Thread: Mostly Hand Tools Made Electric Guitar

Cool.

I've laminated custom truss rod covers out of multiple layers of veneer. Then, you can get creative yet still have it look attractive and sort of match the rest.

You could do that on the back as well... Maybe for the back, get some 1/16" aircraft plywood and veneer over it for the back covers. That way, it's not as crack prone as a thin sheet of solid wood. Those covers are fairly small, so controlling bubbles won't be horrible.

On the knobs... You could always make them out of some cool wood and inlay a stripe of contrasting wood or metal to be the "indicator". Like say some of that white, curly fretboard stuff for the knobs, and inlay a stripe of the body wood into it. Left proud, it would provide a tactile clue as to its position.

I have some gibson spec covers for this guitar, I just think they're kind of ugly and they're always the last thing to go on after everything is confirmed working well.

This guitar has one of those cheaty quick connect gibson setups in with the large switchcraft selector being too big to fit through my routing holes (it's only a 5 minute job to unsolder the stuff, run it and then resolder the end that's on the switch, though, so I did that).

At any rate, I thought about laminating the truss rod cover for a different reason - it'll be brittle if it's solid wood, and then so, too would be the back covers. Probably wouldn't matter for the truss rod cover, but for the back it could unless the thickness is increased.

When you say aircraft plywood, do you mean there's thin ply maybe in something a little more attractive than birch?

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Cool.

I've laminated custom truss rod covers out of multiple layers of veneer. Then, you can get creative yet still have it look attractive and sort of match the rest.

You could do that on the back as well... Maybe for the back, get some 1/16" aircraft plywood and veneer over it for the back covers. That way, it's not as crack prone as a thin sheet of solid wood. Those covers are fairly small, so controlling bubbles won't be horrible.

On the knobs... You could always make them out of some cool wood and inlay a stripe of contrasting wood or metal to be the "indicator". Like say some of that white, curly fretboard stuff for the knobs, and inlay a stripe of the body wood into it. Left proud, it would provide a tactile clue as to its position.

WRT bubbles - I never do anything with veneer, but recognize that it's a constant problem that I've seen elsewhere. Little things like peghead overlays, I've always clamped with something like a layer of drawer liner folded over (the kind that's not a solid mat, but the airy non skid stuff for tool boxes). That always seems to do a good job pushing everywhere - including the edges.