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Post by lefranglais on Sept 7, 2021 22:21:33 GMT
So there I was, having finished the guitar, with this spare ‘Mighty Mite’ neck I hadn’t used. What to do with it? Well the answer is rather obvious. I’d seen a Tele that one of the Fender custom shop luthiers had made for their 40th (?) anniversary. He loved the old Martin acoustics , so he’d made one with a spruce top and herringbone binding, etc. so I thought I'd do something similar. This won’t be a blow-by-blow account like the last one. I thought I’d just take a few photos of the differences. I started with a one-piece khaya slab for the body and the cheapest spruce top from Madinter in Spain. I hollowed out the body in a similar manner to the first one as I intended installing a ‘modern’ Tele bridge and metal control plate and knobs and wanted to keep the weight down as much as possible. The cavities are slightly different, as I intended to make a proper forearm contour on this one by bending the spruce top, rather than the forearm bevel I did on the first one. Mike Doolin used to do this on his acoustic guitars.
The spruce was thinned down to about 3mm thick to allow me to bend it, so I glued in a support at right angles to the line of the bend.
I drew out the profile of the contour and stuck it onto the body, then shaved it down almost to the line and finished off using a large sanding board.
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 8, 2021 8:49:05 GMT
I made a bending form for the top and did a trial run with a spruce off-cut. The form is a peculiar shape as it got modified a couple of times after the trial run.
The top being bent. It has two holes with dowels to prevent it moving around on the form. The area to be bent was dampened, the silicone blanket put in place, the wood and blanket clamped and the heat turned on. When it got up to about 300°F the part under the blanket was gently pushed down onto the form and clamped. The blanket was allowed to cool down and it was left overnight.
It worked well, with just a little spring-back.
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 9, 2021 9:25:44 GMT
3mm of spruce seemed rather fragile for an electric guitar so I glued on some cross-grained patches in the hollow areas.
Then the top got glued to the body.
So far, so good.
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leoroberts
C.O.G. 
Posts: 26,116 
My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
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Post by leoroberts on Sept 9, 2021 10:52:35 GMT
I love a bit of reinforcement (preferably 'positive')  |
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 10, 2021 6:31:13 GMT
I’m going to put a tortoise pickguard on it, so I decided to bind the front in tortoise also, with white/black/white/black purfling on the front and a white line on the sides. The forearm contour makes that a bit tricky, so fingers crossed. I cut most of the binding rebate with the router but had to go back to traditional gramil, scalpel and chisels in the area of the contour.
The tortoise (plastic) binding bends easily horizontally but doesn’t really want to bend vertically, so I forced it into the shape I wanted for it to fit round the forearm contour and applied some heat. Because I was working on other things it also stayed in there for a few days, which might also have helped.
It didn’t keep the shape perfectly and sprung back quite a bit, but I managed to get it to go where I wanted it.
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garynava
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 460
My main instrument is: Stanley No.5
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Post by garynava on Sept 10, 2021 8:15:12 GMT
You did well with that binding!
Cheers Gary
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 10, 2021 8:28:12 GMT
Thanks Gary. One of my favourite things is scraping it flush and finding the sharp lines under the gluey mess.
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Post by earthbalm on Sept 10, 2021 13:02:05 GMT
That looks fantastic lefranglais but that's not a surprise. (very)Nice work. |
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 10, 2021 21:06:09 GMT
I bought a standard Tele pickguard and modified it to a Merle Haggard-ish shape. The horn is a slightly different shape and I cut it straight across the bottom.
The bridge, tuners, control plate and knobs are all Gotoh in Cosmo Black. The pickups are active EMGs again.
The finish is satin Osmo Polyx Oil (thanks to Adrian Lucas for his help). It’s supposed to be for floors and furniture so it should be reasonably hard-wearing. Spruce doesn’t need pore filling but I decided not to fill the khaya either. The Osmo, after several wipe-on wipe-off coats, half-filled the pores and gave a finish that I rather like.
After I'd screwed all the bits together it looked like this.
That's all folks.
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leoroberts
C.O.G.
Posts: 26,116
My main instrument is: probably needing new strings
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Post by leoroberts on Sept 10, 2021 21:24:50 GMT
That was over quickly! Lovely work, mind, despite 'aving to plug the bugger in.... |
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ocarolan
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CURMUDGEONLY OLD GIT (leader - to join, just ask!)
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Post by ocarolan on Sept 10, 2021 21:54:11 GMT
Extremely elegant!
Keith
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Post by lavaman on Sept 10, 2021 23:16:07 GMT
Looks amazing. Well done.   Iain |
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Post by earthbalm on Sept 11, 2021 7:05:59 GMT
Have to agree with Leo, Keith and Iain, that's a very classy look. I love the combination of colours.
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Post by forestdweller on Sept 11, 2021 7:49:59 GMT
Omg, that looks amazing- my kind of Tele |
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Post by lefranglais on Sept 11, 2021 12:34:07 GMT
Thank you for the compliments. I gave it to one of our grandsons whose totally gobsmacked reaction was all the thanks I needed. |
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Jo whoever he is.
