first carved top......guitar content

[richtea]

I know its a guitar, but I'm a bassist and was asked to do this for friends birthday. if anyone is interested I have build photographs. i don't want to cause any guitar v bass type drama. so I will only post if any one is interested.

 

[loveandbass]

very cool. semi hollow or full hollowbody?

 

[richtea]

very cool. semi hollow or full hollowbody?

semi. more chambered
than anything.

 

[richtea]

I wanted the look of a semi, but as slim as possible. the body is very contoured. birds eye maple top Honduras mahogany back.

 

[Hopkins]

There are plenty of guitar builds here, by all means post away. Nobody has any animosity towards those short scale 6 string cousins.

 

[richtea]

why thank you. stand by....

 

[richtea]

Firstly I am not a luthier !!! The donor was an old washburn. the guitar held some personal attachment for a good friend of mine. the guitar was very worn out and battered. Her 40th birthday was coming up so I thought that a rebuild would be a cool gift. I started on the PC. working with her hubby via email, they are in a different country. I did some designs and colour variations.

 

[richtea]

cut a router temp out of mdf and routed the top, a nice piece of birds eye maple at 38mm thickness, as I wanted the neck pocket floor to be in the top wood. shown is the top and donor neck pre fitt

 

[richtea]

sketched the profile lines in three depths on to the top. Using a router with a 25mm ball cutter roughed out the carve starting at the deepest. lifting the cutter by a third of the total thickness for each lighter cut. Feehand router work always good for heart rate

 

[richtea]

After the routing was done I used a small angle grinder with a 40grit sanding disk and levelled out the peaks. I got a little carried away didn't take any pic's sorry. then smoothed out the grinder work with a small palm sander and 120grit.

 

[richtea]

the whole carving session to a finish of 320grit only took less than an hour. I was expecting days of work. next was to rout the trem spring cavity. Then the electronics and chambers for the f holes

 

[richtea]

bonded the top and back to each other. Then carved the back, again grinder and palm sander.

 

[richtea]

after some fine sanding ready for finish.

 

[richtea]

first three clear coats.

 

[richtea]

I cut back the clear and sprayed the red. Interestingly candy colours are not available here. (I'm in Cape Town,

South Africa) this red is part of a red pearl system, it has a tiny pearl flake that is only visible in very strong sunlight, another five coats of clear were applied after the red and cut back with 1200grit. Yep a couple of small runs as a result of trying to get clear into the F holes but nothing that couldn't be sanded out.

 

[richtea]

next up the sunburst. The paint was a basic black, very thinned out, lots of light coats, I hate strong sunbursts, so wanted as subtle a blend as possible.

 

[richtea]

another three clear coats then a solid black coat to the back and sides.

 

[richtea]

once cured...about ten days. I hand sanded from 220 grit through each grit paper up to 2000grit, all wet sanding. I then hand polished with rubbing compound. The finish is still hazy at this point but good enough to highlight any issues.

 

[richtea]

next was headstock from the donor neck, I didn't see why Washburn should get the credit for my body, so out with the jigsaw, one parker style head stock. First trial neck fit, post paint. It was a good friction fit, I had to tap it out of the pocket with a rubber mallet.

 

[richtea]

3000 grit polish cream cut by hand, again apologies I didn't take pics of the 5000 polish stage.The first fit of the electronics and hardware.