Walnut Stratocaster Or Number 8 - Neck Pocket

Now it's time to move on to the neck pocket.

I start by clamping the neck to the body blank. I use a laser to line up the center-line of the body and the neck. clamp it in place. Then I attach two long pieces and one small piece of wood to the body blank. The wood is placed tightly against the sides of the neck. This creates a perfect routing jig.

I remove the neck. Then drill out excess wood using a 3/4 inch drill bit. I follow that by routing the pocket. Once complete I cut the body shape out, and use a spine sander to clean up the sides.

The neck now fits snuggly into the body.

I placed the pick-guard on these last two images, so that I could see just how it might look. I have not decided to use a pick-guard on this build.

Back to 1987 - My Steinberger copy

So now that I've almost completed the Junior. I've decided to turn my attention back to my Steinberger P-series copy, the guitar I am now calling 1987. First I drilled the holes for the neck ferrules using a 5/8" drill bit.

Then I attached the neck and the bridge and took 1987 for a test drive without any electronics. The guitar plays great. There is a fret buzz at the 6th fret of the G and D strings. But thats to be expected as I have not yet leveled the fretboard.

There's only one problem - the strings are sitting unusually high off of the guitar body. So I need to do a little more routing.

First I routed the neck pocket about 4 mm deeper. This put the fretboard about 1.5 mm above the body now.

Then I routed out the recessed bridge pocket an additional 2 mm. This will allow me to lower the height of the bridge saddles as well.

After I dealt with the string height, I moved on to routing the control cavity, and drilling holes for my volume and tone pots. I will still need to put in a pickup selector, I am just trying to find one small enough to fit comfortable between the volume and tone.

The guitar is now ready for final sanding and finishing. Here's my 1987 siting next to a Steinberger P-series body I purchased off of eBay a few years back.

2012 TDPRI Tele Build Challenge - Routing neck pocket and pickup cavities

Yesterday I started work on the neck pocket. First I built a jig. Carefully lining up the neck withthe center line and then fastening two boards to either side. I cut a special board to fit at the base of the neck and drove a screw into the body of the guitar where the front pickup will be.

I made several passes with the plane parallel to the body. However, I still needed to route for the (what I thought should be) 3°- 4° angle. I place two smaller boards on either side of the neck pocket with a half inch board about 7 inches back. This gave me just under 4°. After I checked this with the bridge. I discovered that 4° was too much of angle. I then moved the half inch board back to about 14 inches, and re-routed the pocket. This gave me a 2° angle. Which turned out much better. (Although the neck is sitting about a 1/16 of an inch lower than I would have liked it - but I can live with that.) Once the nut is in I should be able to adjust the string height lower than in the photo below.

A note about geometry - had my high school geometry teacher back in 1984 used guitar building to teach us, I might have paid closer attention. The equation used to find the distance the half inch board need to be at was TanA = a/b. A=2°, a=.5inches, solve for b. I know the equation on the graph paper is for a 1.5° angle. I decided against going that far.














After I finally got the neck to the right height, I moved on to the pickups. First I routed the front pickup using a home made template. For the bridge pickup I needed to attache the neck and measure the distance of the saddle of the bridge from the zero fret, 25inches.

After routing the neck pocket and pickup cavities, I cut the body shape. Then I started sanding the sides. Here is the side view. I'm liking the mahogany veneer.

I then drilled the 7/8 of an inch hole for the output jack.

A note about the GFS Xtrem Vibrato - it's not a direct mount. The saddles sit about a 1/4 inch to close to the neck. In order to compensate for this I moved the neck about 1/8 of an inch out of the body and the bridge about 1/8 of an inch back. Also, the GFS website recommends angling the neck 2.5° - 3°. Actually 1.5° - 2° is probably better. I originally tried a 4°, because I thought the bridge would be identical to the locking roller bridge from Stew Mac. There is a difference in string height that I had not expected. Since this is a new build this wasn't much of an issue. As a replacement bridge this would likely require some modification to work.

2012 TDPRI Tele Build Challenge - cat's eye sound hole and gluing the top

This weekend, I worked on the cat's eye sound hole (decided against the traditional f-hole), routed the top thinner for the electronics cavity and glued the curly maple top to the maple back.

To cut the sound hole, I started by using various sized drill bits. I then moved onto a coping saw for a rough cut. And followed that with a file and sand-paper to smooth out the edges.

The top is 3/8" thick. In order for the electronics to fit properly, I needed to route the top thinner. I will be using a single concentric volume and tone pot, however I haven't decided on the switch configuration yet. I'm leaning towards a four-way as well as two capacitor tone switch. We'll see what I can pull off.

Before gluing the top to the back, I thought it might be a good idea to add a signature visible through the sound hole.

I also thought it might be fun to put a note inside the top front cavity. Since there is no opening this not will hopefully never be read by anyone again. 

I also decided to add an homage to Woody Guthrie, written backwards under the sound hole. Now if anyone uses a dentist's mirror to inspect this chamber they will see this instrument's intended purpose.



















I glued the top onto the back, and let it sit over night.

I added the obligatory extra weights to help with the gluing process.

2012 TDPRI Tele Build Challenge - routing interior cavities

I started routing the interior cavities of the Tele today. First I created some Swiss Cheese, using three different drill bits on the drill press. I drilled dozens of holes to remove as much wood as possible.

Here's the finished Swiss Cheese.

After finishing the drilling and creating a great deal sawdust, I started freehand routing the interior. I did use a straight edge on the interior lines.

Next up, I'll route channels for the wiring between the pickups, and start working on the top - cutting an f-hole and drilling the holes for switches and pots.

2012 TDPRI Tele Build Challenge - body top and back

Today, I turned my attention to the body. First, I glued the mahogany veneer to the back of the curly maple top. I taped the veneer on both sides of the area to be cut in order to stop the veneer from crumbling and splitting. I then clamped the veneer between two pieces of wood before cutting it. I then covered the back of the curly maple top with a generous amount of Tite-Bond. I placed the veneer over the glue, then used a pipe to smooth out the bubbles. I placed several pieces of wood on top of the veneer, clamped them into place and then added weights.

I then turned my attention routing the body. I started by working on the electronics cavity. First I drilled holes all the way through the body. Then I routed out the excess wood.

I flipped the body over, clamped a jig for the cavity cover and routed for the cavity cover.

Next, I grabbed the piece of wood that was re-sawn off the original piece of maple. I lined up the location of the electronics cavity and cut out the cover. This way the grain lined up. As always I cut to just outside the lines. Then I slowly sanded the edges to the lines. Followed that by slightly beveling the edges.

I'm a little concerned about that the top has started to bow. I've run into this issue before on the Steinberger copy. In that case the Tite-Bond and clamping while glue helped secure the top evenly to the body. However, there was a lot more surface area glued to the top. On this build I will be routing out quite a bit of the interior before gluing. So, we'll see how this turns out...