Against The Grain

Part 11: Mr. Win Max and Mr. Poly

Once I had reached the stage where I actually had to stain and finish the guitar, finish meaning not only “to complete” but also literally meaning “to apply a coat of finish,” I realized how out my element I was. The idea of using modern science and chemistry to create an appealing color on my guitar, as well as to protect it from the elements using a substance called “polyurethane” made me question whether or not my twelve years of supposed schooling actually helped prepare me for the “real world” and, as a result I began to feel largely out of my league. Simply the name “polyurethane” was enough to strike fear into my heart and at the same time make me feel powerful. Not powerful in the sense that I had a lot of power, but in the sense that I would have to adopt a lot more responsibility. I imagined that if I were to hypothetically spill Mr. “Fast-Drying Poly” on someone or something that it would be irrevocably damaged or crystalized in a glossy, candy-like coat. After all, he had an intimidating name and as all intimidating people went, you treated them with respect. Fortunately, it mattered very little whether or not I gave the all-powerful oil solution too much respect, as it did me no harm to be conservative when applying it. In the end, my fear over something so simple seemed baseless and silly, but it wouldn’t matter as I had not the knowledge to know whether or not I did it wrong anyways.

If we’re going to be chronological, I’d like to mention that the actual color stain, named “Winmax“ with the title and profession of “Traditional Cherry Stain,” came first. I felt less threatened by Mr. Winmax and was more relaxed around him because it didn’t matter so much how much stain I applied, or was supposed to apply, as it didn’t matter to me what color it turned out so long as it wasn’t disastrously ugly. That being said, the most difficult obstacle I had when staining were from trying to keep the pickups from falling out of their slots and potentially ruining my so far perfectly undamaged coats of stain. On occasion, I found myself accidentally applying stain to the top of the guitar first, which would force me to wait for the stain to dry before taping down the pickups again to work on the bottom and sides. It didn’t seem worth the risk to tape the pickups down only to find later that outlines of the tape formed while the coat of paint was drying. All was well and no sooner did I begin that I realized I had looped through Marina & The Diamonds’ Electra Heart three times, undoubtedly establishing it as my go-to “doing mindless work” music.

Part 10: The Consequences of Not Planning Ahead

*In contrast to my previous posts, which focused much more on the technical/empirical aspects of this project, I’ll be writing in a different style. I’ll admit that this post is much more wordy than the others but also much more fun to write than the others*

Despite saying and seeming like I was finished with this guitar in my last entry, the reality was that this guitar was not near what was considered a “finished product.” The body had yet to be sanded and finished, there was blue marker on the back, and a conspicuous barcode label that endured all the sanding throughout this endeavor. The volume and tone knobs were also less like “knobs” and more like protrusions jutting out of the body.

Unfortunately, having reached the point where the guitar was already assembled meant that I would have to take it all apart again if I wanted to paint the wood. If you’re wondering why it wasn’t painted beforehand, know that I was on time constraints as I chose to use this as my senior project and originally planned to forego all unnecessary steps that didn’t invariably decide whether the guitar would function properly or not.

Even more unfortunate was that I didn’t actually want to deal with this obstacle, but was driven to do so regardless in naive expectations that I might one day want to sell this guitar if I could. Completely ignoring the reality that I was not meant to be a salesman and probably couldn’t sell the crown jewels if given the chance, I decided that it was not planning ahead that placed me in this situation, so it was only natural that finishing the guitar to at least be up-to-par with other guitars could do me no harm and would be the “grown-up thing to do” if I ever did want to produce respectable products. Hence, I found taking apart the guitar into its respective and separate components in order to make it an even greater whole in the long run.

Of course, prior to disassembling the guitar I had completely different notions of how easy it would be, and had blissfully ignored the possible problems that could occur. I would continue to unscrew away at the bridge and neck and knobs in such a mindset until I came to the realization that the pickups were soldered to the rest of the electronics, both being on opposite sides of the guitar body and both reminding me that they had developed a long-distance friendship and relationship to each other that would be more destructive than beneficial to destroy. They were a package deal and one that I strove to preserve, if not only because I didn’t have the tools nor motivation necessary to resolder the electronics a second time.

