Finished Pics! C18Q1 Swift Lite Version 2

Andyjr1515

This project is still in early stages at the moment, but is planned as an evolution of the recently completed 'Swift Lite' below



It's a commission from my brother-in-law's partner, Jane.  Female and new to guitar, Jane ticks two of the boxes of the type of players I had in mind when I was designing this.  Players who might appreciate a guitar that sounds good and looks good but doesn't weigh the equivalent of a sack of coal .  Those types of players include: young players; learners; old players; female players; anyone else who has asked the question 'So tell me again...just WHY are guitars so heavy?'

Will it be a copy?

No

But it will be an evolution sharing many of the same design features.  This is what I have in mind (actually, with one more tweak to incorporate):


Some of the changes, which to be honest are using this new build as a test bed, are simply incorporating my own thoughts and feedback from regular players who've borrowed my own Swift Lite to try out and are just about playability for a lead player.  This includes the slightly further back cutaways to allow a full thumb anchor at the top cutaway and full access to bend at the 22nd frets of the lower cutaway:


The other change you can see is that the top horn is longer. 

My own Swift Lite balances perfectly on the strap - but at 5lbs 14oz is still a touch heavier than planned.  The new one is aiming for the original target of 5lbs 8oz max.  My logic is that, if mine balances just right, then any lighter might send it out of balance.  With the top strap button at the 12th fret, this will balance however light the body ends up.

Oh..and this might have some oak in it.

Yes - I know....madness on many levels

More details as I crystallise them

Andy

Andyjr1515

At the same time as I've been getting my head round the project, I've been trying to teach myself how to use Inkscape.   To be honest, I've only just gleaned from forum discussions that such a package exists!

First of all, this is one of the options for the top wood I may be using:



And this below is my first attempt at clipping a photo of the amboyna with the shape designed on the package and overlain with the 25" scale-length component templates taken from a photo of my own Swift Lite prototype.  To a lot of you CAD afficianados I know this is kids stuff, but I'm well, well chuffed with it and the results    :
 






 

Andyjr1515

I got round to having a look at the oak shelf and cut it into body-sized lengths:

It's a bit cupped, so I ran it through the thicknesser first to take the hump off, and then reversed to take the wings off.  Once it was flat and straight, I thicknessed it down to the nominal 25mm starting point:

 

It will be cut into two wings, either side of the neck and is presently around 30mm wider than needed - as such, I will take off the excess from the rhs in this shot, bringing the feature figuring pretty much into the middle.  While the neck will break that feature up - and the back will be scooped -  hopefully there will still be a continuity of figuring showing either side of the neck. 

For oak, it doesn't feel too heavy.  When I cut the excess off, I'll thickness a length of the offcut and compare the weight with a similar blank of the sapele.

The other good news is - do you remember I made a wrong cut on @impmann 's Alembicesque and had to re-make the neck? (below is the remade corrected one)

 

Well - I've still got the original neck.  It's here:

 

It only couldn't be used because I'd already cut the top for Tim's.  And I haven't cut the top yet for Jane's, so I can use it!

  It even has the correct neck angle, etc, etc, already done

impmann

I like the idea of a family of guitars... :-)

Looking good, chap.

Andyjr1515

impmann said:

I like the idea of a family of guitars... :-)

Looking good, chap.

Thanks

Andyjr1515

Soon time to draw the first blood and start cutting wood. 

I've sorted the join line of the amboyna and tweaked the shape a little - actually, this will probably be tweaked 0.5cm wider either side of the centre line, but this is the kind of shape:


This evening I will glue the two halves together and tomorrow, cut out the shape.

Some of you will know that I use the fancy top as the routing template - absolutely not recommended by most builders so I don't encourage you to do likewise.

Andyjr1515

With the amboyna glued up, I ran it through the scroll saw this morning. 

Just has to be the right time for the first mock-up     :

 

Andyjr1515

Added the wenge constructional veneer (2mm) to the back of the Amboyna:


And then got the fretboard radiusing jig out for its second blooding:


  It's not perfect, but nevertheless did get me to this stage in an hour or so rather than a day or so! : 


You can't really see it in this photo, but there's some lovely birdseye on this piece that will pop out when it's had the finish applied

Andyjr1515

I've recategorised this to be my C18Q1!  I was going to do an entry of a shooting board build to try and get my planing and jointing a bit more accurate but I may as well enter this

I didn't think there was a hope in hell of completing it in the quarter but - heck...it might just happen.  It seems to be absolutely buzzing along at the moment

Andyjr1515

Seemed to spend a lot of today down the cellar with routers, band saw, scroll saw, etc, etc but relatively little to show for it!

Most of the work has been getting the neck ready for adding the oak back wings but it's been more about squaring up and getting things flat and parallel rather than anything special to see.

While I was down there, though, I did push my hobby-grade bandsaw to its limit to cut a slice of amboyna offcut for the headstock plate:


...and then get it on the scroll saw to give me the plate ready to glue.  Also added the two small wings on the headstock to give me the required width:


The other thing I've done is drawn the body section full size to work out the convex / concave curves top and back so tomorrow, should be able to cut the two oak panels....

Roland

Andyjr1515 said:

'So tell me again...just WHY are guitars so heavy?'

Andy, I’m really interested in this. Not just the weight issue, but the development of a guitar from basic principles, rather than repeating past designs. It’s already looking very playable.

Andyjr1515

Roland said:

Andyjr1515 said:

'So tell me again...just WHY are guitars so heavy?'

Andy, I’m really interested in this. Not just the weight issue, but the development of a guitar from basic principles, rather than repeating past designs. It’s already looking very playable.

Thanks!

