I gained a few spare, precious minutes today while my work laptop restored from backup, and that gave me the chance to finally get back to some guitar building - if only briefly. With the increase in weight that the Ash body of my new MKA-2 Mosrite build has gained over the original basswood, I have been mulling over a few simple body cuts. At the risk of turning the MK-2 into a strat (well almost) one obvious solution was to add a tummy cut and an arm rest to the signature Ventures Mk II shape.
Not having ever attempted something like this before, I was a little hesitant, but really how hard could it be? With my trusty rasp and half-round bastard file I decided to find out. After free-handing the cuts with a pencil (using a ruler only for the edge of the arm rest on the front face of the guitar) it was in at the deep end with the rasp. The wood came away easily (a little too easily!) and soon I had the shapes I was after. It was then on to the file to clean up the rather deep gauges left by the rasp.
The file cleaned these up fairly well, and also allowed me to smooth over all the transitions. Lastly it was on to the 80 grit sandpaper to finish everything off and remove the remainder of the rasp and file marks. Man, I do love a good piece of 80 grit paper! The solution to all life's problems.
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| My first ever tummy cut |
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| With an arm rest to go along with it. It still 'aint a strat, is it?? |
All in all I'm very happy with the results. In the end it was a very painless exercise, even for someone as inept at woodworking as myself (yes really). I'm hoping that this guitar will be even nicer to play than my original Johnny Ramone tribute build! Now to get some serious sanding done so I can get on and stain this beautiful Ash body. Stay tuned!
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