MIMF

I've made the fretboard from a 9 mm piece of Birch plywood, and tapered it with a bench plane. To avoid tearout at the ends of the fretboard (because of the cross grained inner layers of the plywood), I've left the plywood a bit longer on both sides and sawed to the right length when it was planed d...

I've made the truss rod groove, by cutting the outside lines using a stanley knife and a ruler and removing the wood with a chisel. Again, I only use my chisel with the bevel downwards, this gives me a good control on the process. Had to make appr. 8 runs of cutting and chiselling to get a 10 mm dep...

Hans - I can appreciate the amount of actual hand crafting going into your instrument, but forgoing a router with a corner rounding bit to pretty-up that edge? Wow Hans... you're a better man than I am. By and about this time, I'd be tempted to switch to a power tool when no one was looking. Best o...

I glued to 9 mm pieces of Birch plywood together and I drawed out the neck. I sawed the straight parts with a handsaw leaving appr. 1-2 mm wood, which I'll plane down. I used a scrollsaw for the headstock. The neck will have a Fenderstyle headstock, but will be rather thick (18 mm). This is no probl...

Claude,

I've actually tried this a few weeks back and it worked fine.
Drilled a small hole and countersicked the hole with a bigger drill, screwed the bone on a piece of wood.
Take care not to overtight the screw.

Hans

When the glue dried, I sanded the body up to 120 grit. It took a while before the sides where nice and smooth. As said before, I'm fond of the look of the side of the body. I scribed a line with my compass and made the edges of the body round using a surform, rasp, files. After that I sanded the bod...

Glueing up the plates. I did this in two runs, first the middle and bottom plate and then the top. I had some difficulty aligning the plates, but in the end it turned out ok. I used two pieces of plywood and a bunch of clamps as a press. Maybe next time I'll nail or screw them down while glueing. An...

Now I've made the channels on the inside of the top plate. The guitar will not have a tone or volume pot because I never make use of them. There will be two separate outputs. One for the bass side and one for the treble side. I made the two channels by scribing the groove with a Stanley knive and th...

Alan Peterson wrote:I too am looking forward to the outcome.

Can't help but think that's gonna be one heavy bit o'lumber hanging off a strap when complete.

Alan,

You're right about that. Although I mostly sit while I play, the next build will have some chambers in the middle plate!

Hans

I like it! Can't wait to see how it comes out. I would caution when using hand tools (planers, chisel, etc) to be careful as plywood layers have a tendency to come apart. For example, if you are using a chisel, the wood will want to split along the glue line rather than the actual depth you want it...

I've sawed the plates. It's a bit time consuming using a scrollsaw (I'll be using a coping saw the next time), but it has some kind of relaxing quality's also... ;) I was a bit afraid that the plywood would splinter, but it turned out fine. I've made a little error by using the top plate as a templa...

I've started out by making a drawing and printed it and cut out. I drew the outline off the body on a piece of plywood of appr. 380 x 480 mm and sawed it with a scrollsaw set with a coarse toothed saw. The body will be made out of 3 piece of plywood. With the first layer I sawed out the neck pocket ...

I'm planning to build a 7-string Charlie Hunter-style electric guitar, using plywood and simple handtools only. I want to build a good quality guitar using as much as possible DIY-store material and using common handtools. IMHO plywood is pretty stable due to the lamineted structure and I like the l...