4 guitar build for 7 Seconds in 3,2,...1


XBIGJIMX

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Well for an inaugural for the shop, I am designing and building 2 pairs of signature guitars for the band 7 Seconds, ( old punk/ hardcore band just youtube, or wikipedia them) So i got with them and asked all the fun questions of what they were looking for and wanted (as well as what they hated) . SO i drew up some designs and got there go ahead and made the start templates

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Which was then transferred to 3/4 MDF using the shaper

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The bodies of the Basses will be walnut and the Guitars will Jatoba with maple tops SO we got the glue up of body blanks

 

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Band sawed out the bodies and then off to the shaper to put the templates to use

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Glued up some neck blanks all 5 ply 3 maple 2 walnut except one which has Jatoba. as well as a test blank 4 maple wink.png

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while the necks are drying will throw a round  round over on the bass bodies

 

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And let us make some fret boards . I started with slicing some Jatoba up

 

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Then a few passes though the thickness sander

 

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Fresh of the presses ...fret boards

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After that i took the blanks out of the clamps and squared them up

 

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And on to the scarf joints , I cut them of at 13 degrees on the band saw. Then i made a support jig to clean ou the glue face on the jointer

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i glued a strip of the matching wood fot a little color before gluing them up

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After drying i cleaned up the faces and added the headstock wings

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For the guitars we are going for a chambered body with sound holes, will this work? hellif I know but we are going to see what happens. So the out line

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Hogging out the material with my helpers /intern ( my sons friend want to learn some wood working so he shows up everyday to help)

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Oh the freaking mess, i need to get the drill press some dust control

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Cleaning it up via the old shop smith pin router

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here is the finished route out , my intern colored outside the lines a bit if you will on the drill no mater you wont see with the top glued on

 

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As you can see i have the neck template on there as well. I made that while he was working on hogging out the bodies

I set the start and end and put on a straight edge then went to the router and shaper to get the template

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Really isn't the music choice the important thing

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and safety selfie of combing your hair is over rated

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Well that the past weeks work for the most part to be continued

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Wow, that's a lot to take in! As a guitarist wanna-be, I have long wanted to build an axe of my own, but never had the guts. You are providing some really good info, maybe enough to push me over the edge soon.

Give it a shot this is my first go at it hahah I am winging it. I just have played and teched forever so i have the concept there everything else i have learned from forums and such, measuring my guitars for refrence and guessing :)

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I love this band! So awesome that you're getting to work with them on this.

They are completely fantastic people, proably some of the nicest guys I have met . I was actually blessed to fill in for Steve in 2012  when we went to Europe (I am the bass player)

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I've made a couple of guitar body's by robbing the neck and electronics from other cheap guitars. They are a lot of fun and I'm just crazy enough to go over board and make a "Rat Tar" out of a 2 x 12. :)

 

 

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OK, OK so it's ugly! Bet you never seen one like it before! :)

 

Rog

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Well true believers since we last spoke this was added to the shop

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It is the one thing i have been drooling over since I started buying machines. Hard to tell it was used ( truth be told idont think he used it much.) So i got some bits for it 1/2 shank size ( my first 1/2 shank I feel like such an adult now) SO i got 1/2 and 3/8 straight bit. But of course it came with 4 pins....None of the 1/2 or 3/8. Well I know finding  parts would not be easy so it's off to get some round bar and turn these bad boys

 

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Also I am thoroughly convinced that Luthier is Latin for I make lots of jigs and templates. Cause I needed to route out the truss rod slots and I wanted to make it accurate and repeatable so I made a jig!

 

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The first layer has the truss rod pin guide I wanted to be able to switch this out for different sizes (bass and guitar). The Middle layer has the center lines and holds the neck. The part with the pool ball nuts is a guide to lay the neck down fast and the then the clamps

 

The under side

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This is it running in action

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After that I needed to resaw the maple tops for the guitars. Now this was my first resaw and i have realized resawing is much easier with a 1" blade

 

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Then gluing up the tops

 

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Now in between all this I had to do something quiet while the grandkids were taking naps so I got my fret saw set up going. My uncle gave me his old radial arm saw when he passed. The problem is it does not have the get up and go it used to so its not good for cross cutting but it works great for fret slotting

 

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And does anybody else's outfeed table look this bad

 

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A quick Sunday morning top glue up.

The spread

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Here is the first version of the body clamp, version 2 will have more cross pipes. Basiclly I use an impact to tighten the down bolt pulling the pipe into Oak cross bars making a nice joint. THis works for keeping body blanks glue ups level as well

 

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Well today we worked on the bodies after pulling them out of the clamps we had the great looking model wink.png

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After a quick trim on the band saw and a photo op with the intern

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Now off to test the pin router

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Now cut out

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Now i have to backtrack I totally over engineered the truss rod jig it was a little over thought. Cause i did not have a router table. I am like well let sick one on the table saw ...where is my circular saw

 

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This was much easier so I got the truss rods put in

 

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Ever have one of the those days in the shop where everything breaks ? Yep had one of those days I mean seriously how do you explode a  solid carbide bit after 20 minutes of use?
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That is so going back to woodcraft .

Then we had the issue of crappy 2 way tape and one shot neck blank. SO i spent the rest of the day running to wood craft and making a dozen neck blanks ( I am so not back tracking to fix screw ups, grab a new blank)

So the next day i worked on making my template for my f holes and hogging out the back control cavity. I am so not going to try to put the electronics though the f holes. When your on tour and need to do a repair no one wants to mess with that

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Started the day routing out the f holes and cleaning up the control cavity.

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Then it gets to the fun part the carve. Started with the pencil lines

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Went ahead and took basicly a route for a binding to knock some of the wood out and give me a finish line

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Then with a hammer and chisel i started knocking out chunks and then used a power grinder to get it close. 

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I then took a cabinet scraper to clean it up and some 100 grit to give it some smoothness

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Well in the past week have done a little of everything as usual. Had to do a rebuild of a neck  do to a slip of a template. So I ordereded some good 2 way tape so this would not be a repeat. I trimmed out on the band saw and then off to to the pin router

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Take 2 was much better by the 4th one i had it down.

 

Now I needed to slot fret boards next. Now with my DIY ethic would not allow me to drop the cash on the template from stew mac. So let make one.

step one get a aluminum yard stick from lowes $3

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I printed out the fret template (thanks internet!) and some contact cement and a file , lets get in the grove

 

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Now I had to make 2 shots at this the first one i went to deep with the file. I checked it to my fender jazz and it was dead on . So it works just like th estew mac ones

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I also had to put together my fretting saw station. I had the blade since xmas and the saw was older than me and is perfect for cutting fret boards

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Now a little test fit after running the fret board over the shaper

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I also made a lumber run I got (from top to bottom) curly maple, spalted maple, curly maple , African Mahogany and the other pile purpleheart, paduk and purple heart. Mind you this is the most i have ever spent on lumber it kind of hurt hahahah

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Also am i the only one who looses pencils every 3 seconds? So I had to make a stop at office depot

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  • 4 weeks later...

heres part 1

 

 

Well true believers it has been a few and let say i have been busy. So this what we call a photo dump with some one liners thrown in if you have any questions ask cause there is alot going on in the last few weeks. So with ...and way we go.

First off we need some fretting templates so with 3 dollar yard stick and some files

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Untitled by XBIGJIMX, on Flickr

Picking a fret board

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Cutting fret slots

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Then off to the shaper to cut out the fret board and a test fit

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Adding inlays and dots. For the dots they are a combo of brass, maple, and black resin

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Next we cut the neckpocket template and the actual neck pocket

 

 

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I went and cut the maple caps next to hide the long neck joint

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ahh the mess

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I need more clamps

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A quick break where I turned a roller blade into a fret bender. cost $0

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next i pressed in the frets

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now heres a tip the really thin super glue will drip right through the fret slot and if you hit it with activator it will glue your finger to the fret board

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