A New Guitar

...or two!

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Intro
The selected wood
First Steps
The bodies

The bodies

The first news is that Steve has now decided to have a "standard" style guitar, with the Sycamore front.
The first main task was to make the two blanks of Limba which will form the bulk of the bodies.
With Nick's able assistance (always useful to have a spare pair of hands!) the Limba was cut into four 18-inch lengths. After making sure that the mating surfaces were flush, these were glued and cramped and left to cure for 24 hours.

While waiting for the glue to cure, the template was completed, with positions marked for the pickups, bridge and controls.
The template will be dual purpose: In addition to being the master for the cutting of the bodies and bookmatched fronts, it will also be used as the master for routing jigs. These will be used to position and cut the pickup cavities, the neck to body joints, and the control cavities. All of these jigs will be made from offcuts of MDF and particleboard that I have lying around.

The first piece of Sycamore for a guitar front has been cut and bookmatched, and looks pretty good so far. Unfortuately my bandsaw is only a small one, due to both limited space and limited budget! This meant that the resawing to bookmatch the piece had to be done by hand. I've managed to make a feature out of a flaw in the wood, which I thought I may have to cut around: It turns out to be quite sound, so I've used it to my advantage and saved wood. This will give a chevron-shaped feature on the front of this particular guitar.