I Made It

I finally got my guitar body repaired. Arrgh.

To summarize the mess so far, I made three pairs of bookmatched walnut boards, and I glued them together like a sandwich to make a Telecaster body with a glue line down the middle. Then I shaped it into a Telecaster body, and I routed the neck pocket. In the process, I used the wrong thing (weak clamps) to secure the router templates, and I ended up with an extra-large pocket. I then had to make bookmatched walnut inlays about 0.7″ thick to fill the pocket so I could rout it again.

When I made the basic body shape, I gouged the side of the guitar at the head end, where the strap pin would be. Because this guitar will have a clear finish, I had to fix the gouge, and I could not do what Fender does. I could not use Bondo. I decided to make a maple inlay, rout a cavity around the gouge, and stick the inlay in it.

Today I made the inlay and installed it.

I found a reasonably nice piece of maple, sawed it open on the band saw, and then shaped and jointed it (on the milling machine) so the bookmatched grain on each piece would be at about a 15° angle to the grain on the other piece. This looks better than merely reflecting the patterns. I glued it together using Titebond III, and when it was solid, I face-jointed it on the mill.

After that, I had to use the table saw to cut a piece of acrylic, and I turned that into a router template by cutting it on the mill, using the DRO to get a precise rectangle (which I screwed up because of addition and subtraction errors).

When I finally had what I thought was a good template, I stuck it on a piece of scrap and tried to cut a cavity with it, and danged if the router bit didn’t jump and eat one of the corners of the template. I hadn’t realized I needed room for the bit to completely exit the wood on each pass.

When it came time to stick the template (still usable) on the guitar, I realized I was an idiot for making a bookmatched inlay, because it had a glue line which had to match the one on the guitar to within a few thousandths. Somehow, I made it work. I routed the hole, smoothed it with a file, and checked the inlay. It fit like it grew there, and the corner which was screwed up by the damaged template was clear of the guitar, where it would be carved off later.

I used an inlay kit to make the inlay and hole. This is an amazing set of tools. If I described how it works, you would not understand, but if you saw it in action, you would get it. Basically, you stick a set of bushings over a 1/8″ bit, and you center everything precisely on the router, and you make a rout for the cavity and a rout around the inlay. By removing one of the bushings, you adjust the router so the same template that made an inlay will make a hole that fits it perfectly.

I pounded the inlay into the hole, and it worked, so I pulled it out, applied Titebond III, pounded it back in, and applied a [probably superfluous] clamp. Then I sat down and hyperventilated for 20 minutes.

Not really. But the whole time I was doing this, I was waiting to make another impossible-to-predict mistake and ruin the whole project. I felt like I was running on a frozen pond in buttered shoes with a bottle of nitroglycerin in each hand.

For me, using a router is like walking in a minefield. Things are going fine, and then BAM, your project is sawdust. Preparation helps, but without experience, you are going to do stupid things you can’t anticipate.

Tomorrow, I hope to rout off the excess inlay material and then use a roundover bit to go around the edge of the entire guitar body. After some sanding.

Man, I should have made a solid-color guitar. I could have made ten of them by now.

Soon the neck and hardware will arrive. I’ll have to finish the bridge I’m making and order a Bigsby. I’ll have to grit my teeth and try to apply a finish. That will be harder than anything I’ve done yet. Paint hates me. It sits in the can plotting against me. It thinks of ways to run, or to fail to mix properly, or to make orange peel, or to just explode. Paint can do things to me that it can’t do to anyone else.

I have no problems with house paint. I can paint an apartment in four hours. I used to do that. But anything requiring a quality finish…scary.

Sometimes when I wonder how I will get this thing done, I think back to getting my physics degree. I had gotten Fs in high school math, and I didn’t really know algebra. Somehow, I did it. If I can do that, I ought to be able to make a guitar out of a cigar box and a bag of wet newspapers.

Sometimes you have to keep plowing forward, assuming the answers will come later.

I’m not thinking about Telecasters any more tonight. This was a good day. I am entitled to rest.