Box O 'Vox
This thread needs a bump. How about this:
That's a whole lot of sawing and gluing and sanding. I need a shower and a nap.
Up to now, most of my builds were one-offs. I had a rough idea what I wanted to make, but much of the details came during the build process - not the most efficient way to work. For these, I first made a full-scale drawing. From that I made a prototype neck and body, to make sure it felt good. From the prototype I made the templates above. There are three templates for the body: the outside contour, the inside contour ( if hollow ) and the pickguard.
These are tracing templates, not routing templates. The actual shaping is done with saw and sander. Any time I can avoid routing, I do. As you can see, the bodies are all about as uniform as handwork will get.
The trick is the inside contour or cavity template for the hollow-bodies, which is most of them. The cavity, and the structure around it, is designed to allow for a wide variety of bridge, pickup, and control placements, given the size and shape of the pickguard, which is rather unusual compared to a Fender or Gibson. That also leaves a large block of wood at the ass-end of the body to act as a counterweight for the neck.
Thus, from one standard design, using a standardized neck pocket and cavity, I can build a guitar, or a short-scale bass of 20-24 frets, a baritone, or even a ukulele. I could also build a long-scale bass, but I have no interest in that, nor the two-octave short-scale, as the neck would be too long for the horn-less body, and the whole thing would be unbalanced.
This is very much the way Danelectro did things back in the day - one size fits all. I am still in awe of the wonderful and inexpensive guitars they built in the factory at Neptune. Too bad Paul Tutmarc didn't think like Nathan Daniel. I'm glad to see that someone has picked up the designs and tradition of Danelectro. Modern Danelectros are great guitars, well worth a look when you get tired of Fenders and Gibsons.
Back to the subject - it's going to be a long time before any of these are finished. I also have a box full of necks, and one bought one to study the scarf joint. Right now I just want to get all the gross woodworking done while I can set up outside and just let all the sawdust blow away and fertilize the grass. If not for the breather mask, I probably would have poisoned myself by now.
Two of the blanks are solid poplar, two are 5/4" soft pine from Lowes, which will be faced with nice hard maple plywood, and three are plywood from a dumpster, which will be faced with masonite - the greatest tone-wood of all ! Damaged sheets of plywood and masonite can often be had at the hardware store for pennies, and are perfect for luthiery, but when I can trash-pick tone-woods, that's even better. 3/4" hard maple from Home Depot or Lowes is perfect for necks, the only thing that's harder to find is fingerboard material, except for more maple. Many flooring woods are entirely appropriate for fingerboards. I have a lot more on the subject
here.
Nice day to do some gluing:
This is what the internal layout of the hollow-bodies looks like. It will never see the light of day again. The pine ones have thicker walls, as I have no doubts about the plywood, but the pine might crack if I make it too thin. The faces are over-sized, so that they lap the entire edge of the frame. This is how the new Danelectros are made, the old ones used pieces of poplar tacked together to form the frame.
Bob Vila says you can't have too many clamps, and he's right. I don't have enough of these clamps to do more than one body at a time, so this is going to take a while. The little baking timer is a great help - I can go off and do other things while the glue sets up for 30 minutes, then come back and do another. A good day for gluing is cool and not too dry, so you have enough working time with the glue.
When they are all done, there will be one more trip to the belt sander to bring the rough edges in smooth. The plywood also needs some wood filler in spots. I like the two-part Minwax, which is just like Bondo. These Danelectro-style bodies will ultimately get Tolex bindings, so the finish on the sides doesn't matter much, but I don't want any holes. The masonite needs no sanding, filling, or smoothing at all, nor does it chip, you just have to be careful not to get it wet, and masonite dust is particularly awful. It's really a brilliant way to build an inexpensive but nice guitar.
Oh, the bell just rang ... back to it !
And finally, all edges filled and sanded smooth, and belly cuts on the solid-bodies. Using the templates, I can now lay out new centerlines, neck pockets, cutouts, etc. The solid and plywood bodies are 1-3/4" thick and weigh about 4.2 pounds. The pine bodies are 1-1/2" thick and much lighter at about 2.6 pounds. I don't want to hang a long heavy neck on a body that light, I will have to re-arrange my plans a bit. Time to build some necks.
