The workshop blogg
or "What the hell is he doing out there??"
Oft quoted phrase by my beautiful, long suffering wife Sharon
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| Hotrod MK2|

Hotrod Mk2 -
Just started a pair of Hotrods which will be a little different to the last one. Keep following
the build for more info. I aint gonna give it all away in the first 5 minutes :)


There's the rough blanks ready for machining. Using northern mahogany for the core of these two
It is a fairly dense heavy timber with a bright tap tone so will be expecting a ringing sustain.


There's one of the boards getting a facelift. :) Very simple but effective jig for machining
a flat face on roughsawn boards.


There they are all layed ready for matching, jointing and then the glueup.


There's one of the blanks glued up. Man what a colour. Pity its gonna be the back.
But wait till you see whats going on the front.

So I've traced the chambers template on the blank and hogged out most of the waste. Its a
boring job especia;;y with a hard timber like this as you have to push through slowly to
stop the 20mm forstner bit from burning

Next job is to screw on the chamber template and cut the edges. The template then comes
off and you can then Clean up the floor and rout to depth, which in this case is 5mm. Quite
thin as generally its more like 7 to 8mm for a guitar of this type.


Got the 2 tops cut, bookmatched and glued. Both necks have arrived and ready for final fret
level, pollish and finish prep. The one on the left needs a bit of fret work, the one on the
right is perfect. the walnut looks a bit plain at this point but will really come alive when the
lacquer hits it.

Theres the finished blank marked out reaady for the bandsaw


Cut out as close as I can go to the line - 1/16" and under


Got the template screwed down nice and tight now its ready for machining the body shape.


Theres the first of the two with a wipe of metho over it to pick up the colour of that walnut.


In fact I did two bodies. I like doing two at a time because once you set up one of the
machines for any cut during the process, its only a few more minutes to make a second cut.


The coulour looks a little weird in this one but you get the idea. I have run around the body
with a rabetting bit set up in the router table and taken it around the whole body
to take some cream binding.


Theres a closeup showing off the nice grain in the walnut top.


There's the binding glued down with piles of masking tape holding it in place. Its a tricky
procedure getting started and then you gotta try hard not to get glue all over the freshly
sealed body and at the same time make sure its sitting tight onto the body so there's
no gaps between the binding and the body. I like to seal the body first because the glue.
when it hits the raw wood, stains it real bad and its a royal PIA to get it off without
wrecking the nice neat binding job


Starting to look like a guitar now so I took this snap to give an idea of the finished effect.
I got the control rout and the F hole done. At first I was very sus on using gold hardware
but mam o man it looks real nice on the walnut with the cream binding. Its a hybrid Thinline
which I think the big "F" released a very few of initially before they bought out the texas
[huge] pickguard style that adorned Thinlines and Customs till the present day.
I will be using a guard on this one but not sure of the shape just yet.


There's the body almost complete - just need to drill the wiring holes. output socket recess
and route the pickup cavities. You can see the back binding chanel routed.


There we are, all setup to cut those pickup cavities


Pretty much ready now for prep and spray.


Fitted the neck to the pocket and you can start to get a feel for the finished guitar.
Had a lot of trouble with the binding mainly due to fiddling a bit too much with it here and there.
Actually had to redo it twice and strip the guitars edge back to bare wood 3 times.


Heres another shot. Shes had a fair few filler coats by now, The walnut and mahogany have
deep grain lines and take a lot of sanding sealer [filler coats]. Nearly ready to start on the finish coats.
The camera flash has really made the label under the F hole jump out.


Final coats are on and while it cures i will work on the guards. Heres idea 1 pretty much a
direct ripoff of the stewmac thinline guard. I like it but its up to the client to choose

This is another idea and this one shows a bit more of the wood at that time I was hoping
he would choose the other. The guards will be done in mother of toilet seat. I know how I
am doing the hardtail guard so will save that till the end :)


You can see here a bit of a run on this side. This and all the other imperfections will be
filled and levelled out as i get into the sanding.


The tele shape has a couple of challenging areas when sanding and the worst is the recurve
down to the neck pocket on the upper bout followed by the area the sandpaper is in.
You can see the high tech sanding cauls I use. Note the mask out of the pocket. I got
that pocket fit real snug and i dont want to make life hard by making it smaller with lacquer.?
All up including sanding sealer around 20 coats went on these bodies. I will get a mirror
finish on these guitars.

