Project Appletree - electric guitar build log

[19_blackie_73]

Hi one and all

 

I think I start things of today. I thought it would be interesting for some people to follow a build log from a mad man with rudimentary luthier skills trying to build an electric guitar from scratch with some wood in the shed.

 

Some background: I'm playing guitar since I'm 7 years old, so right now almost 15 years. Started of with classical guitar, soon went to a steel string, then entered the bigband of my local high school and been there for my whole school career, in this case from grade 5 to 12. Somewhere inbetween some mates and I started a band project and that's where I play most of the time, mostly funk in the style of Stevie Wonder, Phat Phunktion and Tower of Power.

 

Recently I went to the shed of my grandpa, looking for something totally different and I stumbled across a piece of apple tree wood from an old tree he cut a few years back, right thickness for a e-guitar body and approx. 1m long. This piece is the dark part of the apple tree wood, and he had another piece of pale apple wood, approx. 1.2m long. The dark piece is around 10-15cm wide depending on the position, the pale piece ~9.5cm. So if I'd cut that dark piece up and plant it on both sides of the pale piece, this should give a nice body.

 

Spoiler

kinda like that:)

 

Initially my thought was to only make the body, but then realised, the pale piece is more than long enough even make a neck out of it, so at the moment I am leaning towards a neck through guitar instead of a bolt on neck affair. Could get interesting, only played on bolt on neck guitars so far. Problem is, with a neck through I have to make my own fretboard and I don't have any experience with that at all. So could get very interesting very fast. Escape plan: try making my own fretboard and trying to carve the right neck profile and if I fail, curse and retire the neck trough idea, buy a neck from a Stratocaster and route a neck pocket.

The only things I'm sure about a this stage of the project is:

• It will be natural finish
• everything will be apple, even the fretboard itself (though need to check that if that works)
• the dark goes on the outside, the pale on the inside
• trying a neck through design
• hard tail bridge
• no pickguard, the pickups will be in pockets of the plain wood

 

Things I need to find out:

• design? I am absolutely bad with that, guess I need some more inspiration as the body is kinda narrow.
• fretboard? call my local guitar specialist, talk with him about the whole fretboard thingy, maybe he can help
• Pickup configuration
• measurements that are vital for a functional instrument
• find out how to make all the holes for the cables when theres no pick guard.

 

Pickup configuration is probably at the moment the thoughest thing to decide. Thing is, I'm a strat guy, been playing them my whole guitar life and the sound fits. THOUGH I already have a strat that does the job good. Other option would be a pickup config like a e.g. Les Paul with two humbuckers, but I probably won't need that fatness of them for what I'm playing. Then there would be a Telecaster configuration, but I'm not sure about the sound and if I like it or not. If somebody has good ideas for that dilemma, enlighten me

 

So that's the current state, I will be updating you with progress as soon as it happens. This is my first build log ever, so if there's something to improve, tell me, I'm trying to make it better If there's something unclear to non-guitar people, I'll try to expain it better, it's always hard to describe things in such way that everbody can come along on the journey but I'll do my best!

[Dissitesuxba11s]

14 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

fretboard?

Have you thought of going fretless just for ease of construction? Not sure if it will change the overall sound going that route.

[19_blackie_73]

2 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

Have you thought of going fretless just for ease of construction? Not sure if it will change the overall sound going that route.

Yeah would be easier, but for that what I play it would be probably pretty impractical I guess. Good shout though, didn't had that option on my horizon

[19_blackie_73]

------- UPDATE TIME ----------

 

SO I had a call with my local guitar wizard, he gave me a good tip where I could buy already slotted fretboards, so installing the fret wire itself wouldn't be that hard. so no need to go fretless @Dissitesuxba11s Only thing I have to find out if they would slot a apple one for me, so I need to call them and ask them somewhere in the next days.

 

But I discovered have another problem which makes the first part kinda obsolete: I didn't look carefully enough at the wood at the beginning and now discovered that where the headstock would be is a giant branch, so it will not work to get something stable on there and won't look good. Sadly I couldn't find another piece of Apple Wood long and thick enough to make a neck through design, so I'm back with two options: glue-in, selfmade neck or just buy a Stratocaster style neck. Fear with that is that Maple would look of because two slightly different shades of light coloured wood and I'm not convinced either that a dark ebony fretboard or something like that would look good. So back to the drawing board and thinking stage.

