Ormsby Guitars

Solid Body Electric Guitar

Today i carved the body. Once again, i used a 40 grit disc and a sanding attachment fitted to my grinder.

The top took a little longer than the back, approximately 30 minutes to rough shape it.

I swapped over to the 12o grit discs to finish it off, but i am not happy with the results so far. There is still a lot of shaping and sanding to do, especially between the horns at the neck joint.

You can really see the depth of carve in this shot, well over twice the depth of a Gibson Les Paul of PRS.

I got a little anxious to see what it would all look like, so the top is only placed on top of the back here.

Hmmm, nice!!

Look at that body, whoa!!

I then rough shaped the neck tenon. I used a trimmer with a flat bottom channel cutter to cut the tenon to size. Before i did that, i needed to plane the sides and bottom so they were square.

You can see ive roughed out the shape all but the actual angle join under the fretboard.

The neck tenon was finished (all but the final neck to body angle, which was cut to within 1mm of the final size), and the body mortice was marked out. You can really see how far the tenon extends into the body in this shot. Excellent for sustain!!

All done! The mortice was cut using a hammer and chisel, no routers this time.

Nice tight fit. The guitar can be held up by the neck, the join is that tight!

The neck angle, looks excessive in this shot, but it really isnt all that much more than a Gibson Les Paul.

The back, nice huh?

The top was releaved at the neck join, and some mahogany was removed from below the fretboard at the end of the neck. I then marked and shaped the top, between the horns.

Look at that carve, beeaauutiful!!

The back.

The top still needs lots of sanding, but it is almost done.

The carved top looks like its just angled between the centre and the edges. It is actually curved (flat at the edges). The "line" around the bridge and pickup area will be smoothed off when i do the final sanding.

Love those spool clamps huh?

You can really see how the top has been checked out to fit the neck in this photo.
The fretboard continues over the maple for about 2/3 of an inch.

Didnt do too much today. I marked out the control layour from the underside of the maple, and drilled through some pilot holes. I then redrilled using the correct diameter drill bit.

After that was done, i selected a router bit that had a nice convexed bottom, and put it in a drill press. I simply "drilled" into the top with the router bit. The control knobs will be perpendicular to the centre of the guitar, not the top (i hate angled control knobs).