Wow! That's a long time ago!!!

Damn! It's been over 3 months since I posted. That's a new record! Well, unfortunately it's not all because of holidays (I wish!). I've had a lot to do, the last couple of months, part of it is holiday, most of it was jobs around the house though. We are improving the first floor in our house, and that's been taking up a lot of time. One of the rooms was going to be the guitar room, though, so it was also in the best interest of the WarMachine project! Then the following happened:

Results:

• The room will no longer be the guitar room


• Probably even less time to spend on the WarMachine


• A VERY HAPPY ME!

It will at least be half a year until I become a happy daddy, so I still hope to be able to work on it, shortly, and I will keep posting results on this blog!

Shaping the head

Now the "wings" have dried, it is already time to destroy them again: time to shape the head of the guitar. Using a photo of an ESP explorer headstock, I created the following outline:

It's not exactly to scale, but that doesn't matter: neither is my practice neck. I've printed the outline, cut it out, and put it on the headstock panel, and of course forgot to take a picture of that :( Than I used a bow saw to cut the headstock according to the outline. Couple of sheets of sandpaper later, this is the result:

If I can make some time tomorrow, I'm going to try using a different material for the fret inlays, since the epoxy stuff was such a disaster.

Wings!

I finally did some building again. In order to make my practice session more complete I glued some wings to the headstock of my practice neck.

Wings? Well yeah. In order to eventually saw the headstock into the correct shape, some more width is required, so I cut some more of my old bed up into two small pieces of wood, which I glued to the sides of the headstock on my practice neck. With any luck the glue will have dried tomorrow and I will be able to cut it into shape and sand it down.

Let's get picky!

Just as something to keep me motivated, I had the pick you can see in the logo of this blog made. Price wasn't too bad, except for the fact that i had to pay half again that amount in customs taxes to have 'em shipped into this country from the United States :(

Well this is what they look like:

And once again.... it's the mailman!!!

Yeah, the mailman's back... and with some good stuff.this time he brought:

• A truss rod and cover
• Some tuners, 6 I believe ;)
• Fret wire
• Pickup rings
• Gibson style pickup switch
• A jack-input cover plate (although I might have a different plan for that, more about that in future posts)
• A tom style bridge and tailpiece

I believe this means I actually have EVERYTHING I need to build the war machine, except for the wood to build the body. Since I have to wait a little before being able to route the templates I need to route the body later, I haven't gone out to buy it, since bringing the template will ensure I get a piece of wood that is the correct size.

Did he stop building?

Ok ok, I admit, it's been a while since I posted some news. Does that mean nothin's happening? Well, ehhhm.... yes, it does!

Well not exactly. Before I stopped blogging I rounded the practice neck I made. I just forgot to take a good picture, so the one below will have to do.

As you might be able to see, I rounded the back of the neck, so it would be smooth to play....if it were a real neck. Having dropped it a couple of times now, the resulting dents make it painfully clear that pine is WAY too soft to make any guitar part, al though its great to practice on.

It almost looks like a neck

After having dried for more than a night, it was time to turn my sawing and glueing project into something that remotely resembles a neck. Since I wasn't all too neat with my glueing and clamping, the headstock wasn't exactly level with the rest of the "neck". No worries, nothing al little planing won't fix ;-)

Since planing just got rid if the enormous differences, it was time for another round (more like 15 rounds) of sanding. To make things a little easier, I turned my workbench, vacuum cleaner and sander into the beautiful (cough) sanding table, shown below. Best plan I ever had: both hands free to sand the neck, and the vacuum cleaner actually got rid of most of the dust because it didn't have to fight gravity as well. Very satisfied with that ;)

After sanding out the rough spots, this is what my neck prototype looks like. I'm not at all dissatisfied with the result. I know it still looks like a stupid piece of wood, but creating it proved to me that I am able to actually do some of the things required to turn a piece of wood into a guitar! Who knows, this project might succeed ;)

I'm in doubt whether I should shape the headstock (which is too small, by the way, so it would look a bit silly) and maybe shape the part where the neck would meet the body, just for practice, but right now the time of day at which I can actually put my neighbors through the noise that would make has passed, so if I feel up to it, I might do that tomorrow.

What?? He's finally started building?

..No, of course not, don't be silly! ;-)

But I have started building (yet another) prototype. Frustrating though it may be, I think one cannot practice enough, before destroying a perfectly good (and expensive!) piece of wood.

So what have I been up to?