You can get mighty finicky in this area as every lil dimple. pinhole, discoloration needs attention.
It depends a lot on how good you are with the gun and how clean the spray area and the
lacquer itself is. I tend to do a lot of the surface prep when in the initial stages of grain filling
and sand/sealer. If you got it right there the final sand and buff is a snack and a real pleasure
as you watch the finish come alive with that "knock yer eyes out" mirror gloss

I will start the final sandout with around 600 and go to around 1500. After that i will use a
medium cut meguires followed by swirl remover which will bring a pretty high gloss. Finish is
with a high quality car polish which will bring up the final shine and show all the boo boos.
I use a little 1/4 sheet makita OS which saves me arms quite
a lot of work.

Once we got the go ahead on the guard i will cut it but meanwhile theres plenty to do and
usually about now I will wire up the control plate, sand and buff the necks and fit off the tuners.

Mext jpb is to get the neck holes cut. As there usuually is a little wiggle factor I always line
things up pretty good with a laser to ensure the holes in the neck match the holes in the body.


Clamp it up so nothing moves

Punch a set of marks on the neck.

Everything looks good to go so I can pull the neck and go over to the drill prees and cut the
screw holes.


T here's the punch marks. I always use a screw that goes almost to the fretboard and
cut the holes accordingly. The first tighten down is done carefully as you dont want that
stainless screw breaking off as it will be a real pain to remove. Once these holes is cut
the neck is ready for sand, buff and polish.


There we go #11 all done ready to rock


Heres #10


#10 rear view


#10 tailpiece


#10 controls


Close up of #11

#10 again
Both these guitars are stunning players. Very light and responsive to play with a very comfy
feel on the 7.25" radius board. The light build has contributed a lot towards the "alive" feel of
these guitars. I got to keep #11 and #10 went to Brent who said a couple of days after he
got the guitar:
"mate, my fingers are red raw from playing this beauty - I can't put it down - simply awesome"

The Telstar - ex workshop end of march 08
This one started life as a standard tele body but i kind of like an offset body.
I was working on 3 tele bodies at the time and decided to get a bit experimental on one.
I got stuck into it with the bandsaw and and tidied it up with the old robo sander. The
offset body and modded lower horn looked kind of cool to me. Got a nice pair of OC Duff
vintage wound tele pickups and the usual gotoh hardware set.

This one will be a twang machine but with a back to basic approach to the finish, look and feel
I want the player to be able to feel the texture of the wood and not a hard glassy finish
that belongs more on a car than a musical instrument

Above - body cut to shape ready for routing


Smoothing in the belly cut after blowing off the roughout with a flap sander
This one is a featherweight - weighs just 1.6 kgs or 3.5lbs - ideal for a tele
I am going to finish this one in danish oil and carnauba wax - I must admit i am a bit over
all the fuss and fadoodle with a high gloss and am going for a more natural look with this one.
The neck is in poly and will keep that gloss but i want to be able to feel the body wood when i play this one


Laid out and find issues with the neck pocket fit. More work but it will come out
pretty good in the end. Also the fret hieghts are all over the place so a good solid
dressing is required. You can see the laser light i use to line her all up.


1st coat of Danish and I like it a lot. 1 or 2 to go and finish off with carnauba wax polish.
Way more sympathetic to the wood than poly which sits on the surface and can chip off.
The finish is part of the wood and it feels like wood to the touch.


Here you can see the profiles and the soft warm sheen of the oil finish starting to
develop afte just 1 quick coat. I have sanded it up to 1500 grit and may sand to 2500
after the final coat and before the wax. Or I may just hit it with swirl remover and buff
that out before the wax polish. I have kept the roundover radius to a traditional 1/8"
radius so the profiles are clearly defined


The texture of the wood is quite evident in this shot. I am trying get a much more
woody kind of feel. Even though the neck is a high gloss poly I reckon its a nice
contrast. I've taken a less is more approach with this one and the matte black guard will
set it off nice.


Side shot of the profile cuts



Cavities ar carefully shielded with copper foil and earth wires are soldered from each to a
central point in the control cavity. The controls and pickups will be soldered into a loop
that termintes there as well. [star grounding]


Using an Electro socket on this build



Setting up the control plate components for wiring.


Control plate wired up ready to go into the body.


mmm dunno whether i like that black guard - Its a cut down standard 50's style guard
[5 screws instead of the usual 8] I am thinking I might go for a different colour.


Roughed out a blank in 12mm MDF and stuck the guard on with DS tape and blocks of 9mm
ply to give a bit of claerance for the router


Taken most of the waste now to tidy up the corners and rythm rout with a 1/4" bit.


There is the freshly cut master template.
You can see the ply blocks still stuck to the old guard.


Ok I had a pice of laminated guard material in "aged" white. I would like mother of toilet seat
but don't have any so "aged" white will do. It will look pretty nice I reckon.


