Guitar ready to rock

After a lot of hard work here we got the result:













And the custom guitar gig bag, thanks to the people of
Cease and Seekle!!!

Natural wood binding

Natural wood binding consist in a fine strip of unstained wood

The process is not too much complicated, but is easy to do it in the wrong way. The first thing that you have to do is to put the finish, poly, nitro, whatever, in that fine strip. For this you have to mask all but de strip. With a brush you can apply your desired finish to the bare wood. This picture is from the result, without the top masked:

Now you have to mask only the binding, with vinyl tape:

Stain as usual:

Take off the masking tape and start finishing ...

Broken binding

I have learned a good lesson the hard way:


Clamp all your stuff when you are not working.

The neck fallen from my workbench and the hit with the hard concrete broke the paduack binding:



I've decide to take off the paduack binding, at fret 17, leaving the sicamore binding.



I think it's not too bad

Fitting the frets

I have already installed the frets and started to shape the fingerboard

Tapering the fingerboard

Now we have the fingerboard glued to the neck. The next step it to cut the excess wood of the neck, first with a saw, and then with a planer or with a router and a ball bearing router bit. using the fretboard as a guide.








Next step, fitting the frets.

Neck and fingerboard glued

Today I have finished of gluing the fingerboard



You can't see it but there are inlayed MOP dots waiting for a 12" radius.

Travel guitar headstock

This entry it's only to show the work done in the baby guitar's headstock:

Maple veneer glue in.


Headstock shaped:



.. and back ..

Headstock

I any small guitar, special care have to be taken in the design of the headstock.
It has to be small, but not so small that you can't turn the tuners.
My design it's traditional but in a reduced scale:

Baby guitar mock up

This post it's only to show that I'm still hard working in the "Baby guitar":

A pic worth one thousand words ...

Building a travel guitar

I have routed the body and, using a fostner bit, empty the body as much as I can.




A mock up of the guitar. The fingerboard it's not tapered yet.



And a horrible mistake ...



But there is nothing that a good glue can't fix

Baby guitar

I have started a new build.

A baby or small or travel guitar, who cares? . The really important part is that everything has to be smaller, and lightweighted.

This is my particular version of a travel guitar, in this case this is a birthday present for a five years old child. It's a guitar of 20" scale length, maybe too big for a little child ...but they grow too fast!!!

Now the funny stuff, pics:

Laminated neck, brazilian cedar and padouck



Sapelly body



Maple top



More to come ...