Today I wanted to practice building a neck with the headstock at an angle. Multiple sources, including the book mentioned earlier (which, believe it or not, is falling apart by now) describe the procedure for doing this as follows:

I've taken an old piece of pine (I think it was part of my bed once) and sawed this piece of wood in 2 pieces at a small angle (mine is around 11 degr).Than I put the short piece on top of the longer one, in order to be able to sand it to become one plain. This will ensure the headstock will be level later.

Then I put liberal amount of glue on the longer piece and let it dry for approximately 3 minutes.

At last I clamped the short piece to the longer one, as shown below:

I will let it dry overnight, and tomorrow we'll see how it turned out!

The mailman strikes again!

Wow, just on my way out my neighbor stopped me with the magic words "Hey, I got another package for you!". Yes, another one, since whenever I order stuff, I'm not around when it gets delivered, and my poor neighbors have to be the ones to receive it. Guys, if you ever read this: Thanx a lot and I'm so sorry for the inconvenience!

But now, more important matters: what did the mailman bring this time? Well I consider it to be something of a special treat, since I've been waiting quite some time for these:

For the people who just see some stray bits and pieces, you're looking at a brand new EMG 60 active pickup and the wires and pots that go with it! And it's the one that is going to be my neck pickup. I also got an EMG 81 active pickup for the bridge position today, but since I expect the contents of that package to look exactly the same as the stuff shown above, I left it wrapped up, nice and safely, for I don't know when exactly I will be installing these.

One thing this will help me do right away, is finish de routing design for th body, because I now have the exact size of the pickups. As soon as I've finished that, I will pay my colleague Kees a visit and we will use his self made CNC router to route a template of the explorer body. This template I will take to the wood shop, to ensure the wood that I buy for the body will be of an adequate size to make the body.

So why EMGs? Well, the answer is quite simple: these are the exact pickups of the guitar I want the War Machine to resemble.

MAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIL!!!

I'm usually not so thrilled when it comes to receiving mail, since it's bills most of the time. But in this case I'm very happy:

Some of the stuff I ordered came in today!



From top to botom:

• 1 Piece of maple to turn into a neck
• 1 Piece of rosewood for the fingerboard
• One 12" radius block to hold sandpaper when shaping the fingerboard
• One fret saw with depth adjuster

From left to right, top to botom:

• Fretboard protector
• Volume and tone knobs
• Neck plate
• Nutt
• Strapholders
• Neckplate screws

I had actually planned to go to the wood store last weekend, but had some trouble finding time for it. Furthermore, when I go out to buy wood for the body, I would like to bring the MDF template I´m planning to make, using my colleague´s CNC router, to make sure the piece(s) of wood will be big enough. So until that´s done, I'll first see what I can make of the neck.

Sanding part 2

Well, I waited a good week for the finer stuff to harden... Hell, I even went skiing (the things I have to do for this project). After some sanding this is what the result looks like (after some heavy histogram leveling):




Well, at least the dremel helped creating a tighter letter. And the superfine white milliput, does seem a bit stronger, although it still doesn't quite make it through the finger nail test :(

So, it seems my little I'm to lazy to create proper inlays plan failed big time! I will have to create them from proper plastic, since I still think mother of pearl is way too shiny to put on a guitar called the war machine.

This weekend I'm going shopping to find some wood! how exciting ;) Will get back with the results!

Hmmm...

Ok, I´m a little disappointed there with the "rock-hardness" of the silver/grey milliput. It dried out nicely, and after sanding of the residue, a nice T is visible (at least as nice as can be expected considering that I kind of suck at engraving precise shapes with a large chisel). But after I put the nail of my thumb in it, it was quite easy to scratch it... imagine what a nice nickelbound .046 string will do :(

So next try...

I engraved another letter ("E" this time, since it comes after "T" in test). This time I used a borrowed Dremel, with a bit far too large to do any fine work, but the result is way better than me hacking the poor old piece of pine to shreds. This time I´ll use the superfine white grade Milliput. Since I bought it anyway, might as wel try it.

We´ll see what this one looks like after sanding it tomorrow!

I feel like I'm back in pre school

After weeks of trying, this weekend I finally obtained the epoxy resin I want to use to make custom inlays. Since I want to use quite an extensive pattern for my fret inlays (I'll keep the actual shape a secret for now, so I can always back out), I thought it would be easier to model them, than it would be to cut them from Mother of Pearl, which is too fancy to use on a guitar called The War Machine annyway. To test it thouroughly I bought 2 grades of the stuff: normal and superfine. Last night I carved a (very bad and ugly) T into a piece of Pine wood, and filled it up with the standard issue resin. The mixing of this stiff reminded me a bit of playing with modeling clay back in pre school. Got it stuffed in now, and hopefully this evening I'll find some time to sand of the excess resin. Hopefully this will reveil a nice T-shape wich I will need to test on strength. More later...

