2018 Guitar's Workshop: Ep. 1 - '57 Chevy

[courtney2018]

Welcome to the first episode (written) for 2018 Guitar's Workshop. I'll be going through a build from start to finish. It'll be fun and educational hopefully. You can follow me during this process and ask questions or just watch.

I started off with a design. It looks like the side profile of a '57 Chevy. Alder was choosen for this build.



The wood is almost 2" thick. It's about a 1/8" shy of being 2". Alder is very common in musical instruments. It is fairly light, much like basswood, and has good tonal qualities to it. Alder is alittle more expensive than basswood, which also exhibits good tonal qualities as well as being light weight, but not much more expensive. It's actually very inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.

When buying wood from a lumber yard you may run into the units of board feet (or "bf") which is common in the lumber industry. 1 board foot is calculated as 144 cubic inches, thus it's a volumetric measurement. For example, if you have a board that is 1" thick and 6" wide then it's length would have to be 24" long to be 1 board foot. So, 1" X 6" X 24" = 144 cubic inches.

Here's an interesting twist in all of this. Even though this wood is just under 2", the size of the board was determined before the top and bottom were planed at the lumber yard. Once it was planed it came out about 1/8" under 2 inches. This wood was measured for 3 board feet before it was planed. I used 3 board feet for this build. 2" X 6" X 36" = 432 cubic inches.

Let's take the design and place it on the wood to figure out where we want to make cuts out. Since our design is slightly wider than the board we're going to have to make some cuts and laminate the wood together. Before cutting though, take a good look at your wood and see if there are any features that you might want to include.

Here's some pics of the wood cut and situated with the template in place before glueing.






Here's a pic of the wood after it's been laminated. I'll save my steps on laminating for another time. However I will say that getting the sides of the wood that are to be joined (laminated) flat is very important. The tool to do this with is called a jointer. Otherwise you will have places along the joint where the two pieces of wood do not touch, and areas that do. A jointer will ensure that both pieces of wood touch throughout the entire joint.





Next we want to transfer the design to the wood so that we can cut out the shape. I simply used a pencil to trace the design onto the wood. I then used a bandsaw to cut the shape out. I made sure to cut the body slightly larger than the pencil lines so that after sanding the body it would be at the shape of the template. After cutting the body out I took it over to the drum sander and sanded the sides down to the shape described by my pencil marks.



Here's a pic of the body after drum sanding on the sides.

[courtney2018]

Here's a pic after sanding on the top and bottom of the body. Notice that the glue where the wood was laminted is now gone. I then spent some time sanding the edges so they aren't really sharp. The radius on the corners are about the same that you find on Ibanez guitars.









Next episode we'll be doing some routing for a tremolo, pickups and a neck pocket.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

[Myst and rain]

This a really cool thread. I'm looking forward to seeing the truss rod mounted. I've always wanted to see how that goes.

[courtney2018]

Actually, I'm not doing a neck. This is going to be an Ibanez replacement body, so it will fit an Ibanez neck.

I'll be working on this one this weekend and hopefully, if time permits, I'll get back to this one too.

[Myst and rain]

That's kind of a bummer. But I'll follow the thread nevertheless.

I hope the recovery from your surgery is going well?

[courtney2018]

Thanks for asking about the spider bite. It was a nasty one. The hole the surgeon cut was around 2" in diameter and over 1/4" deep. The bottom has grown up and the hole is about the size of an American penny.

About the neck, I would love to make some necks, but it's just too time consuming to do by hand. I have a spoke shave, but that takes some mastery, I think, to get the hang of it and even then can you do the same neck twice? That's why I'm saving up for a small CNC machine so that I can recreate necks faithfully the same every time.

[Myst and rain]

Someone I know actually had the same thing. I remember seeing his back just after they took the bandage off and there was just this hole. It was the same size as yours was. I was amazed at how fast it healed up. And from what I heard it only left a small, neglidible mark which I also found amazing.

I'm glad your recovery is going well.

[courtney2018]

Ok...finally got some direction on this project. I'll be continuing on this project. Looks like I'll be doing a front route for this. I'm going to make custom cavity covers that look like the side glass of the car and have them silvered on the back side.

For the controls cavity I'm going to route out a space that's similar to the silver area on the rear part of this '57 Chevy. I'll enlarge it just a bit so that the knobs and switch fit confortably on there.

Not sure what the color of this thing is going to be yet. One idea is a seafoam color. Kinda like a light blueish-green.

I've been vacant from here dealing with some other things, but this project is getting moving as well as this one, which I absolutely can not wait to get back on. This thing is going to be awesome I think.