Master Templates

Well, if you're anything like me, every now and again you just gotta get your best scratchy cough out and call into work so you can take the day off to build guitars in your back yard. I did that yesterday and, let me tell you, it's a hell of a good feeling. Not gonna let the man hold me down. (Who's w/ me!?) My task for the day was to get a couple templates done for a couple elements of my next guitar. Last time, I made the mistake of building all of these things into the template for the guitar. This is very convenient for one project but makes it a little more troublesome when you move onto the next shape and have to do everything all over again. This time, I'm made each element on a different piece of mdf for greater versatility.

The two pieces I made were for a humbucker rout and for a tele-style neck pocket. These will be common elements on guitars I make in the future so this will equal a lot of time saved. I made these on quarter inch mdf this time. Last time, I used three quarter inch and it was a beast to shape and very frustrating to get accurate.

The first step is to draw everything out very carefully w/ a straight edge and a carpeneters square. I got the measurements I needed from various places online. This took me about an hour and half. For the last project I didn't have this kind of patience but now that I know I can pull it off, it's easier to reach down into the depths of my psyche to find another five minutes of attention span to erase a line and redraw more accurately.

This is the neck pocket:


I made the top of it extend an inch longer than it had to be. Hopefully, this will give the router something better to rest on when I use it so I can better control it. There's lines drawn so I can get it in the right place.

Same deal w/ the humbucker routt:


Ultimately, it was a mistake to cut it out so small, at least before I had the middle cut out. It made it really hard to clamp down as I worked on it:


It was too small for me to use a jigsaw so I had to use a coping saw. As seen in the picture above, I drilled out the corners w/ a handbill so I could turn the blade. The initial cut was none to accurate:


But some time w/ a file got it in good shape pretty quickly (I actually filed it a bit more from this point and it looks very clean now):


Same deal w/ the neck pocket only this time I could use the jigsaw to save time (and I'm actually more accurate w/ that than a coping saw). It is nearly perfect:


This all came together a lot quicker and better than previous efforts so I'm pretty pleased. The only problem w/ using the quarter inch thick mdf is it's really too thin to use directly on a guitar so I will need this to make some thicker templates. It's worth the extra effort for the added accuracy.

Shaping and Scraping

Ok... My camera is giving me shit so if you're just here for the pics, this is all you get:


So there you have it. That's the body of the cheapo guitar cut to shape and routed. I used pretty much the same method as I did on the baritone body. The only difference is this time I frakked up the glue joint between the two pieces of wood so the top of the thing wasn't quite level so before I started I put some eighty grit paper on my random orbital sander and whirred it across the top and back a few times. Worked like a charm. I used the same template as I used for the baritone body. I like it and just can't think of anything better.

First thing I did was trace the outline on the body and do a rough cut w/ my jigsaw. Last time I tried to use a smooth cutting blade and get as close as possible, which worked OK. This time, I just went ahead and used a fast cutting blade and stayed about a half inch outside of the line. If anything, this method left me w/ less wood to cut away during routing--and it must have saved me fifteen minutes or a half hour w/ the jigsaw. Of course, it could have just been the fact that I have greater and more substantial jigsaw skill now but I really do think this was the better method of doing the rough cut and will continue to use it in the future.

After that, it was a simple matter of routing. I set up my template follower to cut a sixteenth of an inch outside the line and am glad I did. There was a little bit of tear out but, unlike last time, I left some extra wood. Once I was done routing, I just took my trusty random orbital sander and sanded down to the line.

So far, I must say this is head and shoulders above the first one and I think I'm gonna buy a nicer neck than I originally planned. I like the kinda weird streaks on the cheapo alder I'm using and I think this one will be nice enough just to finish w/ a couple or five clear coats. I'm thinking I will get a tele-style neck w/ a maple fingerboard and it will look really simple and classy. Probably go w/ chrome hardware and chrome-covered humbuckers. The only weird thing is it's gonna have about six knobs because of the electronics I'm gonna cram in there.

Finishing the Templates (Finally)

Well, I figure it's a bout time I get it over w/ and finish up these templates, given that there's not much else to do until I'm done w/ them. All I have left is to make the holes to rout out the pickup and control cavities. The process is super simple. Do the rough cut w/ a jigsaw (drilling holes first so you can get started and turn the blade at corners) and file away until you are really, really, really bored of filing/

Cut w/ the jigsaw (notice the corner holes):



And you wind up w/ something like this and a lot of filing to do:



These files are actually pretty cool. They used to be my grandfather's so I guess you can call them heirlooms. Either way, they work rather well but slowly especially on my thick sheet of MDF:


It took me a hell of a long time to get them reasonably square. It sucked but it beats the hell out of not building your own guitars so there you go. Here's how it ended up:


The pickup slots are about exactly the size of the pickups. Of course, they need to be a bit wider than that so I'm going to set up my router in such a way that it adds an extra sixteenth or an eighth of an inch around the edges. Hopefully, that will do the trick. I will be damned if I do any more filing on this template.

Routing--Stage One

Even though I don't have all the bits to finish the job, I figured I'd get a head start on routing out the shape of the baritone body. I had to do a few things first before I got started though. First, I used my jigsaw to modify the rough-cut body to compensate for the design changes I made in this post (the little block of wood is what I cut off):


I know, real exciting, right? Well--it only gets better. The next thing I did was take my hand drill to drill holes through both templates and the body so that I could attach the template to the body w/ wood screws to keep it from moving around while I used the router (the screws go where the pickups will be so there won't be any screw holes in the top of my guitar):


Woooo! And w/ that done, I am ready to rout.

I will take a second here to discuss routers since, honestly, I didn't know what one was before I started researching guitar building. Basically, it's a powerful electrical motor which spins a cutting bit at an incredible rate of speed. Mine is probably almost as sweet as a Buick Grand National--and I don't say that about a lot of things. What makes it so sweet? Have you ever found yourself w/ a block of wood that you knew would be a great guitar if it weren't for the fact that there's just way too much extra wood? Well--a router takes that wood and turns it sawdust:


Most people who make guitars use a template following bit, which has a little bearing on it so that it follows a template and only cuts the wood you intend to cut. My router came w/ a little template following kit that that allows you to use a regular straight cutting bit for the same purpose. I think this picture best illustrates what it does:


The light wood on top is the template and the reddish stuff below is the future guitar. The template following kit basically serves as a guard so that the cutting bit doesn't cut the template. The cutting bit itself cuts a narrow bottomed groove around the edge. (You can see that there is a little bit of mahogany sticking up in the middle that I missed.) You can only cut a little bit of the entire depth at a time or you run a greater risk of tear-outs and other woodworking screw-ups.

As I mentioned, the router bit spins really fast and can severely fuck shit up if you're not careful:


That took about one tenth of one second to happen. These really are one of the most dangerous tools you'll come across and utmost caution should be used w/ them at all times. Seriously, you can slack w/ some things but a router is really a beast to be reckoned w/. Fortunately, that slip up and a little tear-out were the only problems I had and it all came out pretty well:


As you can see, I'm only a third of the way though. I need some longer bits to finish up. Hopefully, I will get to that in not too long. For now, I am just pleased that I finally got to have at the mahogany after working on the template for so long.

Rough Cuts on the Templates

As I understand it--and I might not understand it well--the best way to cut out the outline of a guitar is w/ a template following router bit. Now, to do this, of course, you need a template for the router bit to follow. My baritone body is a non-standard shape so I need to make my own rather than just buy one. Oh well--I didn't get into this to save time.

The material I chose for my template was 3/4" medium density fiberboard (MDF). It's cheap and it gets the job done. I got enough for two guitars for about seven bucks at my local mega home supply super dome. To get the templates to shape, I simply traced the pattern onto the board and used a scrolling blade in a jigsaw to cut it out.

I should mention a small design change at this point which is to take off the little bit indicated by the line:



The reason for this is the double cutaway tele design would leave the neck pocket w/o wood on either side. As far as I know, the only production guitars that are made like that are really cheap SG copies and who wants to be like that? So I just decided to move everything in three quarters of an inch so that there's at least that much of the neck w/ a little bit of wood on either side. I'm not sacrificing much in terms of playability since the only frets that will be deeper in the body than normal are the 23rd and 24th which I don't use anyway. (The whiskey in the picture is Wild Turkey Rye. It's good; you should try it.)