Intermezzo: Cleaning the Amp

Hey, what's this??? This isn't about building a guitar!!! You're right, of cource, but what good would the War Machine be, if I can't hear it play. It is starting to look that way, because all the pots on my amp are dirtier than... well let's just say they're rather dirty.



So, armed to the teeth with contact cleaner spray I dived into the bowels of my trusty old Marshall. Let's hope I know what I'm doing! After attacking aech pot with liberal amounts of cleaner spray I have to wait for it to dry for at least half an hour. The waiting is killing. At last, after half an hour I plugin a guitar, turn on the Amp, and...
It works! Only a couple little scratching sounds left on the 2 pots I've really ignored for too long, but all in all a great result. Only bad thing is that I have no excuse left to buy that new marshall mini tower ;)

Shopping list

This weekend I will try to find some time to do the first shopping for tools and materials. Since I'm going to a local hardware store, and not a shop specialised in instrument building, I expect to be able to get the following:

• workbench (small DIY version, not a lot of space at home)
• router and some necessary bits
• modeling resin (which I intend tot use for fret inlays)
• soldering iron (and tin and degreaser)
• graphite (to lube the strings of the new guitar as well as the one mentioned earlier)
• contact cleaner spray (nothing to do with the new guitar, but will need it to get the pots on my amp working again)
• a board of 18mm MDF. Although the choice for the ESP type explorer had the welcome extra benefit that my colleague's router WILL actually be able to route it (yay, I'll be less vulnerable to my own sloppiness), we will first try to route another prototype, this time full scale (x and y dimensions, not z).
• maybe some low grade pratice wood

After the weekend I'll get back with what I've been actually able to find/buy!

The power of prototyping

I finally have some results to report. Using the CAD template by M. de Haan, my colleague Kees has programmed his home made CNC router to create this 0.3 scale model of The War Machine (so I'm actually reporting his results, not mine). This will probably be the template I'll use for the real thing as well. Since the router isn't big enough to cut the entire body (with a staggering width of over 60 cm!), we will use it to create MDF templates. These I will use as routing templates to route the actual body by hand.

As you might have noticed, I'm actually going for the slightly more modern ESP type version of the explorer, for it looks even more like a war machine then the slightly rounded Gibson style. Some choices will have to be made like scale length, type and amount of pickups, number and type of frets, and maybe a different shape for the head, before the actual design for the construction will be finished. Then I will create a final version of the CAD file, which can be translated into machine instructions for Kees' CNC router.

Oops!!! This is going to delay things a bit.

It's probably not a very good idea to BUY a guitar when you're planning to build one, since valuable time best spent in designing and building the new one will now be spent playing this one... But you've gotta admit: She's a beauty! Let's just hope she doesn't disctract me too much ;)

Design teaser: The general idea

I Promised a design of the guitar. I really tried ot have it finished by now, but no such luck! In stead I present: this little teaser. Ever since I first saw James Hetfield on stage (I think it was Metallica's 1992 Wherever We May Roam tour), I've had a soft spot for the Explorer. So that's what The War Machine is going to be, for all of the following reasons:

• It's a damn classic!
• It's got a nice heavy metal look to it (compatible with the name War Machine)
• It relatively straight forward: Fixed bridge, no trems, flat top.

So there you have it! Next time perhaps an actual design? ;-)

Planning Stage

Hi everybody!
First of all: Don't worry, I'm not building a weapon of mass destruction, it's only a Guitar!

Since I had this crazy idea of building my own guitar, I thought it might also be nice to blog about it. In the (probably not so near) future I will publish bits and pieces about the guitar I'm going to build. For the moment I'm still in the planning stage. Lots of webpages to read, and, Hey! I've even bought a book.

As I've read a couple of websites and forums about building guitars, I kept reading this was THE book to learn it all! I've browsed it a bit, and although it seems to me that most of the topics are covered all over the web, it feels good to have bought this, if only to show to myself that I'm serious about this project. Add to that that it gives me something to take with me into the workshop (hmmm, got to get myself a workshop), that is more sawdust and spraypaint proof than a laptop.

So, now the the hard process starts of designing my guitar (and maybe actually reading the book). I have some ideas about it, but until I'm sure its feasible at all, I will keep my plan a secret (although the title of this blog should be a hint). Hopefully this means that by the time I post my next message, I will be able to show at least some sort of design. Until then, I'll just keep watching Youtube movies about my new hero: