Build #2 - Mahogany Tele

[leocuellar]

Thanks for all your nice comments, I have a small update today:

Y finished the truss rod channel, my truss rod will be hidden below the fretboard so I don't need to rout a small channel, so I routed the channel the whole lenght of the truss rod and drilled a hole for the adjustment nut(barrell):

This is the channel complete:

Before attaching the fretboard I want to fill this small gap:

so I cut a little piece of maple and I rounded one of the sides with a file:

Then I glued the little piece on top of the barrell:

After it was dry I cut the excess with a flush cut saw:

After a very little sanding it's done:

Blowing off with compressed air any dust and residues and the neck is ready to have the fretboard glued on top:

I am using my clamps in other pieces I am gluing so I will wait until later to glue the fretboard.

Meanwhile I tell you that I am a little clueless about the string (and ferrule) holes, my drill press doesn't have enough space between the bit and the column to accomodate the tele body, so I don't know how to drill the ferrule holes and ensure straight holes thru the body. Does anyone have another method to drill ferrule holes without a drill press?


Leo

 

[Baylin]

Looking good. There may be other ways but as for drilling accurate holes with a hand drill for he ferrules, I would make a jig using your drill press. Get a piece of 1" thick, flat scrap maple and drill the holes you want through it. Then transfer that to the body, lining up jig holes with the body hole locations secure in place and use those nice straight holes in the jig as a a straight guide for your bit in the hand drill through the body.

 

[Bobtastic]

I did something like this for drilling the TOM bridge holes on my LP build. I used my drill press to drill a "straight" hole through some scrape then attached it to my top and used my hand drill to drill the holes into the body. I would say it was a reasonable success, the holes were not as straight as I would have liked, but they were the best I could do in the circumstances.

I'm enjoying your build, keep up the good work!

 

[leocuellar]

Hey guys, thanks for your ideas and suggestions. Based on your advice I came up with the idea of making my own template/drill guide but instead of wood I will use steel. I bought a few scraps of steel and I took them to a friend's shop, he works with CNC machines and he is going to make the jig for me, it's going to be a steel plate with interchangeable inserts, each insert it's going to be 1" thick and will have the six holes aligned for each of the bits that I am going to use. The first one 1/8, the second one 5/16 for the ferrule and the third one 3/8 to sink the ferrule lip inside the wood. That way I will attach the plate with double stick tape to the body of the guitar and just drill the first set of holes, then change the insert and drill the next set of holes, and repeat for the third set of holes. All of them perfectly centered. This is the scrap material and the design:

I can't wait to have it, and with this I will be able to drill precise ferrule holes every time by hand.

In the next post I will post some updates to the build process.

Leo

 

[leocuellar]

OK So here's the update:

Using my template I drilled the tuner holes:

Now, I am ready to attach the fretboard to the neck:

And here it is, all clamped up (I bought a few more clamps since I started this build, and yes, the gallon of titebond is still almost full):

While I was waiting 24 hours for the fretboard to dry, I drilled the neck joint holes:

Next day, when the fretboard was already glued, with the screws half way in I marked the holes on the fretboard:

then I attached the neck to the sanding block (to have a flat surface to land on the drill press base), measured the depth of the screws, marked the depth on the fretboard and set a stop to the drill press on that mark:

And, peace of cake:

Body and neck, joined together for the first time:

In the next post I will start shaping the neck. Thanks for reading!!

Leo

 

[leocuellar]

In my first attempt I used the tool you see in the back, I don't know the name of the tool but it's basically a high speed rotary tool with a sanding drum. It removes material at a fast pace but it's very hard to control so this is what I could do with it before making the sanding drum explode in thousands of pieces (luckily when it exploded I was wearing safety googles, a few pieces of sandpaper and cloth hit very hard against the googles, thank God for the safety googles!!).

Then I tried to sand (actually rasp) the part where the headstock meets the fretboard and I wasn't that lucky either, I broke with the rasp the very corner of the fretboard behind the nut, so I glued it back and leave the thing for another 24 hours before continuing

Will continue in the next post. I am uploading a lot of images, I don't know if dividing so many images in different posts is better or it's the same but anyway, that's why I am dividing into different posts. See you in the next post

 

[leocuellar]

I realized the best wat to sand the part where the headstock meets the fretboard is with a spindle sander but I don't have one so I watched a few youtube videos about how to make my own sanding drum for the drill press and I made my own.

Glued the sandpaper with spray adhesive:

Done:

I attached the neck to a piece of scrap to be able to align it perfectly sqare against the sanding drum:

Ready to go:

It went fine this time, I just fine sanded with a piece of sandpaper after and it looks really good, unfortunately, I forgot to take a close up picture of the result, I will do it later.

In the next post I will show how I shaped the back of then neck.

