The Blue Guitar

I name my guitars after their color, at least for now.  Lessons I have learned are scattered about this page.

The details on this guitar are:

Some photos:

  If you go back to the yellow guitar and look at the edge of that guitar, you can see how much better the dye job is.  The reason is the way that Mahogony absorbs dye vs. the way Ash absorbs dye.  I am not sure how to handle this just yet.  Also, you can see how the black dye creeps up into the Maple, where I want blue dye. Another issue here maybe that I did not mix the dye enough before application.   On the yellow guitar I taped the edge before applyig the black dye.  Not so on the blue guitar. 

The back of the neck. 

The body dyed and being sprayed with NitroCellulose from StewMac.  Note the hanger.   That is actually the stub off a tele neck. Having the hanger makes spraying much easier. And it keeps the nitro out of the neck pocket, thus preventing the need for cleaning out the neck pocket later.  The photo makes the body look a bit purple, but in real life it is bluer.

I am using a rear route option.  Warmoth drilled the control holes, and routed out the wood where the switch goes.  But it is not thin enough for the short shaft pots that I use, so I have to grind it down a bit.  I used the flat top sander tool from my Dremel tool and put it in a 12" drill press.  The secret to getting a consistent depth is to not put a lot of pressure on the drill press handle, and move the body side to side slowly.  For exposed wood, probably not a great way to do it, but this is hidden and I don't want to buy a $300+ router just to do this little piece.

The whole back, and nothing but the back.  The thin spots in the dye are where I had to sand out a few runs in the nitro from applying it to thickly.  Also notice that I have drilled the holes for the neck cover plate, as well as the neck screws.   Drilling these holes before applying the finish will save the drill bit from tearing up the wood.  Same with the strap locks.

To finish the body, I am using spray Nitro from StewMac.  They suggest using a well ventillated area, and they are right.  My luthier does his guitars with one light coat of nitro, and then one very heavy second coat sprayed over a whole day.   You have to be very careful, because nitro will run.  To do a heavy coat, spray a light mist, let it dry about 15-30 minutes, and spray another.  If you have the chance, you can do the last coat in one day.  StewMac says 2-3 cans per body, Keith says one can per body.  I am not sure myself just yet.

I have chosen to do lots of thin layers, and then a heavy coat. I am in the middle of the heavy coat at the moment.

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Nov 4, 2002

I have now started on the neck.  I have two tasks to do: Install the tuners and install the nut. 

First is the tuners. 

The first step is to insert the machine guides.  Since I buy my necks finished, the first thing I do is use a bit of sandpaper to clear out the bit of finish that has gotten inside the holes.  I used 80 grit sandpaper this time.  It took about 15 minutes. On the yellow guitar I used 120 grit, and it took about 3 hours.  Don't sand out too much.  You want a snug fit, not a sloppy fit.  Then I used a hammer and piece of wood to get the guides to seat. I worked from the nut towards the end of the headstock.  Be very careful doing this, so as not to damage the neck. 

The next step is to actually install the tuners, then the nut.

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Nov 26, 2002

I have finally sprayed enough nitro last week, and now it is drying.  According to both Stwemac and my luthier, a minimum of 2 weeks before polishing. Stewmac says to spray lots of thin coats before drying and polishing, and to use 2-3 cans of nitro.  My luthier says to use 1 thin coat, the one thick coat, using a total of one can.  I now see his point.  It is faster, and a bit less expensive, at $9.00/can.  The way you do a thick coat is this: Lots of thin coats, about 5-10 minutes apart.  No sand or anything between applications.  But you have to let it dry a bit so that it does not run.  I did it in my garage, hung from the garage door.  As the can says, ventillation IS a must.  If you breathe in any of the fumes, you will feel it.

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Dec 3, 2002

I finally did the nut today.  No real pictures to show here, as the camera does not have the lense for close-up work that is needed.  I got the nut from StewMac, and I use bone.  It is easy to work with and does not gum up sand paper.  The nut they ship is most likely too large, since they don't pre-cut them.  I used 80 and 220 grit sand paper to sand the nut down, and my Dremel tool with a cutting blade to cut the end off.  There are two variables here you can play with: The height of the nut (action) and the curvature on the back side. (I have no idea what this last comment means.  It was important when I first wrote it. Now?????) On the Yellow guitar, the nut is a shred too short, on the Blue guitar, probably a bit tall.  I  might make this a slide guitar.

You have be fairly careful shaping the nut.  The bottom side has to stay square to the sides.  Also, you want a snug fit in the slot. There is no magic secret here, other than being prepared to throw a few nuts away.