Roughed out the blank on the bandsaw stuck it down to the master with DS tape and here
you can see I have just cut the bevel which shows the laminates up pretty good


Poke through some 1/8" holes


Viola! nice "aged" white guard.



There she is in place and everything seems to line up pretty nice.
Next job is to buff out the headstock and clean up the overspray. I will fit the graphtec nut,
drill the screw holes and bolt the neck on next. After that I can string up and get the neck relief
right. I am used to a headstock trussrod adjuster so doing it with a heel adjuster is new to me.
Can't really load the rhythm pickup until the neck is right. I could mount the rhythm pickup to
the body trad style. That way I can finalise the electronics and set up at the same time.
Doing it that way I can slide the guard in last. Doing it that way I gotta get the rythm pickup position
lined up perfect with the guard before I screw it down. I usually have the rhythm pickup mounted
onto the guard with 3mm adjusting screws so you can change it any time.



Theres a pic of the finished guitar. Plays very nice actually and the body is so comfortable.
Its very light to carry. The OC Duff hand wound pickups sure sound sweet. It's a real players
guitar this one. Its plain looks bely its beautiful sweet tone. Sounds great through the 5E3 and
really sparkles through the 5F4



Twin Teles
The story of Fatman and Myrtle - Due ex workshop Jan 08
I sold my main tele in September 07 and the guy who bought it has a twin brother who wanted a tele as well .
So i began two new projects. A tele for the twin brother and one for me to replace the one I just sold.


Heres the blank for the southern myrtle tele



Template on Fatman blank for markout



The blank all glued up and marked out ready for the bandsaw


The Myrtle bandsawn


Body shaped routed and ready for cavities



Cavities cut and hardware laid out and everything measures up pretty good


Cutting the profiles is almost done - next step roundovers - always a PIA - in some ways I would rather
bind a body


Theres the neck with its shader coats


One coat of sealer down and the neck masked and ready for the gun
At this stage I always wonder about spraying colour over the grain. It's not a eyeball knockout job
but would be a very nice understated look if left natural - oh well


There they are with the last coat of vintage white applied - The clear will be shot in about 2-3 days


Myrtle laid out with basic hardware in place - The gloss has been shot and curing now for 12 days
I will look at buffing it out in about a week or ten days. - as usual there is a bit of fine tuning the fit here and there.
The body looks offset but thats just parralax from the camera angle. All in all a smart looking tele. I am glad
I did one for me in this colour. A mate of mine though is starting to nag me for it already.
Looks like I will need to build another one straight up. I usually dont use solid colour so for me these two are a bit
unusual. Solid colour is more challenging for me tryning to get that dead right over 100% of the body.


Myrtle body buffed out, shielded and the control unit ready go in. Waiting for the Seymour Duncan
Broadcaster & Vintage Rhythm pickups to arrive. This one will be a TWANG monster.


Fatman body all done bridge in we just gotta fit the neck. Its called Fatman because it has a big fat neck and
A pair of Duncan Hot Tele pickups for a FAT tone, Just right for a fat old dude like me LOL.
This one's gonna be mine. HOPES!!


Getting a final fret dress and polish.


Heres Fatman ready for the road - shes very light with a real kickarse tone - spot on for
blues, rock whatever - the boat neck profile is kind of like a 59 roundback, 1" thick at the heel
and the nut. If you like a big sound and a big neck get one of these. I am going to keep this
one as a demo for a few months then it will probably go up for sale.


This is the Myrtle ready for sale. Peter is picking it up in a few days








And thats the end or the beginning of the story depending on who's looking at it.

Ex workshop workshop in late August 07
Tele style Thinline
It started off with this bookmatched maple imported from Vedder Mountain in Chilliwack Canada

Thinline Tele Mahogany with Big Leaf maple cap. The chambers have been cut, 1/4" Big Leaf maple cap glued down tight, body shape routed and sanded pretty fine. It's now ready for the neck pocket, pickup and control routs to be cut. Then comes the binding and the "F" hole also needs to be cut. See below for a mock up layout. That maple cap looks pretty cool. It should give quite a beefy sound with the Duncan 1/4 pound lead and STR-2 or 3 rhythm pickup. I have a chambered maple tele I use quite a bit that has a P90 in the rythm position and it sounds killer. I might do the same with this one. Tossing up whether to go the whole hog and put a modern Tele bridge instead of the cheesy trad pressed steel number shown in the mockup below. Not sure whether to rear cut the control rout or use the normal steel plate with a stewmac thinline guard. These look cool and a bit different to the acres of plastic used in a standard thinline guard.