I resolved that I would just cover the pickups in painter’s tape to prevent them from being exposed to the oil stain and finish. Unfortunately, there was no way of keeping the pickups in place as the wires which anchored the pickups to the electronics and, hence, to the body of the guitar were longer than absolutely necessary. That being said, the common sense solution was to sand the top of the body, then tape the pickups to the body so that when I went to work on the back and sides I would not have to worry about Tarzans I and II swinging around wildly and freely, potentially sustaining damage to the body and themselves. The pickups were some of the most expensive parts of the guitar and, like a mother’s own children, seemed all the more fragile and precious because of the fact.

Part 9: “Finished”

For a first build, I was impressed with myself at how it turned out. While I’m aware of the minor issues and problems that this guitar has, I don’t mind because those are avoidable/fixable in future builds. The carved top could use more work but it’s doable and will receive attention in the future. It also doesn’t sound terrible prior to configuration, even with a nut that is too high and messed up action. I plan on staining/painting this guitar, but that will be saved for a later date. I definitely plan on expanding and making more in the future, although I’m aware of the investment gap that would accompany the right tools and materials needed.

Most importantly, I plan on doing a completely original design for the next build that isn’t based on any other guitar, but may have influences from some. The challenge of designing something original and being able to adhere to my original plan is exciting.

Part 8: The Electronics

After I finally finished with all the woodworking, I could actually begin to make the “electric” part of the guitar function.

First off, the output jack had to be screwed in and then connected to a yellow and black wire, both of which I don’t remember their function other than conducting electricity. Either way, the output jack had two metal ends, one for the yellow and one for the black, and I soldered each wire to each end using an iron filler which would be conductive to the electrical signals being sent (Soldering is basically like welding but only melting the filler).

In the second photo, you can somewhat see the wire configuration for the hardware. The yellow wire from the output jack is soldered straight to the volume control on one of the three small protrusions. The black wire is soldered to another one of the protrusions on the volume control, but also to the metal base of the volume control was well. The soldering on the base also connects it to the black wire that runs from the volume control to the tone control, also soldered onto the base of the tone control, and a yellow wire soldered to a protrusion of the tone control connects to the volume control via soldering to a protrusion as well. That protrusion is also soldered to another yellow wire that runs to the middle protrusion of the pickup selector switch (also soldered).

Confused yet?

The next part is slightly easier to follow. The wires from each pickup consists of a red, green, white, black, and metal wire. The green and metal wires pair together, the white and black wires pair together, and the red wires are soldered straight each opposite end of the pickup selector. The green and metal wires (both pairs) are soldered to the base of the volume control, and the black and white wires are soldered to each other (2 pairs of white to black, both wires being from the same pickup. No inter-pickup babies, please).

Part 5.51: Final Body Adjustments And Assembling Hardware

When I thought I was nearly finished with all the woodworking, I found out that I had to drill a lot more holes and hollow out a couple more things.

First, there are the very large holes on the long sides of where the pickups go. Those holes are for screws that will attach the pickup to the pickup ring, the white rectangular ring that looks nice around the pickup. The screws themselves are nowhere near as large as the holes, but that’s okay because they won’t have much room to move anyway and certainly provides some breathing room in case some of the other holes don’t align. The holes I’m talking about are those very small ones that surround the pickup cavities. Those are where screws for the pickup rings are locked into the body, keeping everything in place.

Pickups have wiring that has to be routed to the large cavity in the back of the guitar where all the electronics will go, and so the two medium-sized holes, one in each pickup cavity, lead straight through to the hardware cavity, drilled using a power drill with a really long drill bit that looks almost comical.

In the second photo, you can see two black screw holes near the bridge pickup. Those are where the nubs in front of the bridge screw in (third photo). Those nubs keep the bridge in place but also allows it some freedom to move for the tremolo. 

On the underside of the bridge, I drilled two holes for the metal hooks that pull the springs and provide the tremolo bridge its tension (fourth photo).

In the fifth photo, you can see the setup for the volume/tone control and pickup selector switch. Before drilling holes to fit these pieces of hardware, I had to make sure the locations where I wanted to place these switches didn’t get in the way or reach too close to the pickups/bridge. Afterwards, I drilled the holes and continued to rout the electronics cavity until the controls could fit through.

**If you make a carved top, you have to flatten the top ends of the holes using a rounded drill bit that allows for the hex nut to screw in properly.

