Although not strictly "music", this thread sits right in this community imho.
For those of you that know me, I am keen on woodworking, and like to spend some me time out in the garage playing with wood, and am a certified wood hoarder.
So the last few weeks, perhaps month, i disappeared down a rabbit hole - it's not the first time - this will be my 4th home-made fiddle and probably won't be the last... and have started another guitar build!
Here it is.. it is based on a Jackson Kelly design made (in)famous by Marty Friedman out of Megadeth.
This will be a full build - I am intending to do everything myself.
Here is the template:
The wood is sapele (pronounced sap-eel-ey)
Here is the body rough cut ready for routing.
Body routed, and marked up. The astute of you may notice the lower horn is ahem slightly shorter than the template - i had a 5mm section tear out on the last cut as the router was going against the grain and so tore out - no other issues, and I still have all my fingers!
Here is top - it is 5mm bookmatched ash - basically the wood "plank" is cut in half and the grains are mirrored.
I rough cut the ash top, and glued the top to the sapele, and left overnight 0 i used about a dozen clamps in order to do so - i hit the centre line on the money, whic means that the centre of the book will be central to the guitar... next up the other half of the guitar.
The other side of the guitar glued and then routed to match the body - minimal - almost zero visibility of the join to the naked eye - very pleased with this. It was super difficult, but very rewarding to achieve.
To aschieve a very high gloss finish, i sanded the ash to 3k grit - starting at 70 > 120 > 180 > 240 > 360 > 500 > 1000 > 1200 > 1500 > 2000 > 3000.
Check out that mirror finish! - still some router burn outs to tidy up, but super pleased with the top. Originall i was going to face with walnut, but that ash top is far too nice to hide under some walnut... so i now have some walnut for the next build... refer to my n+1 subject! :D
The rough cut body and body rout was done before the UK Easter bank holiday, and the glue up was done over the course of the bank holiday weekend.
Next stop - building a neck. I was going to purchase a neck, and fit, but I am going the whole hog on this one.... i will carve from scratch... this is going to be the terrifying bit now!
This is what I am aiming for:
(pic from the net, not mine)
If i remember , i will try to keep this thread updated with my progress!
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