The wood is lovely, can I ask how much it would cost for the necessary timber alone at the present time, very roughly?
Well, if I remember rightly, it cost about £35 for the Zebrano body blanks, and around a total of £30 for all the neck pieces. I got them from Craft supplies
Click me, I've just done a check and the prices have gone up a bit since then ( I think I bought the wood in 2002, but didnt build it til 2003 ) It pays to go up there if you can, they used to have more stuff in stock than was on the website, and you can get to look at exactly what you are buying.
The price will totally depend on what sort of wood you want, and that depends on whether you want to have a clear / stained finish with the grain of the wood showing thru, or if you want a solid colour ( ie paint ). There are some lovely guitars that are either finished with a clear coat, or stained, made out of the top grade "Flamed Maple" ( grade AAAA ). They have an almost 3d look of them, but the wood is so expensive that most would just have a 3/8" to 1" thick veneer of the AAAA grade on the top of some cheaper maple or mahogany. But if you are going to paint a solid colour as your finish there is no point spending big buck on fancy looking wood, just use some good quality plain maple, ash or mahogany. The more expensive wood doesnt add to the quality of the sound IMHO, but it sure looks pretty when finished well. If I was to make another it would most likely be a Les Paul copy with a "AAAA" flamed maple top.
I believe the gluing of the through neck is quite ticky? - did you find it so?
Umm
EDIT Tim - just re-read your first post and you mention gluing the neck...ignore that then.
Ok
How are the body laminates glued to the body side of the neck?
With the way that I constructed mine, the process was a little complicated because I wanted to match up the grain as best as I possibly could, but I'll try to explain it. (boy I really wish that I had taken more pics when building this
Oh well, here's a 1000 words instead
)
As I briefly mentioned in the 1st post, the timber as supplied from craft supplies comes as 2 planks approx 7" x 24" x 2" thick ( they do sell 1 piece body blanks now ) I carefully marked up which surfaces looked best together as the front, and also marked up the opposite faces as the back. The reason for marking both faces will become clear.
I had in mind that I wanted the front to look like it was just made out of the Zebrano, ie I wanted to cover over the "Thru-neck" laminations of maple and purpleheart. So this would require that I cut off, or Resaw, the body blanks to get 2 pieces of Zebrano approx 10mm thick.
I also had in mind that I wanted the back of the body to be similarly solid looking and covering up the "thru-neck" laminations, and to complicate things further I also wanted to have the electronics cover match the grain of the rest of the back. So this would require that I resaw the rear of the body blanks to get a approx 8mm slice.
With all these resawing operations to do, the likelihood of getting the pieces mixed up was rather large, so I employed a cunning trick to be able to identify which piece was which and also which way up ( or down, or around ) each piece should be. On one of the 2 original body blanks, before making any cuts or slices, I made a shallow saw cut down one outside edge ( across the 2" thickness ) to a depth of about 3-5mm, this was at a point that would be eventually cut off when shaping the body. On the other body blank I drilled a hole (about 3-4mm hole) thru the 2" thickness, again on the outer edge in a place that would be cut away later. By doing this, once all the slices had been made, these holes or shallow cuts would only line up correctly if the all the pieces were assembled in the right order and the right way up.
Anyway, back to your question Chris. Once I had sliced up the body blanks and cleaned them up by running them thru the surface planer, I was left with 2 top pieces, 2 middle pieces and 2 back pieces, and of course the neck that I had already laminated up. On this pic you can see some feint pencil lines indicating the thickness that the "middle" pieces of the body were, and so the amount that would have to be removed from the this part of the neck.
Once this section of the neck was reduced to the same thickness of the middle sections of the body, I then carefull measured the width of the neck and removed half the neck-width's amount from the center of each middle body section so that when assembled, the grain from both top pieces would match as closely as possible thru the middle and back sections. Then it was just a case of gluing the middle sections to either side of the neck, carefully clamping it up while checking that nothing moves, then just wait 24hrs before removing clamps.
This electronic CoC might help confuse matters further
Then it became much easier for attaching the 2 top pieces, after making sure that the previous assembly was plained and sanded perfectly flat, glue was applied and then the top pieces were clamped on using as many clamps as I could lay my hands on.
The same process was used for the back, except on the back I had to rout out a recess for the electronics and I had to make the cutout for the electronics cover before gluing the back pieces on.
Basically it is all held together with good quality woodglue, there are no screws or bolts holding it together. ( why couldn't I have just wrote this at the start and saved boring you all
)
Tim
