Scratch Pine Toronado: Body Finish Do-over

Due to a catastrophic clear coat fail, the scratch Toronado build languished in the corner of the man-cave.  After a hiatus of almost 12 months, I've finally gotten around to resurrecting it. I couldn't rightly abandon my first (and only!) scratch body build, now could I?

The cause of this build's untimely demise was yet another issue with Acrylic as a finish. Once my current builds are done I vow never again to cross Acrylic's dark path! Everything seems OK with an acrylic finish until you try to assemble the thing. But, as soon as you screw into the acrylic, chances are it will lift from the surface in a bubble and you'll hurl the thing across the room. And it seems to be worse the thicker the clear coats are. Grrrrr! Maybe poly will serve me better in the future.

Anyway after dusting the body off I sanded it back completely, added a whole new coat of black dye, and got the Tru-Oil going. After 5 coats things are looking good already. I didn't apply the dye as darkly this time around, opting for more of a trans-black look. The pine grain is standing out nicely although the colour is looking a little blotchy. That's to be expected with pine, and truth be told I'm not that fussy.

Lots of grain in the pine to see, but some blotchy patches too.

Honestly, any variation in the finish is good with me; whether it's beautiful grain or colour blotches. I'm not even sure whether I'll even bother getting the body up to a full gloss this time around. I'll just keep applying layers of TO until I'm happy, but I'm kinda digging the satin oiled look the early layers of Tru-Oil give. I might leave the shiney to the chrome and pickguard for this bad boy.

The Toronado is a really nice shape, am I right?

I gotta say, coming back to this build I forgot how much I love this body shape. It's a little Tele, little Jazzmaster, and a little Jaguar-esque all mixed into one. I think after this one is done I'll get on and start another, this time maybe just in a simple Amber or Yellow. I will have to start from "scratch" again though as my MDF template is ruined.

Scratch Pine Toronado: Wet Sanding and Polishing

Well, after putting the final touches on my Johnny Ramone Mosrite build (and loving the results!), it was time for me to get back to my scratch build - the good old pine Toronado. Now, there have been a few little issues with this build ever since I began on the clear coats - suffice to say that  

--- Tru-Oil is not at all a good idea under acrylic clear coats ---

The main problem is that the acrylic clear coats, whilst not reacting with the Tru-Oil in any way shape or form, simply do not bond to it or find any purchase in the wood's surface. The result is that the slightest bump is enough to make the acrylic lacquer bubble - to just lift straight off the surface. Talk about a pisser! Due to this little setback, in previous weeks I've been quite reticent to get back to this build. However, with the Mosrite put to bed I have vowed to finish it, no matter what the final state. It is my first ever scratch build after all and I'm keen to see it completed!

And so, with the acrylic clear coats applied and well and truly cured, I wet sanded the entrie body with first 1500 and ten 2000 grit sand paper before applying Meguiars Ultimate Compound. The resulting shine was well worth the sore shoulders.

The final step was the application of Meguirs Scratch 2.0X to improve the shine even further.

All in all the body is looking good. There are a couple of small places where I've dinged the surface and caused a bubble in the lacquer, but overall I'm pretty happy with the results. I dont know how I will go when it comes time to put the harware on (I'm especially worried about the string ferrules creating bubbles in the lacquer at their edges) but I guess I'll have to just suck it and see. Either way this project is going to get completed, no matter what!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Pickguard

So I got in this morning and completed the routing of the red perloid pickguard for the Toronado. Not an amazing result, but I gave it my best and it's not bad for a first attempt with sausage fingers and poor router skills. Hopefully the next one will be better - I have to remake my MDF templates for both body and template so that they more closely correspond. If you don't look too closely, the end result still looks pretty good.

I've got two coats of acrylic clear on the body now. Just a few more coats and then I can leave it to cure. Probably 2 more days worth of spraying if the fine weather continues. She's coming along!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Red Perloid

A sheet of red perloid scratchplate material arrived in the mail today. I got straight in and attempted to fashion a scratchplate for the Toronado. It wasn't easy and the results reflect that. Still first attempt and all that. What do you think of the colour?

When I pulled the sheet out of the envelope I was pretty non-plussed. Now it is growing on me. I think it will look great with the humbuckers sitting in it. I was after a shoe-gazer look to this guitar and I think the red perloid and black certainly delivers...

Scratch Pine Toronado: 4 Layers of Tru-Oil

After getting the body dyed black with Colortone dye, I have been steadily laying down coats of Tru-Oil in an effort to pop the grain in this pine body before spraying it with Acrylic lacquer. I gotta say, the combination of black dye and Tru-oil is truly spectacular. Definitely a combination to explore in more depth in future builds.

Basically the body is ready for clear coats now. I'm just waiting for a fine day with no wind so that I can start spraying. Stay tuned!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Sanding for Black Dye

With all the woodworking finally completed on the Toronado scratch build, it was time to start on the final finishing. That meant sanding - a lot of sanding. With the end grain in particular sporting some vicious machining marks, I started at 180 grit and worked them all out. A few dings needed filling with Timbermate along the way but I took these in my stride. It was my first attempt at routing a body after all. Sanding out my own machining marks made me realise that I haven't been sanding nearly enough on my previous kit builds. I now know what those light white patches on the end grain actually are - machining marks (or sanding scratches) filled with saw dust!!

After the 180 grit I moved up to 240 grit, and gave the body another good going over. I again concentrated on the end grain, and the results were smooth and clean. After the 240 grit sanding it was time to apply the first coat of black dye. The aim of this dye pass was to act as a trace - to get into the grain and highlight it. I'll be sanding the top layer back off when it's dry, and hopefully the dye will stay in the grain and accentuate it nicely.

It took a little while to saturate the wood with dye, but I used quite a dark mix and it's looking really nice. What I would like to achieve is a nice dark finish, but with wood grain still showing through as even darker black. I think I'm definitely movingin that direction. Here's what the first pass looked like after I finished applying:

The dye has blotched just a touch, as pine is want to do, but I think all-up it's looking pretty awesome. My other option for a black body, if all else fails, is to spray the body with a solid acrylic paint - but I want to avoid this if at all possible. From the looks of the first dye pass, I have made the right decision going with the dye. From here on out it can only look better and better!

You can see that the wood grain is already standing out in the background, giving a nice "trans-black" effect. After a few more passes, taking the top coat off with 360 grit sandpaper,  the grain should be highlighted nicely and the overall colour will be dark enough to start the clear coats. The plan at the moment is to then apply a 3 or 4 coats of Tru-Oil to soak into the grain and enhance it further before spraying with Acrylic clear.

Yesterday I ordered a sheet of pearloid red pickguard material to go with the black, so I can't wait to see what the two look like together. If the red is no good, I also have white perloid and tortoiseshell as options also. I'm hoping for a real shoe-gazer look similar to (but even better than) this:

Awesome huh? :)

Scratch Pine Toronado: Neck, Bridge & String Ferrules

Well, I finally got the woodworking completed on my very first scratch body today - it's all ready to start the final finishing! To get it there, I had to do all the tiresome drilling tasks - you know, the ones where you have to be accurate and have a steady hand. Not my forte, naturally.

The first task was to get the neck bolts drilled and installed. With a nice tight neck joint this was a no-brainer. The holes were drilled, (after checking the drill bit diameter in a scrap of pine) and the neck was screwed in-place through the plate. I used a few drops of boiled liseed oil to lubricate the neck bolts as they went in.

After the neck was attached and tightened down, the next step was to position the bridge to get correct string travel down the neck. With the two E strings threaded through the bridge and clamped at the headstock, it was just a matter of moving the bridge from side to side until the strings aligned correctly up the neck and the desired distance from the edge of the neck was achieved for each string.

With the bridge holes marked, drilled and screwed home, the string-through positions could be marked and drilled. After marking with a punch, I tried to drill the holes with my el-cheapo drill press. I quickly realised that the drill press doesn't have the clearance to drill in the centre of the guitar body :(. And so it was back to the hand drill to finish the holes.

The first set of small string-size holes were OK, if a little uneven. I tried my best to keep the drill upright in both dimensions but unfortunately one or two of the holes were slightly off by the time they travelled 45mm to the back of the body.

With the string holes drilled, the wider ferrule-size holes needed to be drilled from the back. When doing these I tried my best to get them all lined up again. I was partially successful. The ferrules will be almost in line (not bad for a hand drill) but not perfect. Damn my el-cheapo tools! I was also amazed at the amount of tear-out I got drilling these ferrule holes. Despite the fact that I used a Brad-Point drill bit, the soft pine just didn't want to cooperate.

Hopefully the lip of the chrome ferrules will hide the majority of the tear-out, but I'm sure that some (for example the 3rd from the left) will still be visible. All in all I'd have to say that this experiment in string-ferruling has been a bit of a fucking disaster :(. I will definitely need to fill the tear out with Timbermate before even thinking about staining. The uneven lineup I can't do anything about. Just chalk it up to experience I guess and try do better on the next build!

Anyway, the body is now ready for a thorough sanding before staining or painting (I haven't decided which yet). On the end-grain especially, there are some major machining marks which will need to come out. I'm hoping that I can handle most of these with the random orbital sander, so it wont be long before I'm ready for some colour! Stay tuned folks...

Scratch Pine Toronado: Routing Complete

Today I finally got all the routing completed on the Pine Toronado scratch body build. The first step was to route out the control cavity to create a below-pot thickness of 6.5mm. I managed to do this (just) using my 12mm router bit from Stewmac. For the shape I used the Stewmac templates for control cavity and corresponding cover.

Both routes came out really nicely in the end, although to get the depth of the cover took me a few passes - incrementing by tiny degrees each time. Given that I'm only going to have a single tone and volume pot on this build, the cavity is about double the size it needs to be. It'll cost be a bomb in shielding, but for a first routing attempt I'm pretty stoked with how it came out.

Using the same templates from Stewmac, I also created a control cover from 1-ply black that fits the cavity pretty nicely. It isn't *perfect*, but when you have to grind down the shape on the bench wheel to fit, it never is (for me anyway). It's still the best fit I've ever achieved on a custom control cover and I'm super stoked with it!

The last job was to round over the edges of the body with my 6mm rounding bit from Cutting Edge Saws in Sydney. This was very painless indeed (I was amazed just how painless) and although it needs a little tidying with 180 grit sandpaper where it nears the neck cavity, the rounded edge looks really great.

So there you are! A guitar body from scratch, to a level that I would call "build-ready". That is to say, what you would normally receive in a commercial guitar kit! I'm pretty chuffed with myself I don't mind telling you. There's a few dings in the soft pine that will need filling (where the soft pine has been treated non-too-kindly), but that's a mistake I wont repeat next time. It's a great body shape and is going to look awesome when it's finished!

Before I can start doing the aforementioned finishing though, I still need to get the bridge positioned correctly so that the string-through holes can be drilled and the string ferrules installed. It's the last job before sanding and dying (painting?) can begin in earnest!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Pickguard Mockup

Only a little progress on the Scratch build this weekend. I'm waiting on a couple of router bits to allow me to route the control cavity deep enough, and to round over the edges of the body. Until these come, there isn't much to be going on with. Despite this, I was able to decide on pickup placement and get my pickguard mock-up completed.

I'm really happy with the way it's looking. I really do think the Toronado is such a great body shape - no idea why Fender discontinued it. I could have built a Telecaster for my first scratch project but I'm so glad I went this way instead.

I've ordered some tortoiseshell material to create the final pickguard. I'm thinking of going with a black dye body finish, so hopefully these colours will go well together. With a little luck, I'm going to have a real shoe-gazer at the end of all this!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Routing the Neck Pocket

A knock on my door at 9:00am heralded the arrival of my latest Stewmac loot - two router bits, extra bearings and a slew of routing templates. Joy!

So after a nominal amount of wage earning, I snuck into the workshop to get humming on my scratch Toronado body.

Now I wont say that everything went exactly to plan. I made a couple of epic errors in the few hours I spent shaping and routing the body, but in the end it all came together.

First step, I traced the body shape on to my pine blank and endeavoured to cut the shape out with my el-cheapo band saw. When the blade snapped (yes snapped) I realised that I really didn't know what I was doing. Apparently you can't use a band saw like a jigsaw?? Who knew! And so I fell back to said jigsaw to try and finish cutting out the body. Turns out the jigsaw blade is 1mm too short for the 45mm body blank. But, with a bit of brute force I managed to get the body roughly cut out.

Second step saw me finishing off the body cut using my body template and the router, using the 1/2" template following bit from Stewmac. All went well until the router reached it's maximum depth just over half way down the body.

Time to flip the body over! This is when I discovered my second error - way too much double sided tape on the template. Christ! It took me 15 minutes and a whole lot of swearing to extract the template from the body. With this done, I got the template *almost* identically placed on the back and then routed the rest of the body. Awesome!

Third step was to take the mostly shaped body and use the desk sander and the slap wheels to even out the sides of the guitar where the template didn't quite line up. No problems here. In no time the sides of the blank looked very straight indeed!

Fourth step was to route the neck pocket!! Finally the moment of truth. Firstly I stuck my bespoke neck pocket template to the body (this time using only 2 small pieces of tape!!).

To make sure the template didn't move, I also made sure one of the clamps held it in place in addition to the tape. Looking at my previous Telecaster builds, I calculated that the fretboard should clear the body by approximately 9mm. For my neck, this left a pocket of depth 17.5mm. And so, out came the 1/2" router bit again and the pocket depth was achieved in 3 passes.

