Post by cynical1 on Jun 19, 2011 22:06:59 GMT -5
So, what is this mystery wood in Project #1?
OK, the few guesses made were way off. The researches from old posts got close, but still were a bit shy. Let me end the suspense…if that’s the right word…on how Project #1 is made.
First, a little history. She started life out of the factory looking like this:
That’s my buddy, Mike, with the Washburn when she was new. The two dogs in the back are the guilty parties in the canine mauling affair. Being Rottweilers, I assume they only appreciate zithers…
I don’t have any pictures of what the body looking like when it arrived, so just use your imagination when I say the neck pocket, bottom of the body by the strap button and both horns had seen serious action…and surrendered accordingly… Mike’s a real wiseass, so in the box was a small Milkbone…
I started drawing lines and curves on the body to see what I could keep, what had to go and what had to be outright replaced. That’s why the body has such a unique shape. Sort of like an old Guild Jet Star…the older guys will know…but with more exaggerated horns and additional radii on the bottom.
I knew I’d have to route and block in the neck cavity region…and I wanted a fixed bridge, so I knew I’d need to fill the trem cavity…then the wheels started turning. Why not route a long channel in the back and create a solid wood connection from the neck to the bridge…hmmm…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Wanna know what the original tonewood is? Plywood. That’s right, it’s a plywood body Washburn. Someone mentioned pimento wood burl veneer on the front. Correct. The back is a satinwood fiddle back veneer. That covers the parts you can see.
Now, back to the story… I found a cabinet shop in Madison that could cut, plane and join three pieces of wood for this project. For $15.00 USD I got back three pieces cut within 1/64” of what I asked for. I was impressed. Those pieces are alder. Why alder? Because it’s cheap, works easily, isn’t too heavy and glues nicely. Same reason anyone would use alder for a guitar…
Here are a few marked up images to show where the pieces are located.
Front:
Back:
Side View:
I don’t have any detailed drawings, except the ones I drew out by hand…and they have been lost to the ages….or the wife moved them…same, same…so the locations marked on these images are approximate, not to scale…but pretty close.
I didn’t take any work in process pictures either…I wasn’t sure it was going to work. The whole idea was just an experiment and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, so I didn’t bother with pictures…my bad…
Anyway, I routed the back first and glued and clamped the long runner in. This is also the material the neck and middle pickups screw into. That sat for a few days and I routed for the neck pocket filler piece. The bottom runner is actually routed into about ¼” to accommodate the neck pocket piece. They were both 3-1/2” wide, so the cutaways had to be re-rasped, shaped and sanded. I routed the neck pocket before I did any shaping to avoid rampant use of wood filler later… I took the opportunity to add more room to the bottom cutout while working it back into shape. Once I liked the cutaways I routed a 1” rectangle for the bridge piece, again, about ¼” into the bottom runner, and glued and clamped it in. The bridge piece extends about 3/8” out from both side and the bottom of the back runner. Two of the pictures have this wrong, but I'm too lazy to redo them at the moment...
The front and back were sanded smooth to accommodate the veneer. While I was staring at the body I realized I didn’t like the two parallel single coil routes. I had the router out anyway, so I blocked off a quick rectangle and routed out a space for a filler piece so I could angle the neck pickup. Since I didn’t have any more alder I just used a 1” piece of oak. Man, that stuff is a bear to sand flat… Then I just routed out the single coil slot with a Stew-Mac template.
I used a reverse angle to what you commonly see on a Strat for two reasons.
1.) It allows for a slightly fuller tone on the higher strings and tightens up the lower strings a bit.
2.) It just looks cooler.
I used the 300# of sandbags method for applying the veneer. Nothing beats a veneer press, but in a pinch it did alright. I picked up some veneer glue that requires less pressure then traditional veneer glues, so that helped, too.
Once the veneer had been on for a month I figured the glue had set as well as it was ever going to set so I cut and sanded it int the body contours. Next I waited another week then let the body soak in wood hardener overnight. The wife was not happy about the loss of her big Pyrex casserole dish, but I got over it pretty quick…
The paint is just automotive red lacquer I picked up from an old friend down in Chicago. Don’t know the brand or the actual shade, but he gave me about a quart of leftover red and another quart of clear. He’d had it sitting around his shop for over a year and I think he was just glad to get rid of it. Illinois can be real tough on folks who dump that stuff down the drain…
I used the color, clear, color, clear trick to get more depth out of the single color burst. I’ve done better, but this is fine for my eyes.