 

[leocuellar]

This thread is getting too heavy with pictures, I hope it doesn't take too much to load

OK so, to give a correct shape to the neck I printed some templates of the neck shape at the first and 12th frets, glued the templates to a piece of mahogany and cut the pieces:

Then, I used this super handy little tool to get the contour of the templates (I think it's called profiler or something similar, I bought it at harbor freight for something like 4 bucks):

On the left, the current shape of the neck at the 1st fret, on the right the desired shape:

This is the amount of material I need to remove:

So I started rasping:

and checking:

and rasping some more, and checking, and rasping, and checking, until I got to this point:

Then did the same with the 12th fret template:

first comparison:

After rasping/checking/rasping/checking...

and now I have the first and 12 fret shapes correct:

So I started working by hand and eye on the top and bottom parts, this is the body side:

and both sides done:

To be continued...

 

[leocuellar]

Next I shaped one side of the neck constantly checking with a straight ruler to avoid rasping more than needed until I got this:

I liked the result so I did the same to the other side, then I fine sanded everything and got this:

and that is the current status.

I think the next step is to drill the ferrule holes but I will not be able to do so until next wednesday or thursday when my drilling jig is ready so I will have to wait and maybe fine tune the neck shape until I am completely satisfied with it.

I can't believe how fast this build is going, my first build took me 6 months to complete, and I already had the neck, and with this one I am at about 95% of the process and most of it was all done in one month!

Anyway, please let me know any comments or advice, and thanks for reading!


Leo

 

[elephantrider]

really nice work.

that fretboard is super sexy. looks fantastic.

 

[leocuellar]

Another small update, I drilled the tuner screw holes and installed the frets yesterday:

Marking the tuner screw holes placement:

Fretboard ready to receive frets:

This is my home-made fret bending tool:

Fretwire bent!:

Frets cut and ready to be installed:

Also my friend who has the steel machining business told me he's going to be working today on my ferrule hole jig, so hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance to install the string ferrules.

Thanks for reading!

 

[deed_poll]

Great build! Really enjoying this. I especially like the way you used the contour thing to cut the neck, that's clever.

What finish for the body?

 

[leocuellar]

Great build! Really enjoying this. I especially like the way you used the contour thing to cut the neck, that's clever.

What finish for the body?

Hi deed_poll Thanks for your comment, I'm going to finish it with non translucent butterscotch blonde color, high gloss nitro finish and a vintage cream pickguard, nothing too fancy, I like the classic tele look.

 

[leocuellar]

OK, my ferrule hole drilling jig/guide is done, here it is:

First insert for the 1/8 holes all the way thru the body:

Second insert for the 5/16 holes for the ferrule body:

and third insert for the 3/8 holes for the ferrule lip:

All holes are concentric and the 1" thick insert hopefully will guide the bit perfectly straight.

I will do a test first on a piece of scrap and if everything goes fine I will proceed and drill the guitar.

 

[leocuellar]

One more update: I finally drilled the ferrule holes today, using my jig.

Marking the exact placement of the holes:

blue tape to protect the wood from the steel jig:

Centering the guide:

Drilling the 1/8 holes:

Holes drilled halfway thru because the bit is not long enough to go all the way thru the guide and the body:

Then I completed the two outer holes by hand using the partially drilled holes as a guide:

Flipped the boddy and I have two complete holes and the rest only halfway thru:

I aligned the template to those two holes, and drilled the rest from the back until they connect with the partially drilled holes:

Now, I changed the insert and drilled the 5/16 holes with the aid of some masking tape as a stop on the bit:

5/16 holes done:

Finally I set the depth stop on my 3/8 bit to do the lip holes:

Done!

 

[tonedragon]

I know its too late but you could have cut the boards down before ,then you would have had enough clamps?????

 

[leocuellar]

I know its too late but you could have cut the boards down before ,then you would have had enough clamps?????

Hehehe yeah, you're right on both things, It would have been better to cut the boards before and clamp them one after the other and also it's a little late now, I actually bought more clamps already

Anyway, this demonstrates the value of planning before doing.

 

[tonedragon]

Ha-hahaha its fun to watch someone else's build and learn . I was thinking on a telee build in the future also. I find this informative. Keep it up

 

[leocuellar]

OK, I drilled every missing hole, sanded everything to 220 and now I'm in the middle of the finishing process:

Applying grain filler:

Grain filled and eady to apply first coat of sealer:

First sealer coat applied:

And that's it for today. Thanks for reading!

 

[leocuellar]

Cold and rainy days don't let me progress as I want to but today was fairly good and I sprayed a few coats, so this is the progress:

After the sealer I applied another coat of grain filler, and then white stain (3 coats), after that white base I started applying butterscotch blonde from a rattle can (ReRanch):

Also, I applied to the neck three layers of vinyl sealer, then 1 coat of nitro laquer, sanded and buffed the spot for the decal and applied the waterslite decal (made by George Charles):

After two coats of Butterscotch Blonde:

And this is the current status, I am going to apply one more color coat and then start with the clear coats.