Making of the Mahogany J-11: Part III

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blog, building, electric, fender, gibson, grown, guitar, guitars, handmade, hiscock, home, how, information, instructional, J-11, j11, les paul, lesson, lutherie, luthiers, mahogany, make, maker, making, melyvn, of, strat, stratocaster, tele, telecaster, the, to, use, what, when, where, which, why, wood, woods

Have been working every day 12 hours for a week or two…exhaustion is long past set in, but regardless I’ve managed to find a couple of hours to work on this project and it’s coming along quite nicely.

First step – make some cheese bread from scratch!

After that I hogged out material for the pickup routes and the wire channel, then screwed down my acrylic template.

Routed out the cavities. Had some tearout from rushing and not being careful (exhaustion) but it will be hidden in the end under the pickguard anyways. I will patch it up and clean it up a bit later.

This is what I’m going for – same as my first build (the prototype). All gold hardware, two humbuckers – one volume, one tone, and a blend pot instead of a toggle switch. Gotoh TOM bridge and stop tailpiece.

The headstock inlay has been order from DePaule supply, so I’m looking forward to having that here so I can finish up the neck.

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Fine vs. Coarse Grained Wood

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a, ancient, and, coarse, effect, fine, grain, maker, making, modern, of, review, sound, stiffness, structure, tone, violin, wood

This is an interesting piece of information I found; nothing exceptionally new or unknown, but interesting. Also potentially useful, so I thought I’d share it. I spend a lot of my time doing research and stuff like this comes up…which is the stuff I’ll be posting in this blog frequently!

So this is an excerpt from a book entitled “A Review of Ancient and Modern Violin Making”, published in 1899 by Author W.W. Oakes (for those interested in details the excerpt is from page 71 I believe). Have a look at the clipping below and then I’ll go over it:

Oakes, W.W. (1899). A Review of Ancient and Modern Violin Making. Seattle, WA: Metropolitan Printing and Binding Co.

Basically the significance of this is that coarse grained wood is less stiff than fine grained wood because there is a higher percentage of the softer, summer growth wood. As a tree grows, the amount it grows each year during the warmer months slows considerably, so the summer growth rings get narrower toward the later years (the dark rings being winter growth, which is slowed as the tree remains more dormant while the weather is cold). This explains why old growth wood is desirable – it is stiffer (which, in the case of guitar soundboards, is generally speaking a desirable characteristic).

More importantly though, it also means that you need to treat fine grained braces etc. differently than the ones which are coarse grained (since it is likely that some of your braces etc. will be more coarse or fine grained than others – they will not be identical, and must be treated differently when tuning your soundboard). So next time you go to carve some soundboard braces maybe this will be useful to you!

Making of the J-11 Prototype: Part V (Finished Product)

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finished, guitar, making, of, product, prototype, the

Here I still have to buff out the rest of the body and install the electronics, then she’s done. just eye candy of the headstock, which has already been buffed to a high gloss (photo doesn’t show it perfectly well).

 

And the finished guitar! 🙂

Easter decorations watching creepily over the guitar. You can see the bridge is too high here because of the neck angle…other than that, not bad 🙂 Some bugs are expected given it’s a prototype…the neck angle will be almost flat on the next one and it will have a low bridge.

That’s it for this one 🙂

So I finally had time to finish this beast 😛 I am going to finish wiring up all of the electronics tonight, make a nut, and then she’s done 😀

Hand buffing turned out well, it did a great job getting it to a nice finish, but my arms feel like Jello now 😛

Easter decorations watching creepily over the guitar.

Neck Joint & Heel

Headstock & Body Finish 🙂

Making of the J-11 Prototype – Part III

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carve, depaule, electronics, fingerboard, fretboard, guitars, headstock, mother, neck, newman, of, pearl, supply, white, wiring

Made a duplicate of my crown-shaped headstock template so I wouldn’t ruin the plexiglass master template. Hard coming up with a headstock that nobody else has used but I think I succeeded with this one.

Glued on the headplate, then roughed out the headstock on the bandsaw…

Then trimmed it flush with the tempalte & router. Afterward I did the truss rod access hole using the dremel. This will have a TRC which goes up against the nut, probably white MOP from Andy DePaule.

