Lap Steel Build

Last Summer, I started building an eight-string Lap Steel guitar for a friend of mine. I started with an 8 inch slab of Maple and a Birdseye Maple fretboard.

I then printed a template for a 23 inch scale. I used a carpenter's scale to cut straight lines. The cuts were filled with tinted black epoxy.

For the tuning pegs, I drilled holes from the side. And then drilled holes from the top, followed by a routing. This is similar to the set up on a classical headstock. However, the knobs will face up for ease of use.

I then strung up the guitar to line up the positioning of the nut, bridge, fretboard and pickup.

I then drilled holes for the fret markers and glued a black binding to the fretboard.

There a couple steps not documented here. I had to create a template for the pickup route. And then I had to route the rear control panel and the output jack. 

Next up I will clean up the sides, round the edges and do a final sand of the body before I move on to applying a Tru-Oil finish. Hopefully I'll have this finished before the end of the Summer.