The piece of MDF I got is much bigger than my Workmate:



I was worried this would cause problems but I managed to get each of the two templates cut out on smaller pieces that I could work w/ more easily:



I just did this w/ the same blade as I did the rough cut on the body. For the rest of it I switched to a scrolling blade which is narrower so that you can turn it to cut curves. I first tried the jigsaw in scrolling mode, which allows you to turn the blade any which way w/o turning the body of the jigsaw. This seems like it would be a good idea to try, so I tried it. It turns out that a jigsaw in scrolling mode is way smarter than me and I cut inside the lines yet again:



Fortunately, I was just able to retrace the pattern onto that same piece of MDF so I didn't waste it. No harm, no foul. I cut the rest of the thing in normal jigsaw mode on low speed. It took me a while to get a hang of it and I broke no less than three blades today:



The two that are relatively shiny are nice Bosch ones. The other one is the Skil one that came w/ the jigsaw which met its match quickly but gloriously. I broke all three of those cutting the first template. What I was doing wrong was basically not being careful enough to hold the jigsaw flat to the surface so when I tried to turn the blade it was putting all kinds of stress on it. I corrected this problem simply by standing up straighter and relaxing, which gave me a lot better control. I did the last quarter of the first and the whole second one w/o breaking a blade--which is a damn good things since it was my last one.

And here they are, like two peas in a pod:



The cut is pretty accurate but still rougher than in needs to be. I am going to have to sand them into the proper shapes. I'm probably going to stick them together w/ double-stick tape when doing the outside curves to make sure they come out exactly the same. The reason I made two is that there needs to be one for the front and one for the back. I haven't done so yet, but the one for the back will have a space cut out to rout the control cavity and the one on the back will have the patterns for the neck pocket, pickups and controls as well as the holes for the bridge.

Hopefully, I will get to all that later this weekend. I got my router today and am looking forward to busting it out on that sweet, sweet mahogany.

The Most Unsmoothest Cut

I took advantage of the beautiful Chicago weather today and roughed out the body for the baritone. First I made a template from poster board which I had around the house for some long ago abandoned art project:



I did this by tracing the cutaway half of my ASAT and carefully scoring a center line w/ a pen and my carpenter's square, folding it in half and cutting it out. I've been doing this stuff since preschool and never was really good at it but I took my time and used the square so it came out pretty true. I then used my square again to get aligned on the mahogany [impossible to spell!] and I traced it w/ a Bic engineering pencil.



The line doesn't come out too well in the picture but it's easy enough to see in person. In the next week I'm going to use the poster board stencil to trace a proper template to use w/ my router. It would probably have made sense to make the template before anything else but, what can I say, I'm a rebel. I took the blank outside and clamped it to my Workmate:



The cheaper alligator-clip style clamps actually worked better than the other ones. I ended up using five of those and only using the other ones where I had too. I was worried the Workmate wouldn't be sturdy enough but it held up great though some moments I did have to put my foot on it to keep it from toppling. I need to be more careful about placement and I think I will be fine.

The cutting went surprisingly easily. The Bosch blades were really great and cut quite smoothly. If this had been less thick wood and had I only needed to cut straight lines, there would be very little work to me done to get the wood ready for finish. I only had two problems.

Exhibit 1: Trying to cut too close to the line and not making enough relief cuts.



This is along the bottom of the guitar. I think I will just proceed as planned and maybe plane off a little of the bottom (and I doubt I will even have to do that once it's sanded).

Exhibit 2: Trying to turn the blade like a retard.



It's bent as if it were malleable and ductile material placed under high stress due to misuse. I'm just glad I had three of them. The next one I was more careful w/, which not only worked better but was safer.

It came out pretty well in the end:



Obviously a rough cut but I got rid of most of the excess wood. (I kept the scraps to test out finishes.) The horns were tough so I was cautious and left some extra wood there. Overall, I call the day a success and think I really earned this: