Building a sort of Telecaster. Any interest?

But I did Colin. Are you having a senior moment there?

OK, I’ll give it a go.

Some of you may remember the OM I built for my nephew Daniel. It so happens that I have two stepsons and one of them, Olivier, was born on the same day as Daniel. What’s more, when they first met, a few years ago now, they got on like a house on fire (they both play guitar) and now consider themselves at least cousins if not quite brothers. I gave Olivier the classic guitar I made in 1971 and he loves it, but every so often he says “When are you going to build me a Telecaster?”

Why he wants one I’m not quite sure, although he does tend to buy a guitar because he like the look of it, and I’m pretty sure a told me once that he doesn’t like the twangy bridge pickup on Teles. I thought that’s what Teles are all about but what do I know? So I’m going to build a Telecaster shaped guitar with humbuckers in it.

I’ve had a rather nice quilted maple drop-top for a few years waiting for the right project and I’ve bought a Spanish cedar body blank from Madinter in Spain.I reduced the thickness of the body blank by about 6mm on a router sled to allow for the drop-top and then cut it out on the bandsaw allowing about 3mm extra all round. I didn’t think about taking photos until I’d done all that, so this is the first one.

I suppose this is going to be what’s called a ‘Thinline’, but it won’t have an f-hole. I draw my plans in CAD and print them out on A4 sheets, then stick the sheets together on a piece of 6mm MDF to make a template. The blotches on the top are CA. I run thin CA around the edges of the template to harden them. A drop in the countersunk screw holes stops the screws pulling through the MDF when you tighten them down.
I use 5mm brass rod as locating dowels. One hole will be under the bridge and doesn’t go right through. The other will be for a neck screw and does go through. The template is only for the body cavities. I’ll make another for the pickup routes later.

Having marked the depth of each cavity I then started to take out the bulk with a Forstner bit in the drill press.

Then I screwed the template back on and cleaned up the cavities with the router. If you look back at the template, you’ll see it’s only cut out for the deepest part of the bass-side cavity. As I wanted to dish the back (tummy cut, or whatever it’s called) I routed the deepest part, then took the template off and re-cut it to the next line, put it back on and routed 3 mm shallower. Kept doing this until all the steps were done.

I made another template for the pickup cavities but out of 19 mm MDF as it meant I didn’t have to change router cutters and after hogging out and cleaning up, it looked like this. Spanish cedar is quite soft and screwing into end-grain isn’t a very good idea, so, where the strap buttons will be, I drilled holes and glued in hardwood dowels to give the screws something to bite on.

More later.

Dave.

I meant to drill the hole for the jack socket before routing the cavities (to avoid it making a mess where it breaks through) and then fit a temporary plug so the bearing on the router cutter doesn’t fall into the hole when rounding over the body (been there, done that !). So I had to make a caul for the cavity and did that next. It looks a bit precarious, but I managed it without any disasters.

It’s a counterbored hole for an electrosocket and the plug is held in place by a little caul and a woodscrew.

With the template back in place, I can trim the outside to the finished profile on the make-shift router table. This body might finish up very slightly smaller than it should be as, even this brand new cutter isn’t leaving a perfect surface. It’s going to need some sanding.