All looked perfect! But did the neck fit? Like a dream baby! I'm so happy with how the pocket came out - the neck fits nice and snug. Should sound fantastic when it's all bolted together!

 

Here's how she's looking so far. I'm really happy with how this build is coming together - especially since at least 3 times today I thought that the project had died in the arse due to a) very poor tool choice or b) operator error.

Now all I need to do to finish this phase of the project is to a) route out the pickup and control cavities, b) rasp out an arm bevel and then c) get the edges rounded over. To be honest I'm not sure I have a deep enough router bit for part a) so I may need to spend a few more bucks on tools before I'm done. Stay tuned!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Ready for Routing

Well, I'm still waiting for my router bits and cavity templates to arrive (come on DHL!!). However, in the meantime I have finished sanding the body blank ready for routing. It's really smooth now and looking pretty damn awesome! It's about as perfect as I can get it without a thicknesser. Here's how it went..

Step 1: I started with 40 grit paper, sanding across the grain in an effort to flatten the individual pieces down to an equal height. The 40 grit paper took the wood down pretty quickly, but even still it took about 5 sheets per side to get it close to flat.

Step 2: I continued with 40 grit paper, but this time with the grain. The object here was to remove the machining marks from the previous step. After 2 sheets per side, I went on to 80 grit paper to remove the rest of the 40 grit machining marks. After 2 more sheets of 80 grit per side I was satisfied.

Step 3: Finally, I moved up to 180 grit paper, applying 2 sheets per side to get the blank really nice and smooth.

Pretty schmick huh? You'd agree if you could run your hand over it ;). The grain is looking pretty nice I think. Hopefully I can do it justice when I stain.  Anyway, It looks so good that I'm getting pretty nervous now that I'm gonna ruin all my good work with a runaway router. I guess I'll just have to wait and see I suppose!

The router is a pretty mean beastie by all accounts (I've never ever used one before), so let's hope I can bend it to my will. As soon as the router bits arrive I plan to do some test cuts on scrap before attempting the neck pocket. Stay tuned!

Scratch Pine Toronado: Pickguard Template

While I wait patiently for my router bits and cavity templates from Stewmac, I though I'd have a go at transferring the pickguard from the pdf design to a thin MDF sheet ready for shaping the pickguard material. It was pretty straightforward; involving pretty much the same procedure as with the body template.

First I cut out the pdf on to A4 paper and stuck it together with sticky tape. Using the neck template and the bridge positioning distances calculated from the Stewmac fret position calculator, I oriented this paper template between the neck cutout and the bridge. This gave me the first hurdle to overcome - the hard-tail bridge that I've selected for this build sits further back than the stock Toronado bridge referenced in the design. This meant that the pickguard design needed some freehand alteration to move the bridge surround lower, and to shift the side edges out and down to meet this new surround placement.

With the alteration made, the second step was to glue the paper template onto the 4mm MDF and cut roughly around it with the band-saw. This done, the bench sander allowed me to smooth off the majority of the convex and concave curves. The tight corners around the bridge and in the neck cavity proved the most fiddly, requiring a fine curved file to slowly remove material until the desired shape was reached.

Finally, the job was done and the pickguard template looks pretty good:

I'll have to wait for my templates from Stewmac before I can add the pickup routes in the pickguard. This will provide it's own set of challenges, but I'm ready and raring to go!

Scratch Pine Body: MDF Templates

Today I roughed out some MDF templates that will be used to shape the Toronado body and route out the pickup and control cavities. I started by printing the pdf template over multiple A4 pages using Adobe PDF Reader and sticking them together with tape. This was then cut out and pasted on to 12mm MDF using spray on adhesive. This allowed me to roughly cut around the guitar shape using my el-cheapo bandsaw.

After the bandsaw, I used the bench sander to finish off the convex curves on the sides of the body template. I'm very happy with the resulting edges of the template - nice clean lines with which to route the final pine body shape.

For the tight concave curves, the banch sander was not an option. Instead, I used two sizes of Josco Brumby flap wheels which, when attached to the chuck of my even more el-cheapo drill press, allowed me to make quick work of them. This completed the smoothing of the template sides.

Lastly, the pickup and switch cavities were added to the template. This was achieved using the drill press to create the rounded corners, the jigsaw to join them up, and the flap wheels to clean and smooth the sides. I opted for creating a "swimming pool" type cavity for the pickups this time around. I'll be relying on the pickguard to cover the cavity similar to a strat.  As my experience with the router is very limited (ie none at all), the easier I make the routing on myself the better.

