1Q22 Challenge - Roland’s guitar build

Roland · February 2022

Neck blank laminated: Field Maple and Sycamore, with the grain reversed on the central piece. This is for rigidity rather than looks, so there’s no contrasting wood, and the Sycamore strips are 6mm thick.

It turns out that the Sycamore blanks I’ve cut so far aren’t wide enough for body caps, I need to find a way of making the Yew fit.

Tomorrow I’m off to meet a man who has a planer.

Roland · February 2022

Inching forward. The Yew is now planed, split in two, and the new faces planed.

Ideally I would have edged it up before splitting, and done a proper book cut. There’s not a lot of width to spare, and I was worried about cutting it too narrow, so I’m doing it the hard way and jointing each piece separately.

Roland · February 2022

Several further inches forward this afternoon. Sycamore fretboard slotted by hand. Not a task I was looking forward to, but it wasn’t too difficult. Years ago I was given a mitre cutting jig, and of course I never used it. Today I got it out for the first time.

The first thing I’d say is that I wouldn’t use it for cutting mitres. The wood guide had to be shimmed to get the cutting line square to the neck centre line.

The fret positions were marked with a craft knife and set square, using a table of measurements from Melvyn Hiscock’s book. I was hoping to cut the slots with one of my Japanese saws. Their blades are plenty thin enough, but the kerfs are too wide. So pictured is a proper fret slot saw with the depth guide removed. The slots were then deepened without the jig, and with the guide on.

Lastly the glue up:

Next step is fretboard radiusing.

davros · February 2022

Watching this come together with interest. There's some nice interesting grain in the elm. Is Elm heavy?

Roland · February 2022

davros said:

Is Elm heavy?

Elm? I guess you mean the Yew for the body cap. The Wood Database gives Yew a dry weight of 42 lb/cubic foot, the same as European Ash. English Elm is a bit lighter https://www.wood-database.com/english-elm/

I’ve thicknessed the Yew panels to just over 16mm to avoid adding too much weight. The back half of the body will be thicker, and made from Cedar of Lebanon, which is 32 lb/cubic foot.

davros · February 2022

Duh, sorry Yew, no idea why I said elm!!

Roland · February 2022

This is where I could do with some opinions. What colour do I bind the body? The hardware is black. The choices are black to match the hardware, or ivory to match the Sycamore and the Yes sap wood, or possibly some version of tortoiseshell. White wouldn’t look right.

What do you think?

paulnb57 · February 2022

I like the black for the binding, nice contrast to the lighter woods and matches the hardware

Roland · February 2022

Before I made my first guitar neck I thought that neck shaping would be difficult. In practice sitting down with a wood rasp, spoke shave, and cabinet scraper proved a most relaxing experience. You feel close to your materials. On frosty days I’ve even sat in the kitchen without creating much mess.

This is the fretboard radiusing jig that I made years ago. With care it does a good job, especially if you run a test piece first. There are better designs on the internet, but at one or two guitars per year it would take me a long time to recoup the time and money needed to make one.

The table saw saved work in cutting the neck to depth. My favourite neck is 21mm deep at the first fret, increasing to 22mm at the 12th fret. I actually scraped it fully strung, checking the feel between strokes of the cabinet scraper. This one is 22mm, rising to 23mm. It was tapered to width using a router.

After that the neck profile was cut with a rasp and a spoke shave. To give stiffness the neck is laminated Sycamore and Field Maple, with reversed grain sections. The cabinet scraper wasn’t much use. It kept digging into the grain of one section or the other.

Sanding was harder than usual. I’m used to Maple. Sycamore was similar, but softer. Field Maple was a pig. The fibrous dust clogged ordinary sandpaper within two strokes. Luckily I have a supply of Abranet for the disk sander, and I was able to use these wrapped around a sanding block.

It looks long because it hasn’t been cut to length yet. It’s easier to get a smooth profile all the way along if there’s a “run out” area at the end. I also haven’t decided how much space to leave between the zero fret and the headpiece which retains the strings.

Roland · February 2022

Neck finished, apart from shaping the heel. EVO Gold frets. Lumilay side dots. Osmo 3032 finish. This is the player’s view:

The Sycamore has worked well. The Field Maple less so. It was only used because it came from my own garden.

TTony · February 2022

Lovely grain pattern & colouring on that.

