Chinaberries ... a Build and a Half

[charisjapan]

Said "Hi!" in the "Who are you?" thread, but wanted to show a few pics of my first half-build and first scratch-build. To be fair, I did build a LP-ish guitar, but that was a kit, so except for a few customizations, glued the neck, rattle-canned a bit of clear lacquer, and assembled the parts. but encouraged by that, I wanted to "fix" my Hohner B2B to be more like my Steinberger Spirit 5-string bass that has a more traditional body than most "broomstick" Steinbergers.

I won a cheap bid on a slab of Chinaberry (Sendan in Japanese, melia azedarach in scientific lingo) on Yahoo! JAPAN auction, probably because it had a huge knot right smack in the center. I was going to make a guitar with the knot where the pickup would be, but then got greedy ... why not two?! So I also bid on some lengths of Japanese Mountain Cherry, picking it up at a low bid because it was about half red heartwood, and half light sapwood ... and a few quirky ideas started percolating.

Here's the Chinaberry and one of the Cherry pieces:

 

[charisjapan]

Body design came partly from the Steinberger Spirit, and mostly from the limitations of the piece of wood I had. Obviously the headless would be a bit different from the 30" short-scale Mt.Fuji headstocked scratch-build.

 

[charisjapan]

Compare the Hohner body ...

 

[charisjapan]

I decided on a Stingray type Bartolini pickup for the half-build. The Hohner had a nice maple bolt-on neck under a LOT of shiny black poly, so stripped it, reshaped it (slight "V"), finished with satin nitro, and made it a set-neck.

My workshop is the size of a very tight one-car garage ... which is what it was! In Japan, that is the epitome of luxury. I've been a carpenter/handyman all my life, but found quickly that building guitars requires a different set of tools! My first was a hand-me-down hobby drill press, then bought a nice router and a portable table for it. Since then I've added a small belt sander, and just the other day got a birthday present ... a tabletop 10" bandsaw that can resaw (slowly!) 175mm (7"). That will probably be it for a while, unless I can conjure up more square footage ... VERY precious!

Filled the grain with clear epoxy, then used a rattle-can clear lacquer. I wanted to finish the half-build before starting the scratch-build, so I could figure out what in the world I was doing! Probably took about two months to finish Chinaberry One, and gigged the following Sunday .

BTW, you can see how I "incorporated the sapwood into a forearm contour ... like I said, getting two bodies out of that slab was really, really tight. I'll call it a "feature" ... anyone who remembers Windows 95 will know what that means! .

 

[MPU]

Nice looking headless!

 

[charlie monroe]

Nice job.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

That is some lovely wood, and work! (I'm also a blatant fan of using sapwood as a feature, no win95 references nor air quotes needed.)

 

[charisjapan]

I'm also a blatant fan of using sapwood as a feature

Oooo ... wait 'til I tell ya 'bout Chinaberry Two!!

 

[charisjapan]

For Chinaberry Two, a real build, I wanted to use Japanese wood for the neck, but finding a suitable hardwood wasn't that easy. Most that I could find were great for carving, or making cool antique furniture/cabinetry, but a guitar neck, especially a bass guitar neck made folks wince. Almost all Japanese luthiers use foreign wood! The Japanese Mountain Cherry I found has a reputation of strength, but also movement. Fortunately, it was really seasoned, so I just used a router sled to plane it down little by little, giving time between to settle. Altogether spent about a month to get it to basic blank dimensions, each session showing less movement. The one piece neck was critical, as I'd gotten the idea for a Mt.Fuji headstock, loosely based on old Hokusai woodblock prints, specifically the "Red Fuji." That's where the almost-white sapwood comes in. In order to be real woodworking according to the Hakone Zaiku fashion, the "snowcap" had to solid wood, not an inlay.

Btw, Mt.Fuji is only about an hour away from my home, and I can see it from a nearby hill on a good day, especially in the winter. I've been here more than 40 years, and used to ride my motorcycle around the mountain all the time. Later, when I got into Kamikaze Downhill bicycle racing, I would carry my bicycle to the 8th station (approximately the snowcap on my headstock) and ride down to the 1st station at the base of the mountain. Yeah, this mountain has a place in my heart. And Hakone (the woodworking master's region) is just east of there, and I have been buying wooden toy, "Magic boxes," and even artwork since I was a pre-teen.​

Back to the guitar. I used the same sapwood for the fretboard, and heartwood for the fret markers. To strengthen the neck, I added carbon fiber rods.

It's getting late, so will post more later.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Good work and a very nice looking piece of wood on that first build.

 

[Jisch]

I'm looking forward to seeing the second build, the first one came out great. Nice work.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Very nice, i did something similar with a mahogany body for my Steinberger XP-2, fun project. That wood is gorgeous!

 

[milesdavisblue]

Great Job! Looks very good.

 

[Ewo]

Where's the button to like an entire thread?

 

[4dog]

Obviously not the same chinaberry from the US...that is so soft if you look at it too long itll take dents

 

[charisjapan]

Obviously not the same chinaberry from the US...that is so soft if you look at it too long itll take dents

Indeed, very hard stuff! Cutting it with a jigsaw was a chore. I've seen Chinaberry in Hawaii (my daughters live there) that is soft and not nearly as stripey. I found another larger slab a few weeks ago, again with a big knot in the middle, but equally hard, and even some flame ... hard to tell, but it's about 4-1/2 feet long and almost 3 feet wide. Enough for a full-size body on the left center, and the right side enough for a bass through-neck. Too bad the pith in the center curves so much, or I could get two bodies!

Those two interlopers are Chianti the Papillon and Beaujolais the Border Collie.

 

[charisjapan]

Forgot to add a few things about the Chinaberry One headless ...

Weight is 3,342g (7lb.6oz.) and nicely balanced. The controls cavity is really minimalist, and the maple cover is recessed and held on by one neodymium magnet. Tone report is that is sounds a lot like a MM Stingray, no surprise, but surprising that I get that on a passive system. I used an Emerson treble bleed on the volume, which really seems to help the tone knob be more useful.

 

[charisjapan]

Back to the Chinaberry Two, here's the neck blank getting prepped in the router sled, and my primitive use of Windows Paint to figure out what works. I used FretFind2D ekips.org - FretFind2D to calculate a 30" scale. I guess the main reason for the short-scale was I just wanted to try one! The other was that I wanted total guitar length to be about the same as the headless ... our stage is kinda tight.

 

[charisjapan]

Next was getting the whitish sapwood into shape for the fretboard. I did the same as the neck blank, and used hand planes and router sled to get it basically flat. Then I resawed by running a line on each side using my "table saw" ... which is just an old circular saw upside down in my shop table. Honestly, it's not very good for precision, but good enough for some rough cuts. The rest was done with a handsaw. I made four mostly sapwood fretboard blanks, one for this build, two for buddies, and one for a future build.

 

[charisjapan]

Pickups are Q-Tuner's Q2.0 Neodymium Jbass with Locust Wood covers. Splurged on these, again, mostly out of curiosity.