How about an update

Hey A-Ron,
Thanks for the Guitar pics at work. How about an update on here so I can show them to everyone? (Except Cory, of course!) You are doing a great job, so keep up the good work! Glad you decided to follow your dreams!

Lorri

Happy Birthday Aaron!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear brother,
Happy birthday to you.

Love,
Alyssa

Neck and Body Contouring

Well, I have actually done quite a bit since the last post, but I keep forgetting the camera. Today, I did a bunch more and brought my camera, but it decided to stop working, so I could not get the images I took while working off the CD. Luckily, we just got a new camera and I was able to take pictures of the current status of the guitar. Since the last post, I have cut out the neck, routed the neck, rough carved the neck with a router, done some final shaping on the neck, routed the truss rod channel, installed the truss rod, cut out the fretboard, radiused the fret board, slotted the fretboard, inlayed the fretboard, and carved the body contours (I told you I had done quite a bit!). Since I cannot pull the images off the old camera's CD, I do not have any pictures of the progress, but here's the pictures I have taken after the work was done.

The first three pictures here show the neck, with the tuners just placed in to check fit. I am going to have to grind down the bushings slightly to get them to fit propperly. On the second picture, you can see some of the "flame" on the back of the maple neck. This will be finished with a clear tung oil finish, so the flame will still be visable. The third picture is just a close up of the headstock, which I still need to rout for the cross inlay. You can also see the truss rod in place with some silicon caulk which is supposed to minimize vibrations of the rod while playing.

The next two pictures show the fretboard with the bone hand inlays and the bone fish inlay. I think that the fish may have been backwords, but I think that is how I did it on my Les Paul also. Maybe it is because I am left handed and have everything backwords. I have not yet put the frets in yet, but I have a new tool to help with that also, so hopefully that simplifies things for me. The headstock will also be painted black and will have a Rugged Cross Guitars logo (probably just the initials "ORC") in the form of a decal placed on the headstock below the cross.

The following pictures show the contours carved into the body. In a previous post, you could see the outline of where the contours were going to be, but they were not carved out yet. I have discovered the use of another tool in carving these contours: the rasp. I had bought them for my first electric (the Les Paul), but could not figure out how to get them to work correctly. Now that I have used them, they will definately save some time in carving parts.

The top two pictures show the front and the back with the routed cavities and the body contours. The last two, show the profile view and an angled view to see how the two contours fit together. As mentioned in previous posts, the body will be painted satin black. I just picked up the paint today, so once I get all the parts sanded down, I will start with the finish. I will probably use two coats of primer, four coats of satin black, and four to six coats of clear satin finish.

Thanks for checking the blog. I am keeping the old camera at the shop, so hopefully it will start working again and I can keep the blog updated as I do the work instead of after I finish several steps. Let me know if you have any suggestions, questions, or comments on the guitar or the blog. I am always looking to improve. Thanks,

Aaron

Routing the Body

I went over to the shop today with the intentions of routing the edges of both the Strat and SG bodies that I have started, but I forgot my camera, so I cannot show any progress. Also, the guide bearing for my template bit broke, so I was not able to get to the SG, but I actually got further along on the Strat than I had planned. I was actually able to do all the cavity routing and the neck pocked routing as well as rounding over the edges. Some of the routing was a bit trickier than I had expected, especially the electronics and tremolo cavities. The edge routing went pretty well, I just had to go over it several times to get the full width of the wood. It is not perfect, but nothing that some sanding will not be able to smooth out. The roundover bit for rounding over the edges of the guitar body worked extremely well and was smooth and quick.
Since I did not bring my camera over to the shop, I will just show what the current state of the guitar's body is. Here are a couple pictures of the front and back of the body with all the cavities routed out and the edges rounded over. The first picture is the front (with all the electronics cavities and neck pocket routed out) and the second is the back. You can see on both pictures where I have drawn the contour lines to be carved out at a later date.

Next, I decided to see how some of the parts that I have bought will look and fit. I think it looks pretty good, but I am open to any suggestions and comments. Remember, this guitar is going to be painted satin black and is going to have all black hardware to give it a "goth" look. The skull knobs are from some skeleton garland that I bought from Micheal's for $4 for a set of eight. I just cut the back of the head flat and drilled for the pot's shaft. I got the idea for the knobs by looking on E-Bay and seeing some skull knobs for sale on a couple guitar parts places. I am also going to use other parts of the skeletons for some of my inlays. I hope that it is not too contradictary or sacreligious to have all the skeleton parts when I am trying to build guitars with a Christian theme, but I will still try to encorporate my cross and fish that will be part of all of my guitars. The neck that is shown on the last picture is from a guitar that was given to me by my Sunday School teachers and was already gutted, so I am using it to get measurements from and check the fit of things. The neck I am building will have an ebony fretboard (the back of the neck is going to be natural maple).

Well, I still need to finish designing the headstock and get a new bearing before I can really do too much more. Thanks for visiting.

First stages of Construction.

Here are some pictures I have taken of the progress so far. Sorry it has taken so long to get going on the pictures. The first ones I took about three weeks ago, but I have been busy with work and home projects and have not been able to get the pictures on the web. The latest pictures, I just did the work today and took the pictures and decided to publish them.


From the upper left picture to the bottom right picture, there is the front and back of the body blank with no cuts or template drawn on. Next is the template (backside) laying on top of the body blank (note that the blemish seen on the center (back) picture is outside the template). The bottom row shows the backside very rough cut after my initial cut (it is a new bandsaw and I have not got all the bugs worked out yet. Now the front and backside a bit more closely cut to the traced template marks. You can see where the recesses for the tremolo and electronics cavites have been marked as well as the neck pocket.
Well, I think that will do it for this post. I have changed the date on this to more accurately show when the progress has been made. I will do another post for the work I completed today (Oct 14th). Thanks for checking my blog.

Intro/Test Post

Hello, my name is Aaron Roush and I live in Portland, OR and have been interested in making guitars since high school (about 12 years ago). I have built one electric (Les Paul with set neck) and have started on an accoustic and my second electric guitar (all black Strat copy). I am going to attempt to keep the blog updated as the work on my guitar project(s) continues. The Strat copy will be my first guitar for an actual customer, but I hope to be able to support my hobby and continue building and learning the art of lutherie. This guitar is being built for the son of a friend at work and I got the idea of putting the progress on a blog so that she can see how the project is going without me having to bring in parts or pictures as I build them and so other people can see my work. I do not have an official business as I am still just an amature guitar builder, but I would like to market my guitars mainly to the Christian market, but anyone is welcome to inquire about building them a guitar. I chose Rugged Cross Guitars as the name for my "business" name to remind me of the importance of the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for humankind some 2000 years ago. I plan to add different Christian art, symbols, and scripture to my guitars and really want this to be a ministry opportunity for me. Well I guess this is all for now, I will add pictures and descriptions as I get them (I have just started cutting the body and have some pictures, but still need to format them for the web).

Thanks for visiting and hope you enjoy this blog.

Aaron