Buddy's Building a Guitar...

Lot's of progress made, but haven't had a chance to post it here. It will be done in a handful of posts.

Next up is the bridge. With my center lines made I also make a center line on my bridge. It's a bit easier with hardtail bridges since you can pretty much line everything up.

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Then I lined up the bridge with my scale length line and drilled some pilot holes.

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Started screwing the bridge in for a test fit and.... DAMNIT!! I broke the screw head clean off! My guess why this happened is 2 reasons: it's a cheaper bridge/metal and I didn't drill the pilot holes big enough. Here's hoping having 4/5 securing screws will be enough to hold the bridge down when she's all done.

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With both pickup cavities done and the bridge secured, it's time to work on the through-body ferrules (hope I spelled that right since I haven't ever seen that word written down before a few weeks ago when I wanted to start this project). The intimidating part of this piece is being able to drill a hole perfectly straight without a drill press. There are some guides on Amazon that can help with that.

I first started off with a centering drill bit to make sure I was drilling right through the bridge and not off center.

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Using the drill jig with some clamps I took my time to go as far as I could then did the rest by hand. Not the best job and I wish I could do it over again, but we're here now. Lesson learned: get a drill press or something really close to it.

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Taking my hand drill I opened up the back holes so I could then hammer in the ferrules.

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Close enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, and government work!
 
Next up is the wiring cavity. Using my old cavity cover from the kit build, I traced it by hand and used a router freehand. Not the best work, but I got the job done. A CNC machine would have worked wonders here. I also drilled the holes for the pots and pickup selector. I didn't want the top to be super thin and potentially break if I smacked the knobs too hard (or God forbid drop the thing), so I only routed down the areas I absolutely need.

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The with my hand drill and a looong bit, I made the wiring channels. First time wasn't the charm...

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The bridge ground wire was a bit of a pain to drill too. Make sure your bit is super shallow against the body for best results. I circled the one that actually worked. Not a big deal since the bridge will cover up my mistakes.

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Couple of screws for the bolt on neck, a fresh set of strings, truss rod adjustment, intonation adjustment, and string height aaaaaaanddd....

She's done! At least for now until I can paint her. Temporary knobs. I was a little surprised that I didn't need copper tape in the cavity or conductive paint. She's just as silent as my other guitars.

What did I learn through this process? Well, first and foremost, take your time. It was really exciting to work on this and that's part of this process. Secondly, measure 239834569 times and drill/cut once. There's a reason why that saying is still said. Oh, and I need a drill press. Third, if you respect your tools, they will respect you back. I was a little intimidated with a router bit spinning 25000 times a minute, but as long as your safe and understand how the tools work under your hands, you'll be alright.

I may pickup some nicer hardwood in the future and make this again, but making a neck is also on my bucket list. Maybe some day.

Any ideas for a name or should I wait until finished and painted?

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Congratulations! Your first and likely not last dive into guitar building ;) be careful, it’s at least as addicting but more expensive than pedal building…
 
My wife asked me a month or two ago what I'd like to accomplish this year. I told her I'd like to finish paining my guitar. I've played this for a year and am pretty happy with it. It's intonated and the action is decent for my playing style. I've been itching to work on this since this past Christmas, but needed to wait until the weather got warmer here in New Jersey. Luckily we're going through a "heat wave" in the middle of March so I have time to get some wood filler on it, sand it down, and attempt to put a few coats of primer on it. Yesterday was wood filler and I sanded it down. Unfortunately, I was doing it all by hand (literally, the body was just in my hand) and I dropped it on my driveway and got some chips in it. Good news is that it can be filled in and painted over. Here's a pic after the first sanded attempt, the drop, and the filler reapply. I've got some thinking to do to how best to put the rattle can primer on there. I'm going to be hand painting this inside until it gets warmer in about 6 weeks or so.

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BuddytheReow said:
My wife asked me a month or two ago what I'd like to accomplish this year. I told her I'd like to finish paining my guitar. I've played this for a year and am pretty happy with it. It's intonated and the action is decent for my playing style. I've been itching to work on this since this past Christmas, but needed to wait until the weather got warmer here in New Jersey. Luckily we're going through a "heat wave" in the middle of March so I have time to get some wood filler on it, sand it down, and attempt to put a few coats of primer on it. Yesterday was wood filler and I sanded it down. Unfortunately, I was doing it all by hand (literally, the body was just in my hand) and I dropped it on my driveway and got some chips in it. Good news is that it can be filled in and painted over. Here's a pic after the first sanded attempt, the drop, and the filler reapply. I've got some thinking to do to how best to put the rattle can primer on there. I'm going to be hand painting this inside until it gets warmer in about 6 weeks or so.

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Just offering up my services... if you trust me with your creation I can pro paint it for you pretty quickly with good stuff... Might take me a couple weeks to turn it around but if you send me the body I can make it happen...
 
swelchy said:
Just offering up my services... if you trust me with your creation I can pro paint it for you pretty quickly with good stuff... Might take me a couple weeks to turn it around but if you send me the body I can make it happen...
Click to expand...
First and foremost, super cool of you to reach out and offer your help! The paint job above looks really nice!

Sadly, I'm going to say no thank you for two reasons. First, I'd really like to make this my project even though you'll do a better job of painting than I would with a rattle can. I mean, I build this body from a friggin 2x4 and it looks like it! It would be putting lipstick on a pig. Secondly, this is only primer that I'm putting on. I'm actually going to hand paint this bad boy with something special and probably put on wipe on polyurethane to seal it.

I'd like to stick this project out to the end even though it's taken me almost a year and a half to get through.
 
I went for danish oil simply because you can refinish it and it will look like nothing's happened..

Case in point, last iteration it got planed, jigsawed, rasped, grouged, reshaped the body and neck quite a bit, even reprofiled the upper frets and fretboard - once smoothed, reapplied oil and bob's-not-your-uncle.. looked like new:
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So, here's my setup. I taped up the neck pocket with some masking tape. I want to have the least amount of paint go in as possible. If a tiny amount were to get in? Oh well. I can always scrape it out carefully with a knife or a light sanding.

Next, I found a piece of scrap wood in my garage that would fit in the pocket and hold a screw/nail using the existing screw holes. I ended up with a combination of the two.

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Also, I'll need to hold it firm on the table when I spray, so I opted for a weight from my home gym (like that ever gets used since COVID). Could I have made a jig? Absolutely, but I only have a day of this nice weather before another 6 weeks of waiting. It's been a year...I've waited long enough.

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Reading and watching YouTube, I've learned the best way to spray paint something is even, controlled passes and continuing the spray after you've reached the edge to avoid blasts of paint splatter. I've also learned first hand that its better with more, lighter coats. I will lose more paint from the can, but the finish should be nicer. I've also learned that painting only sometimes covers up your mistakes. We shall find out.

Here's the first coat.

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And the second coat. It's looking better. Hopefully third time's the charm. After that I'll reassess. I'll probably need to run out and get another can and if that's true, this project may just be on hold. I'm hoping that's not the case and my finish coat will be enough.

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For the cavity you can either conductive paint it, or use metal tape - I used copper adhesive tape and lined the pickup bays and the electronics bay, then lined the cover so when it closes it creates a noise resistant box.
 
NickKUK said:
For the cavity you can either conductive paint it, or use metal tape - I used copper adhesive tape and lined the pickup bays and the electronics bay, then lined the cover so when it closes it creates a noise resistant box.
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Funny you mention it. I do have some conductive paint! Er, at least that's what the sign said when I bought it. The container reminds me of an old film cannister.

It's on my list.
 
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