 

So that's all, stay tuned

[19_blackie_73]

------- QUICK UPDATE TIME ---------

 

I just called the shop who makes the fretboard, apple fretboard is save So I might make my own neck too, just as a glue in probably and sand the transition smooth

 

[19_blackie_73]

------- ANOTHER UPDATE TIME ----------

 

I spontaneously decided to start working on the project, not just planning

Things I set in stone after the call:

I will make a bolt on neck, so when I mess up I can go back to some Fender neck.

The fretboard and the neck will be made out of apple wood too, I'm leaning towards a darker neck underside and a lighter fretboard itself. I found enough dark wood without cracks for a neck, so this should work out.

The style of the headstock is yet undecided, I wouldn't mind going away from a traditional Fender headstock.

Additionally, I found a nice finish, sorta like wax which gives the wood a nice, little bit darker colour. Picture will be further down in the post. (made a test)

 

So starting to build:

First off, cutting the pieces to length:

 

 

The surface of the pieces was pretty rough, so I sanded it with some 80 grit and a belt sander to reveal the real grain and colour. Additionally I started to straighten the edges as a preparation towards glueing the pieces together. This is probably the trickiest part because the wood pieces don't have any straight edges, so it needs many steps on the table saw and much patience to create a sort of straight edge as a starting point for planing the joins.

 

After that I started planing the first piece of wood to get it rougly straigt and tested the finish on one corner of the first join:

you can see the finish on the left side, and part of my initial rough sketch on the wood, though the lighting makes it hard to see.

 

Next step is to find someone who can level me the pieces to the thickness I desire. I also want to make a template so routing and/or sawing the outline on the bandsaw will be much easier. So thats all for today, the next steps might take a while but stay tuned

[19_blackie_73]

------ small update ------

I played around with a little bit of 3D, used the file of my profile pic and remodeled the guitar body. Now I'm pretty undecided if I should make a ebony or an apple fretboard

 

 

Ebony fretboard is the top one, apple the bottom one. part of me wants the contrasty fretboard on the left, part of me wants an all apple guitar If anyone has an idea, what would be wiser, let me know

 

please note, pickup config is not final yet, just the placeholder from my profile pic. The headstock profile and layout is at the moment a standard strat profile, but I am tempted to make an angled headstock like on a prs or les paul.

the texture on the wood is just a pic I have taken from the wood I have, but there sawing marks all over it when it was originally cut to the size it is now. The best represantion is probably around the control knobs.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

I really dig both renders. The ebony fretboard contrasts with the apple wood body really well. While the all apple wood finish gives it a unibody feel.

 

What do you think of the idea of taking the apple wood design and giving it darker hardware (pickups, frets) so that it contrasts with the natural finish?

[19_blackie_73]

10 hours ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I really dig both renders. The ebony fretboard contrasts with the apple wood body really well. While the all apple wood finish gives it a unibody feel.

 

What do you think of the idea of taking the apple wood design and giving it darker hardware (pickups, frets) so that it contrasts with the natural finish?

just took the render and updated it to black hardware:

Good shout, but I'm honestly not to shure. I need to test out the finish I'm going to use on some spare wood, because AFAIK it will darken depending on the grain quite a bit (at least the darker parts of this body will get even darker, the light parts might stay sorta this way). If it darkens quite a bit, I don't think the black hardware would work good, if it doesn't I will very much consider it heavily.

So next update will be the tests with the finish, and I might pull the trigger on a router. I'm on getting a spot at a local woodworking workshop to get the pieces planed to the right thickness, then I'll start making the body. Also final design choices will be made and I need to decide on the thickness. Also when the router arrives, I will start making the templates and getting the hardware (at least the bridge for the first part, rest will be decided later and somewhat depends on the pickup choice)

 

[Dissitesuxba11s]

I saw this on Imgur and immediately thought of your project: https://imgur.com/gallery/w2oPR1G

 

Preview:

Spoiler

 

[19_blackie_73]

1 hour ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I saw this on Imgur and immediately thought of your project: https://imgur.com/gallery/w2oPR1G