Part 7: The Neck (Assuming You Cheated And Bought A Neck Like I Did)

Depending on whether your priority is the completed guitar or the process of completing the guitar and your level of experience will determine whether or not you should buy a neck. Or if you just don’t have enough time, buy a neck. I bought a neck due to time constraints.

If you want your own headstock but can’t make a neck, buy a neck with a paddle head, you can still shape it how you like and still hopefully not fuck up the neck.

Originally, I hadn’t given the headstock any thought, and assumed I would be using a Fender neck. When I instead got a paddlehead neck (25″ scale, bird inlays), I chose to shape the headstock similar to Schecter’s style of headstocks. When I drew the neck originally, I hadn’t noticed how skinny I had drawn the headstock, so when I cut it out, it was significantly thinner than I thought (second/third photo). The only real issue is that they are more prone to breaking but not by much. The tuner holes were also drilled based on a template, so if you do not use one, pay attention to the location of them in relation to the nut and center line. There are also the small screw holes that hold the tuners to the headstock. Don’t drill them all the way though unless you want to see a hole on the front side.

On the other end of the neck, I had to cut off most of the block on the end. In reference to the first photo, I cut off most of the end of the block, about half of the bottom of the block, and a section for the neck pickup which resulted in the neck in the fourth picture. The four holes on the block end of the neck are for the screws that will bolt the neck to the body. I made those with the drill press.

I fit the tuners into the headstock without any trouble, but had to cut the two bolts in half that went underneath the neck pickup because they protruded out into where the pickup would be.

Part 6: The Carved Top

This feature is completely optional and rather time-consuming. In Part 5, I showed a picture of the leveled body contour that looked like stair steps. By smoothing those out, we can create a rounded look. The way to do that is through a chisel plane (first photo). This handheld tool is really small and uses a sharpened metal chisel to carve out flat sections of wood. The way to use this tool is to push the blade along the edge of each level of the stair stepped wood and to carve away wood until it becomes sloped and smoothly transitions from one level to the next. Note that this tool is not precise, and is used to roughly carve out the shape. You can further refine it by going to work with sandpaper in hand. 

In the second photo, you can see it is mostly smoothed, but in in some parts, there are creases where it is not sloped but rather vertical and horizontal, like stairs. In those cases, you just have to keep sanding until it is level with the rest of the guitar. These take significantly longer than you would expect, and it’s where most of the time-consuming parts are.

You can also see the rough carvings in the cutaway regions of the guitar. On the longer cutaway (sixth photo), it’s not so deep as the shorter cutaway (seventh photo), which is very deep in comparison. These are done using a power drill with a sanding disc and sanding drum, respectively, to carve those out. 

With the sanding disc bit (fourth photo), I grazed the edge of the guitar with no more than a quarter region of the edge of the disc touching the wood at a time and at a shallow angle. While at first, I was exerting quite a bit of force pushing into the wood, I slowly got a feel for it and the sanding became easier and more consistent. You can see this when comparing the longer cutaway in the second and third photos, the second photo having a much rougher surface than the third.

The sanding drum (fifth photo) worked in a similar fashion to the disc, I pressed the drum along the side of the shorter cutaway and made rounds going left to right running the drum along the edge. The thing to watch for is to make sure you aren’t staying in one spot for too long or sanding one spot too much relative to other spots, as the curvature of the sections you are cutting may not be smooth otherwise.

The large cutout in the back of the guitar (eighth photo) is done the same way as the long cutaway, but with a larger sanding disc. Simple.

Sand by hand when needed.

All of these steps require a lot of mindless repetition and so be mindful that it requires patience, but also allows you a slight amount of leeway if you make a mistake.

Part 4.5/5.5: The Underside Bridge Cavity and Flatiron Treatment

So I forgot to create the cavity for the underside of the bridge where the tremolo tension springs are normally located. These springs provide the pullback when using a tremolo, and most guitar players will understand why the springs are there. There isn’t anything too specific about the tremolo cavity aside from making sure that the bridge cavity (the thin cutout that is hollow from the top all the way through to the bottom) is longer, width-wise, to accommodate the bridge moving.

In the second photo, there are some darker, wet stains on the surface of the guitar. These are spots where the wood can be treated with the heat from a flatiron and water to get rid of wrinkles and minor creases or dents in the guitar. Simply apply a damp* towel to the surface of the guitar and press the towel with a flatiron.