It sat for about 3 months before I sanded and buffed it. Standard routine: 400 grit wet or dry, 800 grit wet or dry, 1200 grit wet or dry, two passes with rubbing compound, two passes with polishing compound and one pass with a swirl remover. Everything was hand buffed since my electric buffer died in the flood of 2008.
The neck in the pictures is not the neck I had originally picked out. That original neck was bubinga with a granidillo fret board. I noticed it had issues with the truss rod, sent it back, and it still has issues with the truss rod. Eventually I’ll fix it, but not today or tomorrow…or this year… Anyway, I picked up a Mighty Mite neck for $31.00 on eBay. I had no faith it would be any good, but for $31.00, I figured what the Hell. The frets were like new and only required a simple sanding and re-crowning on the higher frets and polishing with a /Dremel tool and some rubbing compound. After a small truss rod adjustment the sucker is flat as my head.
The headstock pattern was originally a reverse Tele style...which didn't compliment the body very well. I just band sawed a Peaveyesque shape out of it, sanded the radii back in and that was it.
The decal took some time, but the logo is mine. Advantages of having a good vector based drawing program lying around. The decal sheets are ink jet, and use a very strong smelling clearcoat to seal the ink. They worked like a charm...and give you a happy buzz for about an hour...until the headache slips in...
After about 10 coats of clear poly I just sanded it flat so it would hide in the clearcoat and not look raised…I hate that, personally… The fretboard is a wiped matte poly and the back of the neck is a satin poly. Everything but the fingerboard was wet sanded and polished like the body. The back of the neck is slicker then Bernie Madoff before he got arrested…
The tuners are Gotoh and the bridge is a Schaller fixed roller bridge. That bridge can make any guitar sound better, best fixed guitar\bass bridge out there, IMHO. I have one on my bass and it improved the tone 200%...but I digress…
Out the door the whole thing came in at around $350.00 USD (245.00 EUR, 215.00 GBP, 330 AUD) Granted, I haunted eBay for 12 months to grab most of those deals, which accounted for the delays in completion to an extent, but it was worth the wait. Aside from the paint, the body, and the filler pieces, everything was located and purchased off the Internet.
So the experiment to change to sound of a plywood body by providing a solid path from neck to bridge is finished. I’m happy. And if I didn’t tell you what it was made of you’d probably still be guessing…or looking up old posts...
So, who thought it was plywood when you first heard it?
Happy Trails
Cynical One
PS: Gotta go…I hear marching feet and see torches coming up the driveway…damn Tone Nazi’s…
OK, the few guesses made were way off. The researches from old posts got close, but still were a bit shy. Let me end the suspense…if that’s the right word…on how Project #1 is made.
First, a little history. She started life out of the factory looking like this:
That’s my buddy, Mike, with the Washburn when she was new. The two dogs in the back are the guilty parties in the canine mauling affair. Being Rottweilers, I assume they only appreciate zithers…
I don’t have any pictures of what the body looking like when it arrived, so just use your imagination when I say the neck pocket, bottom of the body by the strap button and both horns had seen serious action…and surrendered accordingly… Mike’s a real wiseass, so in the box was a small Milkbone…
I started drawing lines and curves on the body to see what I could keep, what had to go and what had to be outright replaced. That’s why the body has such a unique shape. Sort of like an old Guild Jet Star…the older guys will know…but with more exaggerated horns and additional radii on the bottom.
I knew I’d have to route and block in the neck cavity region…and I wanted a fixed bridge, so I knew I’d need to fill the trem cavity…then the wheels started turning. Why not route a long channel in the back and create a solid wood connection from the neck to the bridge…hmmm…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Wanna know what the original tonewood is? Plywood. That’s right, it’s a plywood body Washburn. Someone mentioned pimento wood burl veneer on the front. Correct. The back is a satinwood fiddle back veneer. That covers the parts you can see.
Now, back to the story… I found a cabinet shop in Madison that could cut, plane and join three pieces of wood for this project. For $15.00 USD I got back three pieces cut within 1/64” of what I asked for. I was impressed. Those pieces are alder. Why alder? Because it’s cheap, works easily, isn’t too heavy and glues nicely. Same reason anyone would use alder for a guitar…
Here are a few marked up images to show where the pieces are located.
Front:
Back:
Side View:
I don’t have any detailed drawings, except the ones I drew out by hand…and they have been lost to the ages….or the wife moved them…same, same…so the locations marked on these images are approximate, not to scale…but pretty close.