There she is, all laid out ready for marking up the body routs bridge holes etc. That neck by the way, is a Warmoth compound radius, Rosewood on birdseye maple. It's a standard thin profile with a single action vintage truss rod adjusted from the peghead. The Gotoh kluson copy tuners are already installed. It is finished in polyurethane. The body gets a tinted colortone guitar lacquer finish. I will probably use the Vintage Amber I put on the swamp ash tele in thefor sale area. I will probably use a bit more red on this one to warm the colour up a bit.

Put some strings on to test the intonation and string relief. It sounds pretty nice accoustically. Bright with plenty of ring and sustain. I think this one will be a great guitar when finished. I got some Seymour Duncan Hots STL[R]-2 so she will be a sweet little arse kicker. Now for the final routs, purfling and binding. I put the bigsbyon there to see what it looked like. It is a little too big with that long brass Gotoh bridge. I will save the Bigsby for another project. So as not to hide too much of that flame I will use a cut down guard, maybe even a clear one.

Just trimmed out the cavities and next step is the binding channels

Just gone past the router to cut the binding chanels. I used to do this with a hand held dremel [shudder]

You can see we got a bit of burning on the end grain. This bigleaf maple is damn hard. It will clean up good with some paper and will be just fine

Lookin like a refugee from casualty, shes got the binding in place and all taped down to set up real good for a day or two

Binding in and I have shot the shaders onto the back and sides now for tape up and shoot the top.

The mahogany back has come up a real treat. You can see the neck all taped down ready for the gun just behind the body . I have thought a lot abot the pickups and will use Seymour vintage stacks. I got a gotoh hd steel and brass bridge and will use a set of Kluson tuners.

Wow!! that honey blonde shader really makes that top come alive . This is gonna be one real pretty looking tele. Couple more coats of clear then its into the drying room for month before I buff the finish. The neck below has been signed and I will put the final clear coats on that today as well. In the meantime I got to finally decide on the pickups and get in the hardware. I decided on duncan hot stack lead and vintage rhythm stack

The neck all done

Neck bolted down and caivities are well sheilded with copper foil. Time to set up the hardware and electronics

There she is ready for the road - actually it is a pretty hot guitar this one - really in your face with the Duncan Hot Stack bridge and a sound as big as the Tanami dersert on the Duncan Vintage Stack neck.

Thers a look at the real nice figure in the main body wood. Nice grain around the edges as well.

The 1/4 sawn ash neck showing the rosewood board and hotrod trussrod in place. I used some fillets of myrtle to set off the joins of the headstock ears. You can see the scarf join just back from the where the nut will sit. I like scarfs because it is a stronger sctock than the gibson style which is cut out of a single plank. With a steep angle of 15 - 17 degrees on em its no wonder the headstocks snap through on gibson guitars. [ouch] The angle on this one is 12 deg and I'm planning a 25 1/2" scale length

Theres the neck with most of the shaping done and the board glued down. Its almost ready for the frets. Just got to true up the edges of the board and tidy up the carving.

It's a 14" body and that neck is pretty snug in the pocket

Top

Seafoam Tele

Heres how she finished up . I used Duncan Broadcaster lead and vintage rythm pickups. During a build I think a lot how a guitar will end up and sometimes its different to what I imagined. Sometimes I go back over the notes and think "Oh yeah I was gonna do that" or "mm I'm glad I didn't do that". Sometimes I will use the discarded ideas on the next build. This one turned out pretty nice and ended up using it for around 18 months as my main stage guitar. I got some crazing on the back of the body were I rubbed it out too hard and the finish crazed when it cooled off. I used hat as an excuse to hang onto it plus I needed a good solid tele at the time

Pics from the build Solid 2 piece Myrtle body. Myrtle is kind of like Alder in many respects. It is tight grained and light with just a little more pink than alder. The neck is again a Warmoth Rosewood on Maple, compound radius neck which is dream to play on. It has a standard thin contour with 6150 [jumbo] frets. The bridge there didn't end up on the guitar. I ended up using a Gotoh HD with stainless saddles Repro gotoh heads are planned You can see the forearm contour and it also has a tummy cut to accomodate my fat belly. I will probably finish this in either a Brit Racing green or a deep bottle green. It will have a customised strat style Vintage pearl guard.

Pickups at this stage will probably be Seymour Tele stacks. Although I have a few spare hotties lying around waiting for just such a project. This one is gonna be the hotrod tele I always wanted but never owned.

You can just make out the reshaped headstock in this pic.

