Solid
Body Electric Guitar
PART TWO
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Solid
Body Electric Guitar
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Day
5
- Jan 10th, 2003
 This is body with the chamber template attached.  The router is setup with a pattern following collar, and a rebate bit. The collar follows the template, cutting away the timber in the process. The router will only cut a small amount at a time (depth wise), so it takes four passes to achieve this depth.  The body with the sound chanbers, contol cavity, pickup switch cavity (top horn), and the pickup wire channel cut. I worked on the fretboard radius jig again today. I completed the neck holding clamp, which will swing the neck and fretboard over a large sanding machine. More later. |
 The headstock
shape. I think its nice. Trademark pending, so dont steal it!
The truss rod cavity needs to be opened up a little more at the headstock, but im waiting to glue the maple face on first, before i router the end.  The neck,
sanded and ready for the headstock facing. The holes to the left of
the neck are were i checked the depth of the router cut for the truss
rod.
 Clamping
the Maple face onto the headstock. Over the weekend, i had a few hours
spare, so i bought some Jarrah (West Australian hardwood), bolts, washers,
wing nuts, and some cork.
 To make
the clamps, i first made 30 round Jarrah "jaws". I also cut
out 15 pieces of cork. A bolt was housed into one "jaw", and
the cork and other Jarrah jaw were glued to each other, and the washer
and wingnut placed on the end. Tighten the wingnut and leave to dry.
 When the glue has dried, remove the wingnut and washer, and place the bolt into a drill press. Turn it on and use some rough sandpaper to clean up the whole lot. Imagine your using a lathe, vertically... When its sanded nicely, grab a saw, and split the cork (i left the drill running, and simply rested the blade on the cork, cuts like butter). Take it out of the drill, and you have a clamp! These clamps work great. The wingnut and fine thread mean you can really get them quite tight. The cork protects the work, yet its thin enough (i split it down the middle remember) not to be too "rubbery" or soft. Being small and light, they get into spaces that you wouldnt believe. They wont ever replace your adjustable clamps, but its worth the effort to make them. I also made
a template for routering the channels, for the silver vine inlay, from
18mm MDF board. More photos soon.
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 The jewellers
blades finally arrived from the USA, so i continued cutting the 'leaves'
for the vine inlay. At each usual fret marker location (1st, 3rd, 5th,
7th, etc), there will be one large leaf, and one small leaf, cut from
white Mother of Pearl shell. For each fret in between (2nd, 4th, 6th,
etc), there is one small gold Mother of Pearl shell leaf. The vine will
be square pure silver rod (1.4mm square) and weaves up the neck.
 Each leaf
is cut out of paper, and glued to the surface of the pearl shell blank.
The pearl shell is cut using my jeweller's saw. I used 15 blades to
cut all the leaves for this inlay (the blades are amazingly small and
thin, and break very easily).
Each leaf is numbered, and the gold pearl leaves are coloured with green texta (so i can easily find them).  This is a shot of all the inlay pieces sitting on top of the Ebony fretboard. I had already made the jig to guide the cutter when cutting the vine channel. The vine in this picture is actually only pencil lines...  Here is
the same shot as before, but ive turned the inlay pieces over, to hide
the numbers and colour codes. Unfortunately, you cant see the difference
between the gold and white Mother of Pearl in these photos.
 This is
the jig to cut the channel for the square silver rod. It looks a bit
wierd, and this photo doesnt really explain how its done, so you'll
have to use your imagination.
 The Ebony
fretboard was purchased from Stewmac, and slotted for fret by a local
luthier. Ive since set myself up with the correct saws and jigs to do
this myself from now on.
 The trimmer
bit runs along the template, and cuts into the Ebony. The clamps are
moved and the next part is routered. It took me four minutes to rout
half the vine channels, before i was called away to do something else...
non-guitar related!
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Day 8
- Jan 15th, 2003
 Here it
is, the fretboard after the silver inlay channels have been cut.
 Ive rechecked
the layout of the shell leaves, to confirm i was happy with the look
of it all. At this stage i could still change the positions and size
of the pearl shell leaves. If you look up the page a little, you'll
see i made some small changes to the layout.
 Once happy
with the layout, i placed a small droplet of glue under each shell piece,
to hold it into position whilst i mark the shapes of each piece using
a sharp awl. The awl leaves a thin scratch line, which shows up once
ive put a little chalk onto the fretboard.
 The leaf
cavities are cut out using a small router and an unbelievably small
cutter. Ive cut the cavities as close as posibble to the scribe/chalk
lines
 Each cavity
was cut as close as possible to the scribed lines. I then rechecked
each individual piece in its cavity, and trimmed either the cavity,
or the pearl leaf to suit. You can see how accurate the pieces match
in this photo.  The pearl
is now fitted, and glued. You can clearly see the gold and white pearl
shell.
 Starting
the silver vine inlay. Each run is fitted to suit the curve of the channel,
and then cut and filed to suit the distances between the frets. The
silver rod starts and finishes half a millimeter from each fret slot.
 Another
photo of the silver vine. The fretboard still hasnt been trimmed to
final width (and tapered).
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Day 9
- Jan 16th, 2003
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Next, Part 3
(Days 9, 10, 11 and 12)
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WEBSITE IS OBSELETE... COME VIEW THE NEW AND UPGRADED ORMSBY
GUITARS WEBSITE