With the body template created, the next template required (and to be honest the most important), was the neck pocket. To rough this out, I first consulted the (printed) PDF template to get a feel for the overall neck cavity required. The neck was then placed on top of this PDF template to determine how the neck heel compared with the template, and how the neck would be oriented on top of the neck base.

This was traced to get the rough shape of the very heel of the neck, and the resulting cavity was roughed out using the drill press and jig saw. Once shaped, the neck was fitted into the cavity and refined using successive applications of the bastard file until a tight fit was obtained.

I'm still not sure if what I am doing is correct, or whether it will end in utter disaster; especially where the neck pocket is concerned. I guess I just need to keep on going and see how it turns out. I'm a bit skeptical that in my hands the bastard file has produced a neck pocket template with sides that are sufficiently straight, clean and even. It's a tight fit and all, but now I'm worried that the neck isn't going to be straight with respect to the rest of the guitar. I don't know how to alleviate this worry other than to forge ahead and see what happens...

Scratch Pine Body: Fender Toronado!

Shopping for a decent body shape for this pine scratch build, I happened upon the Google docs Guitar Plans Collection. Here you'll find plans for every guitar body shape under the sun! Since the neck I am going to use is a cheap Chinese Telecaster neck, a Fender shape was always on the cards. Rather than make yet another Telecaster, however, I opted for a body with a similar size and neck pocket but with more of an alt shoe-gazer feel. Enter the Fender Toronado!

It's kinda Jazzmaster'ish, with its large top horn and small lower nub, and I really like that look. It's a shape that I personally associated with "Vintage" looking guitars, even though the Tele, amongst others, is a much older design. Anyway, the plans from Google docs include the body shape, pickguard and neck pocket so I should be able to use it for all my routing and cutting requirements.

After 24 hours, the clamps came off the body today and it was on to the 40 grit sandpaper to get the front and back of the body levelled up - basically what professional luthiers, or even sane individuals, might do with a thicknesser. I've got one of those fucking annoying orbital sanders with the little bar clamps either end. Do you think the paper would stay fixed in there for more than a minute at a time?? Nup!

Consequently it's taking an age to get the body blank level(ish) but, with dogged determination, I'm persevering. $400 for a cheap thicknesser? Believe me, it's looking cheaper by the minute ;) ! Despite my little whinge, the results are very promising! The blank is looking nice (and piney) and is just wide enough to accomodate the Tornado body shape.

I have printed out the plans (downloaded as pdf) and am in the process of sticking them to 12mm MDF so that I can cut out templates for routing. I'll let you know more about how that goes in the next installment. Stay tuned!

Scratch Pine Body: Making a Cheap Blank

With a few kits under my belt, I am really feeling the call of the scratch build. While making my own neck still seems like a very tall ask, shaping and routing a body from scratch isn't beyond the borders of possibility. How hard could it be? Well, I aim to find out!

Now tone wood is generally expensive, and a pre-made body bank can set you back anywhere from $100 and up. Even the local lumber yard wants nearly $100 for the timber required to create a really nice 3-piece blank in mahogany, ash or Tasmanian blackwood. While Maple was the cheapest I was quoted, coming in at around $60 for the equivalent of a body blank, thats still a lot of money to go throwing away on a failed attempt.

And so, enter the pine body - a cheap way to earn my luthier chops without breaking the bank. Bunnings stock a 1.2m length of finished pine 45mm x 90mm that's just perfect for making 4-piece 45mm deep bodies. Just two of these 1.2m lengths, at $9 a pop, is all you need for a standard body blank - that less than $20 people! Much more within my comfort zone for learning this black art.

And so off to Bunnings I tromped and got me some pine - enough for two bodies. In no time each piece was halved into 600mm lengths and ready to be glued together with Titebond - the king of wood glues.

I slathered each side of each piece with Titebond - enough to drown a rather large horse - and then got the pieces all clamped together with 46mm clamps.

After I was engulfed (yet not consumed!) by the ensuing wave of escaping Titebond, I did a little cleanup and now must wait a couple of days for the glue to dry. Unfortunately I only have 4 clamps, so the second body will have to wait.

Once the glue dries, the next step will be squaring off the ends with my new (el-cheapo) bandsaw, and flattening off the top and bottom with 40 then 80 grit sandpaper. I'm really excited to see how this turns out, although I'm well aware that this is the *easy* part of the process. after this I'm going to have to think seriously about where this thing is headed!

A big thanks to Warren Gaull from 4D Guitars for suggesting the pine scratchy to me. You've stared me on the long road to luthier awesomeness Wokka!