 

Preview:

  Hide contents

 

It's amazing to see what people come up with   I'm watching at the moment a lot of videos from Crimson Guitars, it's amazing what they do. I'm kinda sad I lack that creativity side a bit, mine looks fairly standard(ish), just a mashup of some classic guitar forms

I definitely have to go back to the drawing board a bit and find a way to make mine more unique and my own instrument
Thanks for the hint

 

[19_blackie_73]

----- UPDATE TIME -----

sooooooooooo it's been a bit since I managed to do stuff on the project, but today a few things happened: I finally managed to get the blanks plained and I will add some 12mm wide really dark strips between the light and the dark part, I hope this will tie in nicely with the rest and the ebony fretboard I decided on and also gives me a bit more space to work with, glued up the body would have otherwise been less than 27cm which is quite small.

Things I also managed to do:

• test piece: oiling it will darken the wood quite a bit, but gives not a so smooth finish. That other wood wax or whatever this is won't darken it that much, but gives a smother surface so I'll probably use that.
• The body will be finished with gluing up hopefully by the end of this upcoming week, and my plan is to pull the bandsaw out and do the rough shape.
• As soon as I get a notice when the ebony fretboard can be delivered (it's currently out of stock), I will order all the crucial bits I need for making the neck and routing the cavities and so on.
• Neck template is finished, measurements are taken, I probably will go for a vintage style (a little bit thicker) neck profile, just for fun
• Headstock will be angled, this is easier for me to make, also 3 tuners left and right instead of 6 in a row
• neck pocket template is also finished

 

Things I need to do during the week:

• headstock template
• body template -  need to decide on the final form

I will post some pictures when the body blank is finished and/or I decided on the final shape

have a good weekend

[19_blackie_73]

BODY BLANK IS HERE

Pretty stoked on how it turned out:

 

I am instantly going to design and render

[19_blackie_73]

I've been quite busy the last two weeks so not much happened, but now the orders are in for all the parts except potis and pickups. Stuff should arrive next week. Though I made my mind up and came to the conclusion to get p90s, custom wound by a local manufacturer. The pickups in my strat are from this guy too and bloody brilliant
Maybe I will manage to get the bandsaw out tomorrow and start building. Final design for the body probably will be the same as you already saw in the renders, maybe slightly assymmetric at the bottom end. We'll see, probably deciding this while building

[19_blackie_73]

Good news

finally managed to not only plan things but to start building. It was slow progress yesterday, but I managed to get the rough outline of the guitar body and neck done and cut the headstock angle on one side. Though before cutting it to the correct size, I wanted to double check the measurements so today I'll do the rough thickness of the neck.

 

next thing to do after the thicknessing is to make a jig to fix the hand band sander in a 90degree angle to a table so I can sand the edged, also some cracks might have to get filled in with some matching wood I cut away for stability reasons.
The outer shape of the neck will be refined with a router, though I'm waiting on the router bits to do that, template is already made. I also need to decide on the final headstock form and how it will all work with the nut and so on.

 

Next week some router bits and most of the hardware should arrive, I will give an update when it's here and explain my choices

Maybe I'll manage to get a lot more work done over the easter weekend, though I have some more projects on the side and also have to work, sooooo it might take a while to get everything where I want it to be. but better slow progress than non

 

[19_blackie_73]

So first wave of parts have arrived.

I went for nickel and black hardware, all black wasn't my favorite and standard chrome hardware to shiny. So here we start:

first of the boring stuff: input jack and knobs:

 

I went for Gover 18:1 tuners, I guess happy medium in terms of price and built quality, but I have no experience in that space.

 

And at the moment the last part my bridge: I went for a Schaller 3D-6 Bridge, it's a hardtail and the strings do not go through the body so this saves me a lot of hassle getting the string ferrules I would otherwise need fit properly. And it has a lot of set up options because you can even adjust the string spacing so my hope is I can hide some things I may mess up during the build

 

 

The trussrod is just a generic 440mm long dual action truss rod:

 

Later this week my preslotted fretboard should arrive and some stuff for building Stay tuned

 

[Dissitesuxba11s]

3 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Later this week my preslotted fretboard should arrive and some stuff for building

So would the preslotted fretboard go on top of the apple wood neck?

