Stack of Twang: 3x Tele style buids

Corvus

As these are all Tele-ish I might as well lump them together. The Blackguard is mainly a demo for a vintage dealer but will be for sale. Beaten up somewhat based on pics from Blackguardlogs. There'll be a second version of the stripey strawberry T
 And an Esquire but trying a hidden neck pickup. Wanted to try that for ages.

These have taken longer than I hoped but everythings changed, got an overhead/pin router. Had to rebuild it and been making new jigs, get used to using it etc. Also had various issues with templates I bought to quicken these, but turned out be the opposite. May have a moan in a separate thread. Had some duff supplies lately.

Starting on the blackguard then. First off I'm not really interested in being 'vintage correct' to the Nth degree. Good luck to those who like that, all good, just not for me. So anyway we start with 2-piece swamp ash. These literally looked like they were fished from a swamp. Covered in mud, very rough cut & odd sized, had to wire brush them before going anywhere near tools.

The planer is fairly OK at jointing but can't beat the plane, so a couple of mins with the No.7 and we have an invisible join.

My usual cutter struggled with the ash, tearing quite a lot. This below is an ace tool, Stanley (or Record) No.80. Great for surfacing or fixing tearout. It's a scraper in a body basically but you hone it differently. Anyway. I got a Radian surfacer which was almost tear-free.

The 2-inch cutter is much nicer to use on the overhead, and makes a quick and super nice finish.

The blanks match up fairly nicely at the blunt end, less so at the pocket but that's fine:

Corvus

Esquire-

A mate who is also a builder had a body he didn't want so I took it on. 3-pc alder and heaver than I like, and some areas not so great, knots on edges etc. So the top got a few mm skimmed off - the new cutter paid off, zero need to sand. And two pieces of plain maple joined up and glued on. My shooting board looks well battered but still joints tops in a few seconds. While it was in surgery it got lightened somewhat but not fully chambered out. I think it should end up at 7lbs or under.

Pile of bodies, a stack of twang

MattNovak

Looking good Bill, what are the colour schemes?

Corvus

Hi Matt, cheers. The blackguard will be the usual, I was thinking pale blue top and darker body on the Esquire. Was thinking blue for stripey mk2 but not sure, see how that looks nearer the time. If the back turns out nice might go natural on it.

Corvus

Decided to try one of Allan at Catwhisker's pickups in the Esquire, this one is Nocaster spec and arrived in two days! I have some Mojo's ready too but heard positive opinions on Allan's stuff and fancied trying one out

Decided to do both trad-ish ones in maple boards for a change. Here they are with boards/frets/dots on and headstocks thinned.

Also the neck blank for the stripey modern one.

Corvus

The blackguard neck's got a cosmetic skunk stripe and head plug. Both maple/maple necks are 12" radius with d/a truss rods btw. The dowel starts off with a square stick, made roundish with whatever's to hand in the drill. Run it through the steel plate. I went with 3/8" dowel (no idea of the vintage 50s size), so 10mm hole in the steel. You always get a dowel a bit undersized, so the dowel ends up less than 10mm but more than 9.5. Then taper it so it'll be a good fit in a 3/8" hole. The transition is left a bit fat so the whole thing can be flushed off to final shape inc dowel plug.
The hole is just freehand drilled so not sure the shape is quite right/as they were etc..

1/4" dots for the blackguard. Bought a bulk bag from Allparts. Hopeless. Mis-shapen, waisted, many under 6mm let alone 6.35. So ended up making them from plastic rod, just a piece of wood drilled and slot cut so when you clamp the ends the slot closes up and grips the rod in the hole. Flush-cut saw. Tons of dots for loads less money and the right size.

Danielsguitars

Looking good Bill, once you get an overhead router you won't go back, I'd highly recommend the downcut spiral bits from Wealden tools, expensive but well worth it

Corvus

Cheers Darren, I'm liking it so far, takes some getting used to. It's also let me do a couple of new things. The only spiral one I've got is Wealdens 2" for body outlines, that thing's brilliant.

