Build Update #4.5

Small update yo.



Here, i've cut a small 3" mahogany block and glued it to the tail of the guitar. After doing this, the entire section in the picture was planed down to 1.25" exactly.



The >1/16" maple veneer i will use for laminating the guitar tops is too thick for the contours its supposed to form to, and too thick for the final thickness of the top. I needed roughly 1/20" for each maple sheet. I stressed over finding a thickness sander to do the job for me. The problem with using a thickness sander (also known as a drum sander) is that the already thin veneer could easily get caught by the 1,000 RPM sanding drum and torn apart, never to be seen again. My solution was to creat a jig to sand the veneer to thickness. This is just a piece of MDF, on hinges, held very close to the round end of my belt sander via a sliding adjustable square. I went two passes on each side. The jig worked perfectly and the resulting veneer was much more pliable.



The thicknessed veneer. They are presented in the order they are pressed, with the grain going vertical, horizontal, horizontal, vertical.



I was skeptical on whether or not the Roarockit Thin Air Press (TAP) would apply enough pressure to get the maple to conform. When pressed, however, i was surprised at how much it really conformed. There was no spot that needed extra pressure. According to my research, the TAP can pull a vacuum at 18-21 lbs per in^2. With the veneer sheets measuring 18" x 20", there is a total of about 3.5 tons of force pushing down against the laminate. The above picture is the final walnut veneer being pressed. The red mesh is there to help prevent air bubbles from ruining the vacuum.



The TAP kit uses a wine bottle vacuum pump (white thing in pic) to pull the vacuum. The spruce board is shown as well. This will be used to fill the gap between the pressed tops and the maple center block (http://www.es-335.net/laminations.html). Shown to the left is the mahogany neck blank i will use to, well, build the neck.



A quick wipe with a damp cloth shows the crazy insane figure on the blank.


I will press the other side of the guitar later. Until the next update, i will have the tops cut to size and the spruce kerfing in place.

Build Update #4

Progress has been slow, but things are taking shape. It looks like a guitar. I have yet to thickness sand the maple veneer for the top and back, so most of my attention has been put on the sides and center block.


I've swapped the 2' x 2' MDF-mini-bench for a perfectly-level-slate-from-1/3-of-a-pool-table I happen to have. Here you can see the mold unbolted and joined with MDF. The 3-ply sides were fit into the mold and trimmed near the bottom of the guitar. A turnbuckle was employed to push the guitars contours against the mold.

I reached a problem when planing the sides. The plans i purchased from the interweb show the sides having a thickness of 1", while the Gibson factory final thickness of the entire guitar, according to a webgoogle search, is 1.75". With the top and back of my guitar being .2", the thickness of the these sides should be 1.35". I chose an even 1.25" for the thickness.



A visit to Rockler gave me my $8 maple center block. It is 1.75" thick, so it needed to be thicknessed to 1.25". I done did it with a router.



But first, the majority of the material was removed by making this cut to the maple with a table saw. It could be the fact that the table saw i have to use has a crooked and dull blade, but that was the most terrifying cut i have ever made. Rhyme. I used a hand saw to cut that small bit of wood out.



Thicknessing the maple to the exact dimension required some dangerous out-of-the-box thinking. The router was attached to a sled, which was passed over the maple. The block was held in place by hot glued bits of wood. The resulting surface was perfectly flat.



The final thicknessed center block, 1.25" thick, 5" wide, 12" long.



Small wings were cut out of the block, and filed precisely to fit, as shown in the picture below. I used blue chalk to mark where the block is hitting the sides.



The block is clamped and glued in with a single bar clamp.



Excellent.



After drying overnight, it was removed from the mold. A mahogany end piece will be placed at the bottom joint in the picture.



Those extra side pieces poking out will be removed later on. The maple block exposed between them is where the neck of the guitar will sit.


I ordered a big block of mahogany, enough for 2-3 guitar necks, off eBay. It will be a while until i can build the neck, but it's good to get the wood early so it can acclimate to the humidity in my home. The next step is to plane the sides completely flush to the center block and install the kerfing. I'm going to use spruce for this. Hopefully i can get the maple veneer thickness sanded and finally start pressing the top of the guitar.