I didn’t take any work in process pictures either…I wasn’t sure it was going to work. The whole idea was just an experiment and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, so I didn’t bother with pictures…my bad…
Anyway, I routed the back first and glued and clamped the long runner in. This is also the material the neck and middle pickups screw into. That sat for a few days and I routed for the neck pocket filler piece. The bottom runner is actually routed into about ¼” to accommodate the neck pocket piece. They were both 3-1/2” wide, so the cutaways had to be re-rasped, shaped and sanded. I routed the neck pocket before I did any shaping to avoid rampant use of wood filler later… I took the opportunity to add more room to the bottom cutout while working it back into shape. Once I liked the cutaways I routed a 1” rectangle for the bridge piece, again, about ¼” into the bottom runner, and glued and clamped it in. The bridge piece extends about 3/8” out from both side and the bottom of the back runner. Two of the pictures have this wrong, but I'm too lazy to redo them at the moment...
The front and back were sanded smooth to accommodate the veneer. While I was staring at the body I realized I didn’t like the two parallel single coil routes. I had the router out anyway, so I blocked off a quick rectangle and routed out a space for a filler piece so I could angle the neck pickup. Since I didn’t have any more alder I just used a 1” piece of oak. Man, that stuff is a bear to sand flat… Then I just routed out the single coil slot with a Stew-Mac template.
I used a reverse angle to what you commonly see on a Strat for two reasons.
1.) It allows for a slightly fuller tone on the higher strings and tightens up the lower strings a bit.
2.) It just looks cooler.
I used the 300# of sandbags method for applying the veneer. Nothing beats a veneer press, but in a pinch it did alright. I picked up some veneer glue that requires less pressure then traditional veneer glues, so that helped, too.
Once the veneer had been on for a month I figured the glue had set as well as it was ever going to set so I cut and sanded it int the body contours. Next I waited another week then let the body soak in wood hardener overnight. The wife was not happy about the loss of her big Pyrex casserole dish, but I got over it pretty quick…
The paint is just automotive red lacquer I picked up from an old friend down in Chicago. Don’t know the brand or the actual shade, but he gave me about a quart of leftover red and another quart of clear. He’d had it sitting around his shop for over a year and I think he was just glad to get rid of it. Illinois can be real tough on folks who dump that stuff down the drain…
I used the color, clear, color, clear trick to get more depth out of the single color burst. I’ve done better, but this is fine for my eyes.
It sat for about 3 months before I sanded and buffed it. Standard routine: 400 grit wet or dry, 800 grit wet or dry, 1200 grit wet or dry, two passes with rubbing compound, two passes with polishing compound and one pass with a swirl remover. Everything was hand buffed since my electric buffer died in the flood of 2008.
The neck in the pictures is not the neck I had originally picked out. That original neck was bubinga with a granidillo fret board. I noticed it had issues with the truss rod, sent it back, and it still has issues with the truss rod. Eventually I’ll fix it, but not today or tomorrow…or this year… Anyway, I picked up a Mighty Mite neck for $31.00 on eBay. I had no faith it would be any good, but for $31.00, I figured what the Hell. The frets were like new and only required a simple sanding and re-crowning on the higher frets and polishing with a /Dremel tool and some rubbing compound. After a small truss rod adjustment the sucker is flat as my head.
The headstock pattern was originally a reverse Tele style...which didn't compliment the body very well. I just band sawed a Peaveyesque shape out of it, sanded the radii back in and that was it.
The decal took some time, but the logo is mine. Advantages of having a good vector based drawing program lying around. The decal sheets are ink jet, and use a very strong smelling clearcoat to seal the ink. They worked like a charm...and give you a happy buzz for about an hour...until the headache slips in...
After about 10 coats of clear poly I just sanded it flat so it would hide in the clearcoat and not look raised…I hate that, personally… The fretboard is a wiped matte poly and the back of the neck is a satin poly. Everything but the fingerboard was wet sanded and polished like the body. The back of the neck is slicker then Bernie Madoff before he got arrested…
The tuners are Gotoh and the bridge is a Schaller fixed roller bridge. That bridge can make any guitar sound better, best fixed guitar\bass bridge out there, IMHO. I have one on my bass and it improved the tone 200%...but I digress…
Out the door the whole thing came in at around $350.00 USD (245.00 EUR, 215.00 GBP, 330 AUD) Granted, I haunted eBay for 12 months to grab most of those deals, which accounted for the delays in completion to an extent, but it was worth the wait. Aside from the paint, the body, and the filler pieces, everything was located and purchased off the Internet.
So the experiment to change to sound of a plywood body by providing a solid path from neck to bridge is finished. I’m happy. And if I didn’t tell you what it was made of you’d probably still be guessing…or looking up old posts...
So, who thought it was plywood when you first heard it?
Happy Trails
Cynical One
PS: Gotta go…I hear marching feet and see torches coming up the driveway…damn Tone Nazi’s…