Roland · February 2022

The challenge of using local wood continues. To get the width I need for a book matched body cap I have to use slices from near the centre of the Yew. Not on the centre line because I need to avoid the pith, but just beside it. One of the slices was a little too close, and has cracked on the underside. I’m fighting for width, and I can’t afford to cut another slice because it will be too narrow and not as close a grain match. Still it’s not split all the way through, and the crack is on the side which will be glued to the Cedar back. To joint the wood I screwed the two pieces back together, and cut a straight line down one side using my table saw. A few strokes with a cabinet scraper and the line was dead straight, and ready for the Titebond. The polka dotted non-stick surface is a piece of kitchen table covering which my wife conveniently threw out last week.

The wood shows the tear out from trying to level the surface with the planer. A hand plane wasn’t any better. The router planer was more successful, followed by cabinet scraper and sander to get it level and smooth. This is the most dangerous thing I’ve done since I poisoned myself with ozone in 1972. Yew is toxic. My larger router is decades old, and has no dust extraction. It just flings the chips and dust around the workshop. I’m not sure that the dust extractor which I use with the random orbital sander is any safer. It collects the chips, and the dust particles which are large enough to see, but probably pushes the micron level particles back into the workshop air. I spent most of the morning wearing a dust mask with the air cleaner on maximum.

Another challenge is not working to a standard guitar design. I’ve got a body template, but it didn’t show neck, pickup, bridge and control locations. I also want the guitar to hang in a similar position to a Telecaster. This means a lot of measuring and redrawing.

There’s not as much space behind the bridge line as there is with a Telecaster. Putting the volume and tone controls beneath the bridge, safely out of the way of my strumming, means that the 5-way selector will have to go below them. I’ll decide the actual positions once the body is glued up and shaped. For now I want to know the approximate positions so that I can cut wiring channels in the Cedar panel before glue up. I could use the conventional method of drilling between pickup and control cavities. However I don’t want to put the jack socket in the conventional position.

When I play I loop the cable behind the strap. With a headless guitar design that means the cable passes across the tuner knobs, making mid song tuning adjustment a bit hit and miss. On this guitar I’d like to put the jack socket on the back of the guitar, above the bridge. I don’t want loads of wires going back and forth through the bridge pickup cavity, which means I need a wiring channel under the bridge. I’ll think about this layout overnight before routing and glueing tomorrow.

DartmoorHedgehog · February 2022

Very nice. I've got some catching up to do...

Roland · February 2022

@DartmoorHedgehog. Not as nice as it looks.

Having planned to route the wiring channel before glue-up I then forgot, and glued the pieces together. Somewhat pissed off because I’ve been planning to do this for several years. I’m still determined to have the jack socket above the bridge, so I’ll now have to drill and plug a channel.

That’s not the only problem. Yesterday, as I was routing the body edge the template follower bit came apart, and gouged a chunk out. Workshop rule: when something like that happens stop working and take a break. After a pint or two I realised that it’s remediable. I’ll just have a slightly narrower body.

On top of that both Yew panels are now showing signs of cracking along the pith line. Hopefully it will stop now that they’re glued to the Cedar.

DartmoorHedgehog · February 2022

Roland said:

both Yew panels are now showing signs of cracking along the pith line. Hopefully it will stop now that they’re glued to the Cedar.

That's a shame - hopefully it'll be stable enough now it's glued to the other wood as you said. I'm hoping the same for my beech, although my speedy drying gamble could add even more worms to the can...

ThePrettyDamned · February 2022

Really cool. Is there a way to help stabilise wood? Like, a penetrating resin or something?

Looks really good so far. Can't wait to see the finished guitar.

WezV · February 2022

ThePrettyDamned said:

Really cool. Is there a way to help stabilise wood? Like, a penetrating resin or something?

the problem is getting penetration. It needs pressure to get deep into the wood

I've spent ages stabilizing spalt with thin CA. you think its soaking in really well, but then when you carve the wood you realize its not gone very deep at all. it does depend on wood type and porosity though

Roland · February 2022

Thin CA is quite good at moving through cracks. I use it all the time when turning on the lathe. If the piece starts to crack dribble on the CA, pause for a cup of tea, then turn away the residual glue. It also works with larger holes. Pack in some saw dust, or used coffee grounds, dribble in the CA. When set you can turn it like wood.