Finish is on! After a couple of weeks in the office it will be ready to buff and pollish. Wow, love that seafoam green. I always wanted a guitar in this old Fender colour. I cut a uni rout at the neck. You can get a mini, humbuck or P90 into that rout if you want to swap out the SD STR2 that is going in there. The guard will be a custom job. Tele-esque but a liitle different. Got to strip off the masking over the pocket and the neckplate rout on the rear. Still need to finish the steel slab neckplate on this one. The front needs cutting and the plate is still to be pollished and plated. Colour is commercial acrylic with clear colortone water based guitar lacquer on top. Got the SD ST2's and all the hardware. This one will bo heading out the door in the 2-3 weeks

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String up test - The Schaller Roller bridge and Grover locking tuners make this guitar very stable. I had the intonation and setup done within 5 minutes and it sounds very loud and ringy accoustcally. A very good sign that this one is going to have the "tone of doom". I have a pair of Seymour Vintage P 90's for this one. Next job is to pull it down and prepare the neck and body for spraying.

Had some bits of Mahogany left over out of the slab I bought last Autumn so I lammed up a 3 piece solid blank and cut this body. You can see one of the the joins on the bottom bout. You cant see the glues lines on the rear so will leave that as is and prolly go over the front with a 50's style car colour maybe Brit racing green or a deep plum colour. Will use a white mother of toilet seat guard. She will look pretty smart sporting the Schaller roller bridge and SD Vintage p90's. Got a Warmoth strat maple/rosewood neck to go on this one. The stock was a big old 70's CBS slab which I cut down a bit to make it balance with the small body better. Man those CBS Strat stocks are big. I reckon they only look good on a big old Jazzmaster or Jaguar body.	0
Neck pocket Routing All set up ready to cut the pocket. You can see there is no chance of anything moving as it is down real tight. Before clamping I use DS tape to sit the template down so it don't move when I apply pressure on those clamps. Got a routing mat down so we don't pick up any dags off the bench top when it is tightened down.
Pocket cut. Damn! the binding pulled up when the cutter hit it. Restuck with masking tape holding it in place pretty tight. There is always something new and fun in work like this. oo
Patterns Just cut the patterns to make the templates for routing the control and pickup cavities. The guard is done as well. Next comes the tricky bit of making it up into masters out of 9mm ply. From them I will cut 12mm MDF working copies. I don't like working with master templates cos if you wreck it you gotta do the whole thing from scratch again. ooo
She'll look something like the above.

Hawk Junior Thinline Another killer Big Leaf Curly maple cap from Vedder Mountain, Canada, on a Mahogany body. That kind of swirling flamey pattern towards the front of the quitar is known as spalting and makes very cool patterns when you get in close. Some of it will get covered up by the pickups and guard. The design is based on the old Gibson Blueshawk with a string through body, Hipshot "Hardtail" bridge. I will use Seymour p90's with cream covers. There are 3 single coils to choose from trad, hot and very hot and a few humbucker options as well. Probably will go for hots as the trad style can be a bit nasaly and bright. Although with all that mahogany around them, trad's might be pretty warm I have a real nice Warmoth mahogany LP Style neck with a cool curly maple laminated headstock I am going fit to this guitar. The resemblance to the gibson ends here as it is a bolt on 25 1/2" scale. The wiring will be quite different to its antecedent as well.

Warmoth neck Rosewood on Mahogany with curly maple laminated headstock. Compound radius 10" - 16" with 6150 frets [jumbo's] Scale length 25 1/2" and its a bolt on job
Next stage Neck pocket cut and binding in. Just went over the top face with my brand new veritas cabinet scraper. Suer beats the hell out of sandpaper. Still a few small details to take care of before the initial string up. Cut the neck bolt holes, mount the Hipshot Hardtail string through bridge. Next is to finally decide on the pickups, cut the routs, design and cut the custom guard. I am more and more leaning to using min humbuckers in this one. I really the cutting ballsy tones of the Old Gibson Firebirds and Seymour Duncan have a vintage model I can try. Maybe Dimarzio's plain mini might look better without that big g "S" stamped onto the front of the SD unit.	00

I must catch up with this project and get some more shots up. I have done quite a lot since the above shot was taken. Here you can see that I have cut the control electronics access port.
Below are some shots of the finished guitar Ive missed out most of the finishing, strinup testing etc pics on this build. I ended up using seymour 59's instead of P90's I must say that this one has surpassed my expectations on sound and feel. It is a beautiful guitar to play and has a bright vintage jangle and excellent sustain. It has a warm sweet tone from the neck to die for and a raw, ball busting rocking blues tone from the bridge. I love this guitar and its going to be hard to say goodbye when she goes