza and thanks for sharing. Really enjoyed this thread. Like to build me an axe myself --one day  

Jim


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## MickCheese (7 Nov 2010)

I like the body shape.

Well done.

Mick


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## bugbear (8 Nov 2010)

Trizza":1witx96r said:


> This week's progress: Glued up the maple cap, flattened both sides of the cap and the body blank. Good exercise
> 
> Top cap glue-up:


WOW! Did you _really_ clamp all those thin pieces in one operation? I'd have thought the whole assembly would just spring upwards (It certainly would if I tried it!  )

BugBear


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## Trizza (8 Nov 2010)

bugbear":3mm59kgv said:


> WOW! Did you _really_ clamp all those thin pieces in one operation? I'd have thought the whole assembly would just spring upwards (It certainly would if I tried it!  )
> 
> BugBear



I was a little bit worried before I started but it turned out to go very smoothly! I was ready with more clamps and a bar to put over the top if I needed it, but I didn't need it in the end.

The pieces were each about 15mm thick, and I had tuned the joints until they were pretty much perfect - without any clamping pressure the surface tension of the glue was enough to hold them together. The clamps were only applying very light pressure to hold everything in place. I think if the joints were any less tight then there might have been some drama!


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