Just a bunch of pictures

Well, since Lorri is at it again, telling her friends at work about me and my guitars, I figured I would post an update to the blog since I have not actually done so since before I finished the three guitars I was working on for Christmas 2007 and Lorri's birthday in 2008. Nothing like being refered to a site with a bunch of unfinished guitars if you are interested in seeing what someone can do. So if you checked out the blog recently and did not have the more recent pictures, sorry. Here is what I have finished and what I have in progress. I have not been in the shop much lately, but hope to get over there once the weather gets nicer before I start school back up in the fall. Not sure why some pictures are aligned upside down. The originals were not that way and I could not figure out how to rotate them in the blog publishing page.

My cousin's guitars. Made the brown-burst LP for my cousin Jeff and the Amber Tele for my cousin Tim for Christmas 2007. Both have semi-hollow ash bodies with flamed maple tops and koa binding. Gold hardware, fret wire, and gold pearl inlays. The pickups on both guitars are Seymour Duncans with the Tele having stacked pickups with coil splitting and the Les Paul having a Phat Cat (humbucker sized P-90) in the neck and a split coil humbucker in the bridge position. Both guitars have an accoustic style output jack in the bottom strap pin.

Green Telestratocastor for Lorri's birthday 2008. Alder body, Nashville Tele style pickups with a tremolo. Lots of custom inlay and gold hardware.

Lorri's friend Hung commissioned my first left handed guitar. He wanted a single pickup, single volume strat bodied guitar with a Subaru WRX blue finish.

Red Tele style guiar made from MDF (medium density fiberboard) with a flamed maple veneer top and a maple neck. It is just a test project to try to find different materials to make guitars from. This is currently the closest guitar to being finished. I just need to fix the wiring and do some fretwork.

Silver basswood strat style guitar. This one had the finish start to peel, so I have stripped it down and am starting the finish over. I have not decided on which pickup configuration to use. I have a pickguard wired for SSS (w/b/w) and HSS (pearloid). It will have chrome hardware.

Les Paul style guitar. Had some problems with the binding on this one, so I have redone the binding. Need to finish getting the neck pocket/tennon joint and glue together and then I will be ready for finish sanding and finishing. I have some Seymour Duncan humbuckers for this one and chrome hardware, but may opt to buy some Seymour Duncan P-Rail pickups instead to get more tonal variations.

First SG style guitar I have built. I am adding a bit more contour to this than a standard SG to give it a bit more of a comfortable feel. Planning on doing a cherry finish with black pickguard and black hardware (chrome covered humbuckers).

First attempt at an accoustic guitar. I started it in a class I was taking, but was unable to finish it. Someday, I will finish it and if it turns out to play well, I will most likely by a side bending machine so I can build more. Flamed maple back and sides and spruce top. I am not sure how the sound hole cut out will work, so I may need to cut it out for a more standard round sound hole as the pieces are very fragile and may break too easily during playing.

I'm still here, just been busy

I'm still here, I've just been busy with the holidays, work, kids, buying a new car, etc. I have also had a couple setbacks. The spray booth we were making was not ready when I was ready to start finishing and the pickups were about two weeks late due to a problem with production at Seymour Duncan. I ended up applying the initial coats of sanding sealer with foam brushes, which meant I also had to do more sanding to get the finish leveled. Now the booth is complete and I just sprayed the next couple coats on one of the guitars. I will spray the other tomorrow and then start with the finishing lacquer. I am using water-borne lacquer for the first time and so far, if it is anything like the sanding sealer, it works great. It is very clear and glosses very nicely without any sanding or polishing (I will still do these steps, but when I sprayed the nitrocellulose lacquer, it was not glossy until I sanded/polished). Before applying any finish, I installed the nuts on the Tele style guitars and put the side fret markers on the rosewood fretboard guitars. Here are some pictures, starting with installing the side fret markers and then the finishing. I did not have the camera with me today, so I don't have any pictures of the spray booth or spraying. I am not going to go into detail with the pictures like I usually do, but there's not much to explain. Some of the pictures are brighter just because they were taken with the flash on.

Here are pictures of the side fret markers being installed. They are actually small pieces of plastic rod. The fretboard is drilled and the rod is inserted and glued in with superglue. The rod is then cut and sanded flush with the side of the fretboard. The top four pictures are the hollow body Telecaster and the bottom four are the Hollow body Les Paul. I have not done this on the green Tele as it does not need to be finished as soon as the other two, but it will be done.

Here are a few shots of the hollow body Telecaster body. I have just begun putting the sanding sealer on. I don't have any good shots with a high gloss because even without using a flash, the lights reflected on the shine and made for not very good pictures. The last picture is the back of the neck. I tinted the sealer to give it an aged look instead of staining the wood, which would make it a much darker amber color.




Here are several shots of the hollow body Les Paul in various angles and at various stages of finishing. Most of these shots are after the lacquer has dried, so you can see that the gloss is fairly good even without any sanding/polishing.






Here is the green, Celtic themed Tele. I have not finished the neck yet, but the body top, sides and back all have one coat of sanding sealer. I will need to apply a few more sprayed coats and then the regular lacquer. The close up shot shows details of the wolf inlay.

Well sorry it has taken so long to post. Life is busy. Most of these pictures were taken shortly after my last post, but I have just not had time to post until tonight. I hope you enjoy the progress. I am planning on finishing the spraying this weekend, wiring and setup the following week, and tweaking/adjusting the first week of December so I can send the two hollow bodies out the second week in time for Christmas. Oh, by the way, the cases have also arrived. Let me know what you think so I know that you are reading this. Thanks,

Aaron