Adams second build - a reclaimed timber hollowbody...
Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 7:04 pm
Greetings folks,
Having finished my first build and been pleased with the end result, I have moved straight onto my second. As previously, I could not have completed this without the help of many folk on this forum, but the primary inspiration has come from Chad McCormacks thread on building a similar style instrument (though Chads' is to a considerably higher standard).
With this guitar, I wanted to explore a few new techniques/designs, and as such went for a clamshell-style hollowbody with 3 single pickups (again by Bareknuckle, a UK producer of pickups) wired in a standard strat style but with a single tone and volume control.
I was lucky enough to come into a fair amount of reclaimed afromosia timber (previous life as workbenches at the university where my father-in-law works) for nothing but the price of fuel for collection. I havent measured it up, but I reckon there is enough for several more guitars, should I decide to use it. Amongst the planks are quite a few with near full QS, and I am going to attempt an acoustic build at some point from it.
Overall, I am happier with this guitar than my first (the padauk bodied-with-inlaid-stripes twin humbucker beastie) as I feel the technical level of completion is higher. However I am not *quite* so keen on the aesthetics, and given the indian rosewood for the neck, it is a little neck-heavy. Anyway, before I rabbit on too much, here is a specsheet for it, and a few photo's of the build :
Body - hollowed afromosia
Neck - indian rosewood (I had bought a one-piece neck blank from Gilmer Woods a while ago, and decided to mill it into planks to use as scarf-jointed necks. This way I will have three necks for the price of one blank)
fingerboard - Scottish laburnum
Scale - 25"
Pickups - Bareknuckle Irish Tour set, centre pickup RWRP
Selector - standard 5-way blade
Tuners - Gotoh
Bridge - Gotoh 510
Here is the afromosia as I received it : This was to be the front of the guitar, a nicely figured and bookmatched piece, but I ended up routing away on the wrong face meaning that it had to be used for the rear. Not a huge problem, but another 'measure twice, cut once' error. You can see the lovely toffee-colouored afromosia well. This was the template I used to rout out the inner chambers. The single template is used for one half of the body, then flipped over and used for the other half. With retrospect (and for any future builds), I shall use a way of indexing to improve fit when the two halves are glued together. An awful lot of sawdust later (I am now wholly convinced of the need for an enclosed face-shield system when machining wood rather than a jury-rigged extractor hose) : please see next post, Adam
Having finished my first build and been pleased with the end result, I have moved straight onto my second. As previously, I could not have completed this without the help of many folk on this forum, but the primary inspiration has come from Chad McCormacks thread on building a similar style instrument (though Chads' is to a considerably higher standard).
With this guitar, I wanted to explore a few new techniques/designs, and as such went for a clamshell-style hollowbody with 3 single pickups (again by Bareknuckle, a UK producer of pickups) wired in a standard strat style but with a single tone and volume control.
I was lucky enough to come into a fair amount of reclaimed afromosia timber (previous life as workbenches at the university where my father-in-law works) for nothing but the price of fuel for collection. I havent measured it up, but I reckon there is enough for several more guitars, should I decide to use it. Amongst the planks are quite a few with near full QS, and I am going to attempt an acoustic build at some point from it.
Overall, I am happier with this guitar than my first (the padauk bodied-with-inlaid-stripes twin humbucker beastie) as I feel the technical level of completion is higher. However I am not *quite* so keen on the aesthetics, and given the indian rosewood for the neck, it is a little neck-heavy. Anyway, before I rabbit on too much, here is a specsheet for it, and a few photo's of the build :
Body - hollowed afromosia
Neck - indian rosewood (I had bought a one-piece neck blank from Gilmer Woods a while ago, and decided to mill it into planks to use as scarf-jointed necks. This way I will have three necks for the price of one blank)
fingerboard - Scottish laburnum
Scale - 25"
Pickups - Bareknuckle Irish Tour set, centre pickup RWRP
Selector - standard 5-way blade
Tuners - Gotoh
Bridge - Gotoh 510
Here is the afromosia as I received it : This was to be the front of the guitar, a nicely figured and bookmatched piece, but I ended up routing away on the wrong face meaning that it had to be used for the rear. Not a huge problem, but another 'measure twice, cut once' error. You can see the lovely toffee-colouored afromosia well. This was the template I used to rout out the inner chambers. The single template is used for one half of the body, then flipped over and used for the other half. With retrospect (and for any future builds), I shall use a way of indexing to improve fit when the two halves are glued together. An awful lot of sawdust later (I am now wholly convinced of the need for an enclosed face-shield system when machining wood rather than a jury-rigged extractor hose) : please see next post, Adam