Also sanded the radius on the nut using the belt sander. And here she is! NExt is the custom cut pickguard, and then time to glue on the fretboard. I need to make the shim for under the fretboard as well (since it has an angled tenon and a flat top, the fretboard rises very slightly above the body – I’ll fill the gap with a shim made of darker wood like a scrap Ebony or Ziricote cutoff rather than a piece of rosewood).

And here is the pickguard done.

 

Worked on the pickguard, but I eventually ended up replacing this one with a shiny one 🙂

Routed the pickup cavities and chiseled the edges sharp so the elctronics would fit properly.

This is the space under the fretboard created by the neck angle. Didn’t realize at the time (should have!) but the angle was a bit steep (even though here it’s angled more than the final product is, still steep).

Anyways, the shim will be glued in to fill the space.

Placed in the truss rod and glued on the fretboard.

Carved the neck and made the nut.

Here it is with the tuners holes drilled and tuners fit; the neck is not glued in at this point.

Did all of the wiring.

Fit the bridge and tailpiece bushings. Glued in the neck and rounded the edges of the body over.

Here is the headstock logo which finally arrived from DePaule Supply:

Routed the headstock and glued in the logo with epoxy dyed to match the rosewood headplate.

And the logo sanded flush with the headplate…

Continued in part IV!

Making of the J-11 Prototype – Part II

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cedar, humbucker, II, j11, mahogany, making, of, part, spanish, the, two

Prepping the joined top wood so that it can be cut out roughly to shape before beign glued up.

Trimmed out roughly to shape with 1cm or so all the way around as extra width until after it’s glued. Looks like a Strat at this stage! Soon it will be a Strat’s slimmer cousin.

And there we go – trimmed to shape. Still a bit of work to do with some minor repairs from tearout.

Now the neck is in – unfortunately though that is going to be it for this prototype for a while because I need to save money away to fund the build the rest of the way.

I want to use two single coils and a tremolo, which are together going to cose about $250 – so I’m going to cannibalize my other guitar build for parts (tuners, pickups, bridge, tailpiece, etc.) in order to build another J-11 with humbuckers and a Gibson-style bridge. Which means on with the original prototype model now…here is where this is at for now (and still, even though the prototype model is now actually completed as I write this).

 

At this stage in the build, the body routing is done on this one (this one’s the prototype) 😀

 

Fretboard slotted, inlays done; buffed it up as well.

Making of the J-11 Prototype – Part I

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cedar, design, electric, guitar, J-11, j11, les, mahogany, making, of, original, paul, prototype, spanish, strat, the, tom, tremolo, vintage, ziricote

I had wanted to give a go at designing my own guitar for a while, and finally got the gumption to go ahead with it.

It has a strat-inspired body, but the neck is angled like a Gibson guitar (since it uses a Tremolo it will also have an angled headstock – Fender guitars have a flat headstock, which doesn’t make sense because that makes them require string tees which impair tremolo function! Not well thought out in my opinion – but then, they are made to be slapped together with bolts easily).

Started with blueprints – it has evolved since then so it has single coils and a pickguard rather than humbuckers; this is an early speculative drawing. The prototype will have a TOM instead of a tremolo. The name also change from Lucas. A (My middle names) to Newman.

From that drawing I created this 3D concept which I posted a little while ago. Designed in 3Ds max.

I also designed a set of templates which were laser cut in clear acrylic.

Then I went a little bit crazy in an exotic woods store and bought over $300 in Spanish Cedar, Ziricote, and Striped Ebony (enough for three guitars).

Cut the wood which has horizontal grain so that I had some quartersawn neck blanks.

The neck blanks, plus an African Mahogany neck I made with a Gibson headstock – not sure what to do with that one yet.

Then I joined the top to make one board to be glued to the body (this is for #2, the Ziricote build – not the prototype build).

And the completed body in Spanish Cedar – I had sketched up the front with pickup placement, control cavity placement, tenon placement, etc. but this face side was then covered up with the Ziricote top I joined earlier (this was not the prototype body either).

And that is it for the moment…more shortly.