Thursday

25 Jan 2007

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Thursday 25 January 2007

21.30

Well, I'm sitting in an armchair next to a fire relaxing after a day of not such hard work... though a two hour meeting with my new accountant did manage to fry my brain pretty adequately.. I developed a nervous twitch in my left eye after 15 minutes!! I can't understand people who get off on numbers and equations.. I got a big fat F for GCSE maths and feel that I over-achieved.. anyway.. guitars... the meeting pretty much took up my morning so not much of consequence done today.. although I thouroughly tested the repaired planer/thicknesser... and it works!! Just waiting for a bit for my broken sander and I'm back in business..

This is the headstock of the solid rosewood neck going on the PAF DC model we looked at yesterday..(I sound like a fifth-grade teacher..?..!) .. I wanted something more interesting than average so spliced two pieces of rosewood on at an angle with flamed maple stringers between them.. the front will have a flamed veneer glued on tomorrow but from the guitarists point of view behind this beast it will be just a little bit more interesting.. and it's the players that interest me!

The back of the headstock after flattening everything down a bit.. see what I mean by the cuts being off-axis.. more interesting this way me-thinks?

Prior to making a non-standard headstock like this I mark out the strings and check that the tuners fit ok.. since this guitar is a Double Cut the center of gravity has changed and the neck could tend to drop to the stage... therefore I'm making the headstock as small as possible, the only downside is that I can't get straight string-pull on the D and G strings, it'll have to do though, can't have this baby come back in for a headstock splice..

This is the DC1 that we're building based on an old gretsch guitar.. here you see the tone-chambers marked out..

and then roughed out with a large drill bit.. half an hour later and with cramp in my arm from the pillar drill that is! I'm carefull to leave space for the bridge so it's adequayely supported.. The neck on this guitar will be a deep-set neck-tenon ala the RF thinline models and will be glued in under the maple cap.. after I've made the neck that is..

same story here, this is the PAF DC with the pickup and control cavities roughed out..

and then routed.. and then carved... bloody pretty piece of timber here.. although I do think that bookmatched flame maple is getting a little tired now.. how many guitars have this on??

The ash descendant being built for the show, the blanks were glued yesterday and this is what we come out with. It's a lovely light piece of English Ash.. must have come from near the top of the tree where the timber doesn't need to be so dense.

with the routing template in place after being rough-cut on the bandsaw.. I can't believe that my first guitar took three months to make and I used a £15 jigsaw to cut out the shape!... badly!!!

After routing the final outline I'm using my trusty no. 5 plane to smooth off the top where I've decided to have a rather special cap..

Doesn't look so special now... but just you wait.. half-an-hour with some big machines and we get something which surprised even me!

Damn fine bit of Poplar home grown in Dorset.. this is after just one face has been put over the planer/thicknesser..

then I split it in two on the bandsaw (and realised I need to change the old blade tomorrow) and then wack the resulting two halves through the thicknesser to get a uniform size.. and the process is repeated as I just want a bookmatched top of around 6mm. The body timber is very similar in tonal character to this cap and therefore it's just for the aesthetics and not for any pressing audible reason we're using this wood..

the thin bookmatched pieces on the bench, next to my Eeyore mug full of tea.. gotta be done, I can't survive without copious amounts of caffein in my system!