Corvus

The mate who rejected his alder Tele sent me a neck profiling cutter, so I modded a jig to try it out. This thing has three jobs now, truss rod routing, neck profiling, and it lays inside the thicknesser for doing thin lamination pieces (minimum on mine is 3-4mm so helps to raise the bed)

In a couple of minutes we have a rough shaped neck, far from finished, it just saves some donkey work. 

Corvus

Darth likes a three inch cutter

PeteC

Absoluty loving the update.  Some great looking Teles on the way.  Any pics of the new pin router set up ?  

Deadman

Cor blimey Bill. My eyes are popping out of my head here! Lovely skills.

Corvus

You're very kind, gents! Cheers. 
Pete this is the only one I've got at the mo, it's an old Elu with a single-speed body. I think it was the first router made for freehanding in like 1950 or something. Dewalt were still making a copy of the motor up to a few years ago. This dalek itself is probably 80s or 90s. 

Danielsguitars

Corvus said:

You're very kind, gents! Cheers. 
Pete this is the only one I've got at the mo, it's an old Elu with a single-speed body. I think it was the first router made for freehanding in like 1950 or something. Dewalt were still making a copy of the motor up to a few years ago. This dalek itself is probably 80s or 90s. 

I've got one of those round my friends, it's a bit of learning how to get the best out of it and take into account run out etc, we ended up junking that motor and using a trend t11

Corvus

The motor seems tight, bearings are good and collet & chuck OK, the trickiest bit on that score was aligning the pin turrets. I've got a motor speed controller so can tame it a bit if needed so no plans to change the router as yet. Hopefully found a source for collet chuck+collets, the Dewalt ones are out of production. Got a set on the way to get a 1/4" collet setup in there. I don't trust those reduction sleeves.

Corvus

Stripey Mk2

This'll have a maple top, will have to check the stash but there's a speckly streaky one earmarked for it. The main body halves are pear. These were very rough when arrived, more like the top left, pic is after some planing to see what it actually looks like. It's quite dense but very tight-grained, won't need lots of filler.

As a bonus after cleaning up it looks quite nice and seems there is some light flame there. 

The red one's binding was tricky, I'm planning similar but using different materials which I hope will be less hairy.

Corvus

Stripes and blank pics. 9 piece neck inc two veneer layers. A better spindle sander fence setup made these easier to get good

Corvus

One advantage of my body clock trying to revert to being awake all night & sleep in the day is realising at 3am that Mojo Marc's shop might be open... and getting a tron-sized goldfoil ordered on impulse. So that's half the pickup dilemma sorted. Thinking maybe a T90 type in the bridge but no idea yet.

PeteC

Corvus said:

Stripes and blank pics. 9 piece neck inc two veneer layers. A better spindle sander fence setup made these easier to get good

Better spindle sander fence set up - would love to see that ! 

Lovely work as ever   These look really great. 

What wood is the centre strip in the neck ? 

Corvus

Cheers Pete. That's black walnut in the middle there. I've got one of the basic Titan spindle sanders (I think its Titan). The table wasn't brilliantly flat and even after 'subtle' adjustment with 4x4 oak drift and BFH it's not perfect. So this fence has hinges and a small amount of adjustment to make sure it's good vs the spindle, wherever the fence gets set to.

The accidental dophin's eye is an inset bolt, the little lever has a nut embedded so it's easy to tweak. The dolphin nose was in case I felt the need to run a bolt downwards through it, as a stopper against the fence getting forced to tilt. But it seems fine as it is.
Formica type stuff on the front face. Big fat ol' hinges only because I had them sat spare.
Holes drilled in the table so one end is a pivot to swivel around. Due to doing it on the fly and zero planning there's two holes at the slot end of the table, to cover different gaps vs different drum sizes and all that. If the base was wider it praps wouldn't need that.


With drums in good nick it's great at smoothing & thinning lams and accurate. Also makes the headstock transitions a breeze to do.

PeteC

Lovely job.  The thinner maple lams look about 3mm or so.  Did you have to run these through using multiple passes ?