Plantilla guitarra

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Las plantillas son un punto importante en la creación de una guitarra. Aunque sólo vayamos a construir una única unidad de un modelo, es interesante crear una plantilla. Nos será más fácil transferir nuestra idea del diseño a la realidad. Podemos crear plantillas para casi todo, el cuerpo, la pala, la cavidad de los controles, las pastillas. En cualquier caso nos facilitarán las cosas y, en caso de necesitarlo, reproducir un modelo del que ya no tenemos un ejemplar disponible para su copia. Hay diferentes métodos para afrontar esta tarea. Explicaré el que yo utilizo. Se necesitan dos maderas de contrachado, una de unos 3 mm de grosor y la otra de aproximadamente 1 centímetro. Sobre la madera más fina dibujamos el contorno de nuestra plantilla, ya sea un nuevo cuerpo, la pala o cualquier otro elemento de la guitarra. Podemos hacerlo a mano alzada o podemos pegar un dibujo generado por ordenador. El siguiente paso es recortar este patrón y a continuación dejar los bordes lo más perpendiculares posible, con un taladro de columna y un tambor de lijado o con un taco y manualmente.El utilizar una madera más fina en este paso nos facilitará mucho la vida. Puede que no consiguamos dejarlo completamente perpendicular a la base, lo que tendremos que considerar es que el borde exterior de nuestro rebaje será el que dicte la forma final de nuestra plantilla. Ahora es el turno de pasar la plantilla a nuestra madera de 1 centímetro. Esta última madera será la que utilicemos en el trabajo diario, siendo la de 3 mm nuestro "master" para poder sacar nuevas copias en caso de que se deteriore nuestra plantilla de trabajo. Dibujamos sobre nuestra madera de trabajo el contorno de la plantilla master y recortamos lo más posible el contorno. Ahora pegamos la plantilla master sobre la plantilla de trabajo con cinta de doble cara, repasamos el contorno con una fresadora con guía y ya tenemos nuestra plantilla de trabajo. Para utilizar la plantilla, lo único que hemos de hacer es seguir los pasos que hemos dado para pasar de la plantilla master a la plantilla de trabajo. Templates are an important point in building a guitar. Although we will build only one unit of a model, it is interesting to create a template. We will make it easier to transfer our design idea into reality. We can create templates for almost everything, the body, the headstock, the control cavity, etc. In any case, this will facilitate things and, if needed, to reproduce a pattern that no longer have a copy available for copying. There are different methods to acomplish this task. I explain the way I do it. We need two plywood sheets, one of about 3 mm thick and the other about 1 centimeter. On the finest plywood, draw the outline of our design, be it a new body, the headstock, or any other element of the guitar. We can do it by hand or we can stick a computer generated drawing. The next step is to cut this pattern and then make the edges perpendicular as possible with a drill press and a drum sander or by hand with a sanding stick. The finer plywood in this step makes our life a lot easier. If you can't leave it completely perpendicular to the base, you have to consider that the outer edge of our template will dictates the final form. Now is time to transfer the template to our 1 cm plywood. This will be the template we use in daily work, being 3 mm plywood our "master" to get new copies in case of eroding our job template. We draw on 1cm plywood the outline of the master template and cut out the outline as possible. Now fix the master template on the job template with double-sided tape, we follow the outline with a routing machine with a ball bearing guide and we already have our working template. To use the template, all you have to do is follow the steps we have taken to move from the master template to the daily work template.

Diseñando una guitarra

Español English

Diseñando una guitarra. Hay consideraciones básicas que hemos de tener en cuenta a la hora de crea nuestro nuevo modelo que rompa esquemas. Lo más sencillo, si es la primera vez que se aborda esta tarea, es partir de un modelo conocido, que sabemos que funciona, e irle aplicando modificaciones a nuestro gusto. Simplificando mucho las cosas, tenemos dos tipos básicos de guitarra, la Les Paul de Gibson, y la Stratocaster de Fender. Una con dos pastillas dobles, mástil encolado y cuerpo con tapa, y la otra, tres pastillas simples, mástil atornillado y cuerpo de una pieza. Partiendo de estos esquemas podemos ir ampliando un poco más las cosas, y empezar a fijarnos en cosas no tan evidentes, como pueden ser la pala y al disposición de los clavijeros, 6 en fila, 3 y 3, selector de pastillas de tres posiciones o de seis, control independiente de volumen y tono para cada pastillas, longitud de escala, tipo de material de la cejilla, adornos, colores, grosores de cuerda y sigues y sigues hasta el infinito. Como se puede ver, las posibilidades son casi infinitas, y estamos hablando únicamente de las partes más evidentes de la guitarra. Disfruta de tu diseño. Designing a guitar. There are basic considerations that we must take into account when establishing our new model, "the next big thing". The simplest, if it is the first time that deals with this task, is start from a well known model, that we know works, and customizing it to our liking. To oversimplify things, we have two basic types of guitar, the Gibson Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster. One with two humbuckers pickups, set neck and body with top, and the other one with three single pickups, bolt on neck and body in one piece. Based on these schemes, we can expand them a bit more and start to look at things not so obvious, such as the headstock and distribution of tunners, 6 in row, 3 left and 3 right, three or six position toggle switch, independent control of volume and tone for each pickup, scale length, type of material of the nut, decorations (binding, inlays), colors, guitar string gauge, to infinity and beyond!. As you can see, the possibilities are endless, and we are talking only of the most obvious parts of the guitar. Enjoy your design.