Week 6... Body Routs, More color and Buffing

     Another busy week in the shop and only one more week left before its time to prep and spray finishes on our instruments and graduate! Its hard to believe that its been a full school year already! Time flies when you are learning so much.

     Construction class this week saw me nearing the finish of my electric build. Monday I routed the pick up and control cavities into the alder body, then rounded over the corners and shaped the belly and fore arm contours. The body is ready for final sanding and feeling light and comfortable!

     The next step was to shape the neck. This is a critical part of the build as it will determine much of how the guitar feels and plays. If some one picks the guitar up and the neck is not immediately comfortable to them they may not want to play it at all. The neck starts out as a rectangular block and is shaved down to thickness and given its curved shape and taper by hand. There a re a few ways to go about this, one of which is using a rasp and scrapers as I did with my acoustic guitar neck. I started this neck in the same way, then took it to a belt sander auxiliary drum to quickly rough shape and remove most of the excess wood. I then went back with the rasp and scrapers and sanding bars to give a straight even taper and comfortable C profile. There is a bit of tweaking to be done to the volute area ( where the neck meets the head stock ) and the heel area ( where the neck meets the body ) but it is pretty much done
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                         I also laid out and drilled the tuning machine mounting holes on the headstock.

The Electronics were mounted into the pick guard and control plate for a test fit to the body..

     Wednesday and Thursday's finishing class was a bustle with color flying in the booth and from brushes, and power drills buffing out mirror shines on our Gibson Red project boards. I finished my color matching exercises, buffed my red board, finished my hand applied sunburst and sprayed a dark brown burst. 

The sunbursts are super fun to do and i cant wait till next year to get some more practice doing them in different colors. 

                     The Gibson Red buffed to a high gloss mirror shine reflecting a Les Paul off the wall.

4 Custom paint colors matched to almost perfect using artist tempra paints.

Finished Ice Tea/ Tobacco Burst hand applied 

Finished dark burst sprayed ( hard to see the yellow to red to brown fade in photo)

     The hand applied sunburst went better than the sprayed one but I absolutely love both techniques. practice practice practice!

     Friday was back to the grind making repairs to my trusty old axes. This week i began the work on my #1 Custom Stratocaster. The guitar has been my go to axe for over 10 years and has seen a lot of action in all kinds of settings. This guitar was in desperate need of a fret job, new nut , re wiring some of the electronics , and rust removal. Lets start with the fret job and new nut.  The fretboard was masked off with tape to protect the wood. Then the frets were leveled, re- crowned, ends dressed and all polished. Then the original plastic nut was removed and replaced by a handmade bone nut. 

Next week I'll pull out all the electronics, de-solder everything, clean it all up, remove some rust from the screws and hardware, and re-solder all the connections like new.  Then put it all back together and set it up to play like a dream again!