Build Update #3

I got home from college for the summer Wednesday night, and began building Thursday. I had ordered the necessary parts and tools beforehand so I could begin building once i got home. This included the 1/16" (turns out to be more 1/20", which is great) walnut face veneer and Roarockit's Thin Air Press. The press was available at Rockler for $35 when i checked last time (from previous post). I checked one weekend i was home and they said they don't even carry it anymore. This meant i had to order it online from the store in Canada for $56. No big deal though, i should get my money's worth. The walnut veneer was purchase from eBay for only $8, enough for the entire guitar.


To start the build, i knew i couldn't get 1/16" veneer in sheets wide enough for the entire guitar, so i had to do some joining. The flimsy veneer needs to be flattened and pushed together. For this, i purchased a sheet of MDF from El Depot de Casa and made a joining jig. It allows me to press the veneer flat and allow twine to be wrapped around it to apply clamping pressure. Before placing the maple/walnut veneer into the jig, i needed to true the edges to allow a perfect joint. This was done with two aluminium drywall squares clamped together, with the veneer in between. A plane was utilized (my first time using one, actually) to bring flush the veneer to the square. The veneer was placed into the jig, where twine was wrapped and weights were placed to hold the wood together. This process was especially difficult for the walnut veneer, for it was thinner and more brittle than the maple. The resulting bond turns out to be stronger than the actual wood!

Here are some pictures of the process (the walnut is going to look so nice):


Walnut in T-square to plane straight the edge.



Walnut in joining jig. Weights hold veneer flat; twine to pull the veneer together. The wax paper prevents the veneer from being glued to the jig.



The same is done for the maple. Glue of choice: Titebond III



I forgot wax paper a number of times (the joining process needed to be done 8 times [2 walnut, 6 maple]), so i snapped a pic of the joint, showing good signs.



Awesome join. Great job.



A joined walnut veneer (front, pre-sanded) + cat. The lighter center is not as noticeable in person. Such a nice piece of wood, i'm very glad it turned out well.


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Moving onto a different part of the guitar: the sides. At first, i was going to have it be 4 layers of 1/16" veneer, but that would have been too thick (to bend, at least). So i had to find a way to get the 1/16" (heavy) maple down to roughly 1/20". A random orbital sander worked, but proved to be inefficient and inaccurate. A power planer worked in the end, shaving the thick 1/16" maple down to a heavy 1/20". A thickness (drum) sander, of course, would have made this process simple, but i'm not made of money.

I took the already thin walnut and the thinned 2 maple pieces, steamed them, and clamped them into my mold from build update #1. Wondering mindlessly throughout my garage led me to a solution to steaming the 40" strips of side veneer: a 48" level case. Made of strong plastic, the case was only slightly modified to accommodate steam, which was supplied by a pressure cooker via a vinyl tube. The rig worked flawlessly. The veneer was rotated every 10 minutes for a total of 45 minutes in the steamer. Afterwards, they were placed into the mold using a couple clamps, and set to dry completely for 24 hours. This allows the 3 veneers to roughly hold the shape of the guitar prior to gluing. To glue, the veneer was first planed to an even width of 1.5", then a judicious amount of Titebond was spread on one piece, which was placed into the mold. 2 veneer strips were glued at once, to ensure even clamping pressure. Using a combination of twine and clamps, pressure was distributed along the mold. The system dries for 24 hours. This process was repeated to finish one side of the guitar, 3 veneers thick.

Pictures:


The steaming rig, showing the pressure cooker, vinyl tube, and 48" level case.



Hot water gas stuff. Very peculiar. Don't breathe this.



3 veneers clamped in the mold after steaming.



After steaming, the veneers were prepped for gluing by planing them flush with the mold (width of 1.5")



The gluing process. Wax paper was again used to prevent the bonding of the veneer to the mold. Spindle sander rubber piece used for the guitar cutout. The twine was pulled as tight as i could. Any spots needing extra pressure were clamped.




Unfinished result from gluing. When the second half is finished, the pieces will be planed to their final thickness.



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For the top and back of the guitar, i will need to thin the maple as i did with the sides. However, a power planer will not work. With the help of my dad, we tracked down someone who owns a wide enough thickness sander that i can use to thin the 1/16" maple down to 1/20". At this time, they will be ready for the vacuum press. Until then, i will continue to glue the sides and possibly get the maple center block installed.



Do it.

-Andrew