The Blue Flower Thinline build thread ...

4114Effects

OK, so as promised, here's a mini build guide for the blue flower thinline. 

I'll start by saying, I'm no luthier, so don't take any of this as the correct way to do it - I work in a small workshop with limited tools, so maybe this will inspire a few to have a go. 

My building journey so far has been partscasters, then a solid body bass guitar, and now this - a little more ambitious. I've still got to make the step to making necks too, maybe one day soon ...

Anyway, here is the guitar in question. I've always wanted a blue flower to match my pink paisley, but find the modern patterns a little gaudy and bright. So I made this ...



There are a few picture steps missing, apologies. I was just taking pics for my reference, rather than planning an in-detail guide. 

I'm lucky enough to have a laser cutter at work, so all the templates were drawn in Illustrator and cut from 8mm clear perspex. Below is the template for the chambering, pickups and neck pocket. I've left plenty of excess around the body to help prevent the router tipping when following the template. You can also see there are two screw holes - one under where the bridge will be and one under the pickguard - I've kept these holes common to all the templates, so everything should align correctly.  Here's the template on a poplar body blank.




First thing to do is remove a lot of the material from the chambers - makes it a lot easier for the router to do what it needs. I use a pillar drill with depth stop to keep the depth consistent and a large-ish forstner bit. 




Next the chambers are routed with a flush bearing router bit. I actually use a small Makita laminate trimmer style router rather than a large plunge. I find it much easier to control, although you can see where I still managed to tilt it and gouge the body. This will be hidden under the top though, so no drama really.

 I took another pass after this to remove the holes the drill bit point left. 



Next I had a little go at the F-holes. Drill bits first then join with a coping saw before cleaning with files and sandpaper. Routing may have been cleaner here, but I didn't have a bit small enough. 



Bot of progress below. You can see the second perspex template with f-hole and bridge and neck bolt locations.



After rough cutting the outline of top and guitar I glue the top on (not pictured, but just imagine lots of clamps and a large amount of Gorilla woodglue) I begin to rout the outline of the guitar in several shallow passes. I use a top bearing bit to go over half way, then switch to a longer bottom bearing and flip the body over to finish. 



You can see the first of the passes here. It's better practice to cut closer to the outline before routing, but my jigsaw isn't the best and the blade wanders vertically, so I leave a good margin for error.



Nearly finished ...



And done. You can see the size of router I use, seems to do the job very well. Any imperfections in the body edge are more likely my shoddy technique!



I missed the pic where I routed for the binding. I use a router bit with a smaller  flush bearing  - just set to the right depth and run it round, leaves a nice edge.

I then switched back to the larger template to route the pickup cavities and neck pocket. Also forgot to take pics of this. 

Next I gave the whole body a spray of silver, you'll see why next. 





The flower graphics are printed on a clear self-adhesive film, which is overlaid on the silver then trimmed round the edges. Original paisley and flower was a metallic sheet, so this gives roughly the same effect. 

The graphics were made using a floral pattern I found on the net, which I then converted to vector so I could change the colours and scale to any size. The colours I chose to be similar to the original blue flower design, but a little more muted. 

Here's it applied to the body.


 
The biding on the top really helps hide the edge of the film meeting the paint - it was a lot harder to try bury the edge on the rear of the guitar. 

4114Effects

Next the pickguard. I bought a blank sheet and drew the guard in Illustrator, before laser-cutting. 





A little test-fit with the parts. The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice that the guitar now has a P90 neck pickup - I changed my mind towards the end of the build, so I laser-cut another template to enlarge the cavity. This also gives the advantage of being able to switch pickguards and go back to traditional tele neck pickup if I need to.

And ... that's all the pics I took I'm afraid. Next steps were to spray the guitar in lake placid blue nitro, including the edge burst, glue the binding on, spray everything clear, leave a while and then wire up. Pics of how she looks here: https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/189214/ngd-my-take-on-a-blue-flower-thinline

Any questions please ask!

Wazmeister

Fascinating ! Keep em coming.

axisus

Great thread! Really interesting. You should totally make a neck, if you can do all that stuff you can make a neck as well. There's nothing more satisfying that making the whole guitar. I just took the plunge and dived in about 5 years ago, and the neck was nothing like as hard as I imagined. Done 6 now.

Is it possible to get templates made up at your work and if so what sort of charge? I'm just about to knock up templates for a jazz pickup and a precision pickup. It's a job I don't particularly like. I have drawn up vector files of them.

usedtobe

Nice one! Looks great!

4114Effects

axisus said:

Great thread! Really interesting. You should totally make a neck, if you can do all that stuff you can make a neck as well. There's nothing more satisfying that making the whole guitar. I just took the plunge and dived in about 5 years ago, and the neck was nothing like as hard as I imagined. Done 6 now.

Is it possible to get templates made up at your work and if so what sort of charge? I'm just about to knock up templates for a jazz pickup and a precision pickup. It's a job I don't particularly like. I have drawn up vector files of them.

Certainly is - drop me a PM and we'll discuss.