The next step are the tuners.  I approach this with a bit of treppidation.  I am using Kluson tuners this time.  They fit together very tightly, and if the first one is angled wrong, it could throw everything off.  On the Yellow guitar I used Schaller Mini-Lockers, and they do not fit together so tightly, so there was a margin of error.

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Dec 11, 2002

I put in the Kluson style tuners yesterday.  Not as bad as I had thought it would be.  Actually much easier that I expected.  The key is to get the first one square: after that, since they all interlock, the rest will also be square.  You can see in one of the photo's above, the headstock with just the guides in.  It now looks very different.

All I need to do now is buff & polish the body, and then put it all together.   Then I can play it.

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Jan 7, 2003

The New Year, and the next step in the process.  Today I started the final sanding process.  StewMac sells a kit with six different grits of very fine sand paper,   two sheets each, that includes a sanding block.  Just dip the sand paper in water to dampen it, not flood the guitar, and start sanding/polishing. The water provides both lubrication and thermal protection.  As near as I can tell, when all the scratches look the same size, it is time to move on to the next finer grit.  About 5 minutes of sanding per grit.  No pictures here, because my camera just ain't good enough to show any detail. 

The next step is the buffing and polishing, making the scratches even smaller and finer. 

I think that I made one FUBAR that is too late to recover from.  I think that I was supposed to use some wood grain filler on the Ash body before finishing.  I didn't and the back is starting to develop some pitting.  Looks like crap, but does not affect playability or tone.  But I won't forget on Orange.

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14 Jan, 2003 (early in the day)

Today I finished the sanding and the polishing.  I got the finishing supplies thru StewMac.  The sandpaper is from a company called Micro Surface, and I have no idea who the polishing compounds are from.  One thing on the sandpaper: These guys have a different approach to numbering the grit on their papers, and they have a chart somewhere on their web page. 

Anyways.... I used thru the finest grit of the sandpaper, and then used, in order, the Medium, Fine, and Swirl Remover polishing compounds.  I put the pad in my power drill and used a low speed and light pressure.  Worked very well.  You can't tell from photo's, but there are far fewer and smaller scratches.  The only thing that happened that I can not explain is that the finish is cracking a little bit around the holes to mount the bridge to.  Hmmmm.......

Later in the day

Well I cheated.  I decided to put the PUPs in instead. Thought that I would get to the pots and switch also, but ran out of time and light.  And learned a lesson along the way.  What I learned is this: The PUPs in a Tele are supposed to mount to something, like the pickguard or the bridge.  Well, I don't use pickguards on my guitars that I build, because Idon't like the way they look and ruin the look of a good wood.  So I mounted the neck PUP to the guitar it self, and the bridge PUP to the mounting plate.  But I had to figure that one out.  Took me a while of trying to mount it to the body directly to catch the clue.  The bridge that I am using on this is the 6-saddle piece from StewMac.

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15 Jan 03.

Minor set back today.  I cut the grooves in the nut too close together.  The spacing, on my Taylor, is 3/64" from the edge of the nut to the first string, then 21/64" between strings.  I cut 11/64".  Oh well.  I will do it next week.  The total is 212/64".  The end result is that I am off by 1/64".  I can live with that.

 

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The next phase is to finish the nut, and then put it all together.

11 Feb 03

Today I got the mounting piece for the bridge PUP.  Just what I asked for, and at the right price: FREE. (Thanks to Matt Ellis and his machine shop)  The only challenge was that the holes for the PUP were a little too wide, but I drilled out what I needed to.  Only to discover that I do not have the screws I need to hold this thing together.  Oh well.  I will make my second Home Depot trip of the day tonight, after I pick up my daughter.

This is a standard pickguard.

 

The picture on the left is what my friend made for me, the picture on the right is the PUP (Kinman AVN) mounted in the bracket.  You can see the extra hole in the mounting piece.  Not too bad, seeing as how I did not pay for it.  But this leads to an interesting question: Can I build a telecaster using tune-a-matic and build a mounting piece of similar design for the bridge PUP? If so, then I could use a rolling bridge and a Bigsby.  Hmmmm.......

Then it should come together pretty fast.  One thing that I have learned is that if I have all the pieces on hand, I can stain, finish, fit, and complete a guitar in 2 weeks, including 1 week of letting the finish dry before buffing it out.  But getting all the pieces lined up is a bi*&ch.

I did not touch the nut today.  Tomorrow if I get the rest of it together.

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12 Feb, 03

A major leap forward!! Yea!

I got the pickguard in, and all of the electronics attached, and the neck on.   YeeHah!  Not with out trouble, but no major problems.

Just the guitar with the bridge PUP mounted in place.  I love the reddish tones in the wood, but only at certain angles, and only in the photo.

The control cavity, with the "stuff" in it.

Pots, switch, and PUPs mounted where they belong.  I almost did not route out enough of the control cavity for the pots, as I almost forgot to account for the Nitro lacquer depth.  But barely.....

Guitar with neck.  No strings or nut.  Next week.  Sitting in the baby stroller.  Great place for it.

I made one boo-boo.  When I went to do up one of the neck screws, I had the drill on Reverse, not Forward.  So when I went zap, the drill jumped and landed on the body, doing the damage you see here, bottom center.  Oh well.  Its a relic mark!   I learned something else.  I have a Makita battery powered drill, and setting #3 for the gear is the right way to go.

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19 Feb 03

Well, I got the nut finished, the strings on, and........  NOTHING!   Argh!!!!!!!  The guitar is in the shop awaiting an expert who knows what they are doing.

I cut the slots in the nut wrong.  I went over the math many times, and then realized that 1/4" spacing * 7 = 1/75".  But that is wrong.  The two end strings should be much closer to the edge of the nut/fret board than 1/4".   So that nut went in the trash, and I did another one.  My luthier has a plastic template showing how to space the strings, supposedly from StewMac.  This is a much easier way to do things, even though the PUPs still don't work.  Intuition leads me to believe that it is something simple, since they are Kinman PUPs and I followed the directions correctly (I think), but obviously I did not.

If anybody knows where I might find the nut slot template refered to above, I would appreciate it.  I have tried StewMac and LMII with no luck.

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28 Feb 03

On the nut groove guide, I found it at Schatten Designs. It should be on its way.

The big news is: The Blue Guitar has strings on it. And it sounds pretty nice.  I did something really wrong on the electronics, plus I forgot to put in a bridge ground, like I was aware of this?  It turns out that when you rear rout, you need a bridge ground, and you need to ground the switch.   Now I understand.

    I apologize for the pictures.  Neither is very good.  So what do I have left to do? The knobs and switch doo-hickey.  I also need to swap out the bridge.   Apparently it is a cheap Asian one that is not very good.  I do have a Fender bridge, and I will put that on.  But it plays.

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4 Mar 03

I did it.  And I did not screw anything up.  Miracle of miracles.  I swapped out the bridge for a vintage Tele bridge.  Went well.  Then I added knobs and the swtich tip.  And it works.  The bridge was so bad that I had to take a pair of cutters and cut the screws holding the saddles.  Very sad.

  The whole guitar, and nothing but.

  A close up of the body.  You can sort of tell that then knobs are blue topped.   The shop did not have any that went up to 11, so I went with blue. Now it is done, and just needs to be played.

Next is to finish the Orange Guitar, then the Walnut Guitar, and the Resonator guitars.   Then... Who knows?

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4 Oct, 2005

This is the beginning of the mods to Blue. They are:

  1. Change the bridge from the 6 saddle Fender bridge to a 3 saddle Glendale bridge.
  2. Cut out the back of the Glendale bridge so that I can mount a Bigsby behind it.
  3. Change the PUPs from the Kinmans to, probably, Seymour Quarter Pounders, with coil tapping

So the first thing that I have to present is the cutting up of the Glendale bridge.

This is what it looked like before I messed with it.

Here is my work space.  Why the water?  Cutting metal generates heat, and I wanted a way to cool the bridge down.

I did this using a Dremel tool.  I used a cutting disk and cut through the metal.   One thing: You will need at least 2 disks as they are not very robust and the disks wear rapidly.

All the stuff cut away that I wanted removed, before cleaning.

And all cleaned up.  I am not a metal worker, so the job is probably not as clean as it should be.  But.... I do what I can.

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7 Oct., 2005

Today I received, and mounted, the Bigsby.  Finally.  Here are the pix.

The first thing you need to do is get the tail piece lined up to the neck.  So what I did was put some strings on the guitar, and then I weighted them down with water bottles.  It provided enough weight, but was light enough that I could still manage everything.

I used blue 3M painter tape to protect my finish, and I marked my drill spots.  I drilled the holes and screwed down the Bigsby.  Before removing the tape.  No harm done.  I did learn one thing that I had probably forgotten.  When Warmoth does a semi-hollow, the end of the guitar is hollow too, not just the sides. Fortunately, there is enough wood to grab on.

I had to grind away a bit more of the bridge.  It needs to be much closer to the size & shape of the screw head than I originally had it.  Since I did not want to remove and unwire the bridge, I did the work with the bridge still on the body.  To protect the body from hot metal, I taped and papered over the thing like you see in an operating room.

After the additional grinding.

All done and strung up, ready to play again.  I need to set the saddle heights and re-intonate, but that is pretty simple.

 

Lessons I learned:

Please  Email Me  if you have any questions or comments