Part 5: Body Specifics

First of all, you’re notice that I cut off the front protrusion of the body where the neck would be and there are lines drawn all over the body (first photo). This is because that protrusion is dependent on the type of neck that you buy or make.  Originally, the protrusion was designed for a Fender style neck (second photo) which you can see has a protruding part of the body that the neck sits on top of and is bolted to. Meanwhile, the PRS neck (third photo) has no room for a protrusion because the neck is thicker at the area where it connects to the body. In fact, the neck looks almost like it has its own protrusion connected to it.

Next, you’re going to notice that where the protrusion used to be and where the neck pickup is located is a cavity that is significantly deeper. This is simply a cutout of where the neck will go, and it is made with a drill press and router, along with whatever extra sanding by hand I thought was necessary.

Part 4: Body Cavities

The next step of the process is to cut out all the cavities in the body for the pickups, bridge, and electronics/small hardware. The main tool for this job is the drill press (first photo) which has a rotating drill that punches downward by lever. The Forstner bit (second photo) is used to hollow out large sections of wood and creates large circular holes(third photo). Again, this is another bit that is more about pure wood removal power and less about precision.

In the third photo, you can see that the pickup cavities are roughly cleared, and once again we will use a router to clear away the edges until it lines up with the pencil line.

Next, we’ll adhere the template with the proper cavity shape to the body, and use the router to match the body cavity. In the fourth photo, you can see that I already did that prior to taking the photo. The layers are there because you don’t want to rout too much wood at once as it is difficult to control and so you move layer by layer.

Also note that one crucial concept I skipped over, which is absolutely crucial to making a good guitar is the center line. You can see it in the fourth and fifth photos, and it is incredibly fundamental to making sure a guitar sounds good.

Part 3: The Router and Sander

The router (first photo) is a really cool piece of machinery. In essence, it’s a rotary device that rotates a ball bearing and a blade at extremely high 4 to 5 digit RPMs. The ball bearing itself doesn’t move much, but instead is used to run along the template or surface you want to match. In our case, we’re going to align the ball bearing along the side of our template and the blade to the side of the body. This way, the blade, which matches the radius/diameter of the ball bearing, will cut the body to almost the same shape as the template. (This was also how I made the original template, which was routed along another template that my mentor had). 

In the second picture, we attached the template to the body by putting strips of tape on body sides of the wood, and then gluing the tape together to make sure they stayed together. I took the picture while waiting for the glue to distribute and dry, hence why there’s a large metal thing on it.

Because routers rotate in one direction, you have to move it in a certain direction for it to work more effectively, similar to shaving. However, unlike shaving, the routers used for wood are much more powerful because they’re so fast in that the only way you can possibly control it is by going in the opposite direction. Here, in the third picture, is an illustration of which direction my mentor advised me to guide the body along the router. However, and this is how I came up with the title of this blog, when I followed the diagram and guided the wood in the same direction as the rotating blade, I ended up with a lot of broken off chunks of wood (fourth and fifth photo) and frequently I would lose my grasp on the body because the blade jerked it out of my hands.

Another minor thing about routers is that because they spin so fast and frequently, the heat build-up from the friction causes blackening (similar to the band saw) if you expose the wood to the blade for even a short while.

The sander (fifth photo) is noticeably more straightforward. It is a rotating band of sandpaper that sands wood with greater ease than by hand. In essence, it is a low power, high control version of the router. I used it to smooth out the sides of the body. Also, they don’t create enough friction to burn wood, and you can sand in the same direction of the rotating sandpaper if you want even more control and precision, and against if you want more brute sanding power.

Part 2: The Band Saw

The tools I used to make the template in the previous post are the band saw (first photo), router, and sander. These are also how I cut out the guitar body from the original alder body blank, which is basically a large block of wood. You can see I “reconstructed” the body blank (second photo) post-shaping the body. There long cuts along the body are the initial cuts made by the band saw, which roughly outlines the body, leaving just a bit of wood around the drawing. The reason is because the band saw is not precise and can’t be used to accurately trace the body. You can see this slightly in the fourth photo, as the sides are uneven and in some places blackened because of the friction of the band saw trying to cut through a block of wood this thick. Next will come the routing, which does exactly what the band saw can’t, it’s going to trace the body.

Part 1: Designing A Guitar