Tuesday 16th January 07
22.48
Today's mostly been spent performing the routing and major carving on the three guitars featured on yesterdays diary.. I'll be following just one of them as the processes are pretty much the same throughout. The guitar you'll be seeing most of is a derivative of my Descendant model which is a derivitive of... et al.. This guitar will be the signature model of our endorsee Rich Newport, he no plays with Blaze Bailey's (former Iron Maiden) band 'Blaze' as well as numerous other duties as a teacher and online columnist and also playing with future metal band Elastttic... the guitar will have massively powerful humbuckers custom wound by Wizard pickups and a Kahler trem.. topped off by a trans-black oil finish... what more can I say?
Here I'm carefully triming the edges of the headstock veneer glued on yesterday.. I made this knife specifically for inlay work but it's turned out to be a truly great odd-job blade.
Here you see the reamer used to bring the holes to their correct size.. 10mm for most modern tuners
The top of Rich's descendant has been glued on and requires trimming. You can see the glue spill-out has foamed up.. it's a new type of glue I use on the recomendation of a furniture designer friend of mine.. lovely stuff..
the edges are clean now.. I used a mini router with a small template triming bearing cutter.. it gets most places except for right near the neck.. that will come out by hand later in the game.
All three guitars are now trimmed and marked up for humbuckers and control cavities.
I drill the cavities out first to save the edge on my router cutter.. and to save my arm, it's surprisingly hard work to push a large router through solid timber!
...pushing a large router.. again a bearing cutter and a template
here you can see how close the bearing cutter actually gets.. pretty damn close... you can also see the deep-set neck-tenon at the bottom of the cavities..
control cavity with a rebated section so the cover is flush with the back..
I've marked out and drilled the holes for the volume, tone and three-way switch and clamped her up for final major carving...
Me.. prepped for the making of major sawdust and looking ugly as usual.. the ear defenders are a must, too many years playing very loud rock has screwed my hearing.. it annoys my wife no end! .. or is that selective hearing I hear you say..?
You can see here the gentle curve on the top of Rich's guitar... more ergonomic than your average flat-axe
And ergonomics is definitly the name of the game here.. gotta be comfortable both in normal playing position and slung two inches off the floor!
Another view.. oh, and mahogany dust is an aquired taste... and I haven't aquired it yet!! bloody stuff gets everywhere! even through the mask!
The front partly sanded and ready for the bridge routing.. the flames will come through much better once the fine sandpaper grits are reached
the inlay process.. just our logo to start with.. it's a modified signature.. which I thought was fitting as it's the companies signature.. no, I'm funny... really.. it's also loosely based on the scorpion which gave it's name to my first company and the shape of a guitar if you look really close..
the cavity for the abalone has been marked out and partially cut.. it has to be pretty much the exact depth as the thickness of the abalone..
glued and any gaps filled with maple dust...
And the final product looking pretty.. I love the look of abalone.. lets hope it shows up through the trans-black stain.. should be pretty stunning..
I hope to have this guitar ready for the finishing process soon.. just have to replace my random-orbital sander that gave up the ghost today.. I go through tools at a rate of knots! Other projects that need to be completed over the week include the star-wars project guitars and a LP type... I'll also be recieving a very large block of perspex.... now what can that be for I hear you ask...? Wait and find out.. my most daring project yet.. Oh and there looks to be another twin-neck on the horizon, this time with a 5-string bass and a standard 6-stringer... could be fun making that light enough to wield without invalidating your health insurance!
As ever it is too late to be staring at a computer screen... good night and good luck.
Ben
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