Question on building guitar body

[latinjem7vwh]

Hello JEMsiters, need a quick question. I am currently taking a Wood class and finally decided on building a guitar body for the final project and use Ibanez parts for the hardware, neck, etc (got a beat to sh*t rg550 lying around). The thing is though that I have never done anything like this before. It's not going to be anything complicated. Single bridge humbucker, edge bridge, nothing too fancy. The thing is I don't want to spend any money on this so I decided to use some of the Pinewood (eww, yeah I know, but this is just going to be a learning experience anyway). My experience with Pinewood so far is that it splinters VERY easily. Will I have problems with structural integrity because of this? I mainly use girly 8's, so I don't think there would that much terrible stress on the neck joint. Plus I plan on tuning the thing to like Eb or even D (feel safer with D) Any structural integrity problems there?

Oh if you're wondering, it's based on the guitar Micheal Angelo uses in the "Speed Kills" video introduction with a sheet aluminum top. I'll try to post up conceptual drawings soon!

[btweensunandmoon]

if you are going to go through all that trouble, you may as well invest a little bit of cash and buy a body blank. They are cheap if you get something like basswood or alder. Pine is very soft and will more than likely crack/break if you drop it. This may be a learning experience but you might just end up liking the finished product and then realize that you put all that effort into a POS hunk of wood. Check out Warmoth. I believe they sell blanks.