[19_blackie_73]

39 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

So would the preslotted fretboard go on top of the apple wood neck?

Yeah, I thought it would be nice to have a little bit of contrast so I went for a dark fretboard (hopefully) kindoff in the color of the dark strip

[Dissitesuxba11s]

29 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Yeah, I thought it would be nice to have a little bit of contrast so I went for a dark fretboard (hopefully) kindoff in the color of the dark strip

Are you still planning on staining the body or maybe a clear coat to seal it?

[19_blackie_73]

31 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

Are you still planning on staining the body or maybe a clear coat to seal it?

The body will stay more or less the way it is now, it will get a bit darker when I oil or wax it. At the moment I'm preferring the waxed feel. I won't mess with paint or an ordinary clear coat because I only have spray cans available and firstly won't get an even coat and second I don't like the feel. The test piece I made showed only a little bit of darkening with the wax and the oil. Don't have any pics atm, maybe I can make sometime soon one.

[19_blackie_73]

Everything has arrived so now it's "just" building for the most part.

The fretboard and some auxiliary stuff has arrived. The final look will be something like this:

on thge right us the neck blank. The fretboard turned out to be quite dark nonetheless, the shop told me that it would have a lot of brown grain in it but I don't see much of it

 

I made a jig to hold the band sander vertical to the bench and started sanding the edges.

 

as you can see there are quite a few cracks, so I started to fill in some of the bigger ones. Though I have to decide what to do with the back side of the upper blank. because there is a bit of a weird and hard to fill in crack.

 

I hope to get a lot more done over the long weekend.

 

Next things to do are:

- build a jig for routing the truss rod channel
- build something to sand the inside of the horns (sorta a spindel sander)

- sanding, sanding, sanding

- carve the top

 

[19_blackie_73]

BIIIIIIIIIIIIIG update time and a happy easter weekend to all
 

I managed to squeeze a lot of work in the last two days,didn't have as much time as wanted but I got a few milestones done:

First of all, finishing all the little cracks all around the body. I sanded and cut of the excess of the fillins i made and also sanded the outside to 120 grit.

 

There's that one big cracky weird thing left on the backside to which I hinted last update:

 

I'll probably rout the bulk of the cracked material away and make an insert with the stuff that I have left, should work out. I sadly can't put a bevel on it or chamfer it because the crack is too deep. I might have a very good matching piece so it should be fine and not too visible.

 

The other part that very likely needs to be fixed is the wooden plate the guy who helped me with the body used to make the sandwich work:

This will be a lot more hassel to get so look right, but I will wait with that until I sanded the inside for the first time and made the rough carve.

 

Moving on to the headstock: first step was getting an even surface and the band saw marks out, second step was to make a template and route it out. The wood is on some parts very brittle and saddly, the router catched a bit and knocked a good chunk of material off one side of the headstock. Lukely I found the piece again and managed to get it glued back on:

 

you still can see the faint whitish lines where it cracked, but from the top you can't see it:

 

I then dropped the idea to make it with the router and shaped it with the band sander. I also routed the rest of the neck to the correct width.

 

There are some cracks I need to fill in though on the headstock:

I don't think it is the best idea to leave it as is.

 

last thing I did was to route the neck pocket:

 

this means: here it is in the final form 

the fit of the neck pocket is pretty good, but I managed to route it on a slight angel so the centerline of the neck and the center line of the body do not match. It's maybe 2degrees maximum, but the consequence is that the bridge won't sit in the middle. Sooo I need to fix that somehow, but I'll do that after carving the top and the neck.

 

Probably next step is getting the mating surface for the fretboard absolutely level and then rout the truss rod channel.

Stay tuned

[19_blackie_73]

Another update Sorry for the long time it takes, but I sadly have very limited time to work on the project at the moment.

