Thread: 1st woodwork project- Construction of a Strat / Superstrat style guitar

From here it was nasty...







(Sorry i'm shirtless, in Tassie we got hit by the Australian heatwave a bit as well so it was pretty toasty, especially with the sun baking down on the corrugated iron roof of the shed)



ANyway finally finished, here's showing off the wood






AND posing with the blunt beast that did the dirty work.




Here's a few random photos, first showing the body pieces together after facing the bandsaw, Then with the leatherwood neck in place.






Now here's the sneaky part. At first we were going to do a neck through guitar because the sassafras wasn't wide enough to make a full body (It is SO hard to find good wide, thick timber in Tasmania??????? WHY?)

Instead, I though that we could just just use some of the neck wood cut separately to be a giant "laminate" in between the sassafras, as shown...



So now it's going to be a bolt on or set neck, in case we stuff up the neck.

BTW, it took a lot of planing and scraping to get those pieces of wood to fit together, they were all bits of wood with badly sloped sides...


But when you're on a tight budget anything will do.


OTher things:

I ordered an Indian Rosewood fretboard, some kind of truss rod and fret wire off the Luthier Mercantile website, which I'll post pictures of when I get them.

THe rest of the hardware, electronics I can probably buy from places near where I live.


Now because this is a big post, I've probably forgotten some of the things I've done, I can fix it up later. Any advice or constructive criticism (or maybe even praise) would be greatly appreciated! From now on I'll post pics and stuff as I go. School starts soon so that might slow me down a bit, but we'll see...

nice

it is good to see more aussie eucalyptus being deployed!

Oooohhh nice Sassy, drool....

Seems like your working out what you need to Luke, but if you have a question there are lots of guys on this forum who know what they are doing

adore the blackheart sassafras, great choice for a body my young man.
aren't grandad's awesome. my two are long gone but definatley not forgotten, good to see skills being passed down.
your guitar looks like a good one. i like the fact that you are flexible enough to change your design on the fly to compensate for wood issues etc.
don't worry bout budget constraints, ingenuity and passion beats lack of funds anyday.
nice work, look foward to seeing it progress.

Hey that IS looking good already, and great to see someone not scared of a bit of hard work. Ripping that tassy oak plank BY HAND is something not many other people would even want to think about. But then, you are your father's son ... and your grandfather knows how to sharpen his tools!

(Luke is my nephew. He helped me hog out the top of my cornerless bass, and also built a Uke from a kit, so he's done a little bit more than he lets on. And he sure knows how to shred. Look after him!)



Matthew

THanks guys and thanks for pointing out the design flexibility aspect of this project, I guess I have planned for things to change as I go along! How unprofessional...

I checked on the oak that we sawed down the middle and unfortunately, in the heat it warped a bit. However, when we attach it as a layer to the top surface, we will have planed it quite thin, to about 1/4". When it's this thin, will we be able to flatten the wood down at all so that it glues to the body?

That's true... that Uke did take a bit of work to put together, but the body shape was already made for us. There wasn't as much worry about whether we would have enough wood to keep it made from only a few different pieces, or whether it would split when we worked it!

Oh I forgot to mention... I'm really sorry guys... but that sassafras was originally too thick and we couldn't chop it with the band saw because it was too wide. So we took it out to a joinery to thin it and sadly about a third of it ended up as sawdust... oh well, perhaps a sacrifice to the woodworking gods that all goes well!

I think, if you leave it for a while so the air circulates evenly, and not in the sun, the warp will probably sort itself out. By sawing it down the middle, you have suddenly exposed the virgin middle bit to heat and dryness, and the drying will cause the warp. Don't leave the planks flat on the bench, stack them upright or layered with thin stick so the air can circulate. when the drying is even, it may straighten.

If you ever need to COAX a warp in a flat wooden plate, spray one surface with water and watch what happens!

Thanks, I'll ring grandad and tell him to put the wood upright.

looking good so far. good job on splitting that whole piece with the ripsaw!

looking good dude
splitting wood with a handsaw is a pain!!!!
i used to run both sides across the table saw then just handsaw the middle section, dunno if thats what you did?

is this going to have a trem on it?

keep up the good work man

I've thought about putting a trem in it, I've got several other guitars all with floating trem but I've played a guitar with a floyd rose and loved it, so I'm prepared to put up with intonation and stringing hassles. If that's too expensive then I'll use locking tuners.

Anyone here with experience putting in and setting up a tremolo? If it's really complicated I might just use a fixed bridge, at least for my first home made guitar.

Luke, as you said, you have guitars with whammy bar. So time for a fixed bridge, i think, and make your life simple.

(Don't you think "trem" is such a wimpy word? WHAMMY BAR!!!!

LOL
well whammy bar just sounds queer
trem is short and to the point

yea i reckon go hardtail if you already have a few geetars with Trem's