I’ll give these cracks a few days to see whether they’re going to go further, then I’ll try the CA.

Roland · February 2022

The cracks are expanding so I’ve run in some CA, then sanded off from the surface once dry. I’ll dose it again until the cracks are full. Unfortunately the cracks are above where the control cavity will be. Even with the CA this guitar might have a short life.

I’m having second thoughts about binding the body. When I look at the side grain I think a wide radius round over might look better.

Although looking from the front it would be nice to have an outline:

PeteC · February 2022

Hi. Really interesting build Roland. Lots of challenges with the wood but you seem to be overcoming them very well.

i love that combination of woods/fret choice in the neck too - looks great.

Roland · February 2022

@PeteC The wood may yet win this competition. Those cracks in the Yew have now extended right across the body. At some points they were wide enough to be filled with fine dust from my dust extractor. CA seems to have held the cracks from getting any wider. I'll give it a week to settle before doing any more work on the body. The good news from this episode is that the Yew surface smooths nicely when I take off the excess CA with my thinnest cabinet scraper.

News of the neck is little better. The Field Maple was denting every time I touch it with something. To harden the surface I've sanded off the Osmo that I'd treated it with, and given it two coats of Rustin's yacht varnish, thinned 50% with white spirit to ensure a thin coat. Much as I hate varnished fingerboards I've given that a coat too.

Roland · March 2022

Do I bind or round over? When I look at it from player’s perspective I think round over.

From the front I like the idea of a black outline.

I’ve left the guitar alone for a week, and the crack hasn’t developed any further. However it has left dark lines across the body.

Roland · March 2022

I went for binding. It’s also had forearm and belly chamfers. In the late afternoon sun the forearm chamfer shows in shadow.

In less good news, there are some new cracks. Where I’ve machined the chamfer it’s released stresses in the yew, and I’ve resorted to more CA. They are also appearing where the control cavity will be. That’s more worrying because the cavity will be routed out from the back, and come within 3 or 4mm of the front. I’ll have to flood the bottom of the cavity with CA as soon as it’s cut in an effort to stabilise the wood.

Roland · March 2022

... and more cracks a few days after routing the pickup cavities. This one is in the neck joint, where the yew has split and is pulling the cedar apart. I’ve brushed in some fine sanding dust, and flooded it with CA.

To deal with a similar set of cracks over the control cavity I’ve bought some long thread potentiometers, the type that normally go into Les Pauls, so that the cavity doesn’t need to be so deep. I still need to get it down to 4mm about the pickup selector blade switch, but thankfully that’s 40mm away from the crack line.

Andyjr1515 · March 2022

It's looking good, @Roland ; but that cracking must be very irritating!

Jalapeno · March 2022

Roland said:

... and more cracks a few days after routing the pickup cavities. This one is in the neck joint, where the yew has split and is pulling the cedar apart. I’ve brushed in some fine sanding dust, and flooded it with CA.

Booo ! Very frustrating !

Roland · March 2022

Andyjr1515 said:

It's looking good, @Roland ; but that cracking must be very irritating!

The cracking in other parts of the body just added to the challenge. The neck cavity is a different matter. It weakens the whole structure, and may well affect the resonance and sustain. I already have plans for another build. Possibly a new body. Possibly a complete guitar. It depends on how the Field Maple neck performs. Like all home made guitars it’s a prototype. It will tell me how the Hipshot tuners perform, and whether they’re worth the money. It’s also an opportunity to try a hard glaze varnish instead of Osmo, and see how much the wood darkens over time. So I will take this build through to completion, and then start a new one in the autumn once the gardening season is over.

DartmoorHedgehog · March 2022

Bummer about the cracking - makes me realise how lucky I've been so far with my hastily-dried beech (although it's smaller pieces than a guitar body and not structural because of the through-neck - good job as well because some of it is pretty soft)

Roland · March 2022

Cig35 said:
(In another thread) Only 12 days left of the challenge ...

Bugger. At them moment I’m in bed with Covid, and don’t want to trust my hand at routing the control cavity until I stop feeling dizzy. At least I’m not going to use nitro, so the finishing time should be quite short.

downbytheriver · March 2022

Get well soon and safe Roland

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1Q22 Challenge - Roland’s guitar build

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