 

First of, I made the trussrod channel. I used the table saw fence as a guide so I can put the straight part of the router base against the fence and get a clean cut. To hold the neck, I made some U-pockets out of scrap wood to rest the neck in and clamp them in the proper distance to the table of the table saw.:

 

 

It took quite a bit to the the trussrod fit proberly, because the nut to adjust the trussrod had a bigger diameter than the rest. A bit of carving and now it fits also made the access hole to adjust it:

 

Next thing on the list: rough carve the backside of the guitar to see how the crack on is going and what I need to fill in. Then I routed out a straight piece, made a fill-in to more or less the exact thickness out of a scrap piece and then glued the piece in and filled some little spots with very thin wood strips:

 

After that, I sanded the whole thing flat to the surfaces:

 

Didn't had any better light coloured wood pieces, but I'd say good enough at least the lines line up.

 

I also rough carved the opposite site of that corner so it would be more comfortable to play:

 

 

last but not least, I started on the electronics compartment and made the cover and the cover recess. I plan on getting rid of a big chunk of material there, because the body already weighs in at around 3 kg at the moment, together with the (uncarved) neck it is around 4.5 to 5 kg. and thats without fretboard, tuners, bridge, pickups and all the other stuff that goes in an electric guitar. For comparison, my ready-to-play strat is just shy of 3.5 kg. So pretty obvious, this thing has to get lighter to be playable for longer periods a time.

 

Routing the compartment is a challenge itself because the middle section of the guitar is lower on the backside. soooooo again improvising is king and sanded a piece of scrap wood to the right thickness to put it in the middle part so the router won't tilt in. I used a part of the former body blank as a guide and another piece of scrapwood for the other guide.

Later I will make a template for the router bit to follow to make the compartment. For now, I made the cover out of a thinner piece of applewood that I already prepared when the bandsaw was out and about. Again I tried to match sorta the white grain line. After a lot of sanding and trying and a lot more sanding I got it to fit:

That's it for this update, next time I will make the neck fit a bit better and work on the compartment. Stay tuned

[19_blackie_73]

Major step completed I'm happy to announce that the fretboard is glued in place and already flush with the neck

I managed to get some work done and first of all straighten the neck pocket and the neck to the body. It was a bit fiddly, but now it should fit like intended. At the moment the neck does not go all the way in because I wanted to leave some room for sanding the fretboard flush and to get the tightest fit possible. I simply made a shim out spare wood, glued it to the side and planed it so it will be straight with the neck. not the most beautiful solution, but functional.

 

To get the fretboard square to the centerline, I drilled in some small posts as a reference under the bridge so I can rest the fretboard against these two while clamping it up.

 

(i know that that there's a chip and a rather rough fit and finish to the trussrod, sry )

 

GLUE TIME:

 

 

Today I trimmed the fretboard back to where it should be and started sanding in the radius:

 

that step is not finished though, it takes really long to get the radius in and I ran out of time. I don't wan't to do it with rough sandpaper so I don't have to get rid of many scratches and this way I have more control over the process. Downside it takes longer. But better save than sorry I guess.
 

I also ordered the electrical components except the Pickups, wiring will be 2 250k linear potis for Volume and 2 500k log potis for Tone (also a 22nF capacitor on each tone poti) and a 3 way switch. I have no freakin clue what I should use or not, so this is kindoff experimental, but this part is rather fast changed and doesn't cost a lot so I don't worry to much about that. I also started to make the routing template und fit the input jack, though that's not finished yet.

 

Stay tuned and have a great week

[19_blackie_73]

Finally update time Sorry for the lack of updates, I was quite busy with university stuff. Though I should manage to get a lot done this week as I'm working from home, so doing 2 hours a day for the project should be possible

 

First off, I finished sanding the radius of the fretboard. Ebony is quite a pain because of the really fine, black dust.

 

Next up, I decided to put the frets in so I can better see how it feels while making the back side of the neck.

 

 

aaaaaaaaand fretting done. I don't think I did it the right way, though they are in so I guess thats a win.

 

 

next thing: control cavity. I have to say, it's a lot of dust and shavings. But now there's a place for the electronics

 

last new thing: I startet sanding the inner parts of the horns and removing the connector thingy that bugs the hell out of me.

 

For sanding purposes I made a round thing that can be put in a drill and then wrapped it with sandpaper. For removing the connector thingy, I used various handtools to remove it as I don't have any router bits or dremel attachments that could reach in there. I will plug the hole with some of the left over wood from the blank.
 

That's it for now, maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow I will post another update, depending on the progress.