It's certainly an area of interest for me.  What I'm quite intrigued by is which aspects are like they are because, quite frankly, they have been well proven to be the best way of achieving a playable instrument and which aspects are like they are for either factors that used to be true and no longer are, or factors that just happened to be and stuck.

If that makes any sense at all  

Andyjr1515

Roland said:

Andyjr1515 said:

Not just the weight issue, but the development of a guitar from basic principles, rather than repeating past designs. It’s already looking very playable.

And interestingly, with this design having come so far from purely functional requirements, it's interesting that it is morphing into a pretty familiar shape at the moment

Andyjr1515

Roland said:

Andyjr1515 said:

'So tell me again...just WHY are guitars so heavy?'

Andy, I’m really interested in this. Not just the weight issue, but the development of a guitar from basic principles, rather than repeating past designs. It’s already looking very playable.

Further to this, @Roland ; what about this for a revelation.

Putting weight and thickness to one side for a moment, let's just look at body shape.

I started with this, absolutely my own design:


While perfect for me (I made it for myself and - a bit of a surprise - I really, really like this for my style of playing, arthritis issues, etc).
I then lent it to a number of lead guitar players and watched how they played it and what it needed for them.  This included:

• A touch deeper lower cutout for top fret access
  
• A deeper upper cutout to anchor the fretting thumb when bending the top frets (not all, but some players)

I generally play on a strap, but the one thing I would do it I played over my knee more was to move the lower waist back a cm

Jane's version is going to have oak back panels which, however thin, may end up heavier than mine above, which balances just right on the strap.  So I extended the top horn.

This got me to this:

Maybe a bit more generic, but still 'it's own design'

THEN - I marked out the back oak panels...oversize by two or three mm ready to cut:


So...the traditionalists can breathe a sigh of relief.  Because if that doesn't look a teeny bit like a stratocaster, I don't know what does  

The finished guitar will not look at all like a strat, but I find that fascinating and absolutely wouldn't have predicted it.

Andyjr1515

Anyway, enough about design concepts - back to the build

Oak panels cut out:


And the inevitable premature mockup     :

Andyjr1515

With the control chamber cut out, it was time to glue the back panels:




It will need a final flattening before the top is glued on, but pretty flat as glued:


The back will be concave curved as with my own Swift Lite build - you can see how much will be removed from the inner areas of the panels here:



Also tapered the fretboard.  I'm going to try the trick of using fretboard binding with a feature stripe again.  Here's the binding being glued.  The vertical lump of ply is to stop the two cauls from collapsing inwards:

Andyjr1515

From the look of the weather forecast, I'll have plenty of time over the next few days for guitar building!

Just as well, really, because the next part is probably going to take the longest - carving the oak.

I need to get all of the weight I'm intending to remove out of the oak before I put the top on. 

One of those tasks is easy - I must have been daydreaming when I cut the 'LP-Junior' style control chamber hole:


Clearly, regardless of how little is going to fit into this chamber, the larger it is, the more weight will come out.  So I will first cut the largest chamber cover I can from the amboyna (or maybe from the neck laminations) offcuts, and that will be the guide to the largest chamber hole I can cut.
In the meantime, I will start on the concave carve at the back and the hidden lightening chambers in the oak .  The finished cross section will be broadly like this:


There's no best sequence of doing this - if I carve the back first, then holding everything steady while I try and rout and carve the chambers is tricky.  But if I rout and cave the chambers first, I have to absolutely know that I'm not going to break through when I start carving the concave...

I'll have a ponder on that little conumdrum...

In the meantime, I've tapered and bound the fretboard and also rough tapered the neck:


For the binding, as mentioned above I've tried the technique I used on my own Swift Lite of using an acoustic guitar edge binding to make it easier to produce a neat and un-wavy feature line.  It's certainly MUCH easier that trying to glue flat sheets of maple and ebony veneer to the back of the fretboard! :

 

Andyjr1515

Reference the sequence of glue / carve, I've decided to trust arithmetic and scale drawings

Basically, as long as I carve the curves to this full-size template, I shouldn't break through.  Here's hoping!



And so out came the router.  I've left extra thickness where I'm going to do any carving through the layers, scoops or strap button points:


And then - an essential step for the final carve - a template of exactly where those chambers are.  Like when I'm veneering, I just make an impression on sheets of paper.  It does fine.





And finally - what was that mantra about how many clamps you need, again?

 

paulnb57

Looking great Andy!

Andyjr1515

paulnb57 said:

Looking great Andy!

Thanks, Paul  


With the top glued on, time to rout the excess oak.  After too many scary moments with the router, I decided to do it very, very gradually.

Ignore the bearing on this shot - it was the only 1/4" shank bit I had to covered the whole of the back panel depth in one go, so the bearing was running in fresh air.  The key thing is that I used a series of guide rings, so that each cut was 1mm max:


This meant no kicks or catches at all, even round the two horns!  Hooray!!!!!

After the last ring (16mm), it left an excess of 1mm that I then used a conventional top bearing bit to remove, over two runs to achieve the depth:


And there we have it - basically trimmed:


Oak might be a bit of a pig to work with, but there's going to be some interesting grain patterns on the finished guitar:

Andyjr1515

I made a quick profile template for the back carve from the cover of an old A4 writing pad:


Then got to work with my pull-shave.  I agonised before I bought this a few years ago - I'd never seen anyone else use one -  but am SO glad I did!  It's proved useful for many tasks, but for this it's perfect:


It really didn't take all that long to get to this stage:



Then to the top carve.  I will do this over a couple of days.  I like to leave it part complete and come back to it afresh - otherwise you end up not being able to see the wood for the trees to use an appropriate phrase   This is enough for the first stage of the top carve:


Total weight at the moment is 3lbs 13oz with quite a bit of neck wood still to remove.