Stratocaster Project Part II

Please see part I for a detailed description of what I have done so far.  This is part two.  Part I composed of stripping the guitar down to the wood and doing an inlay on the body.  Part II will be making a custom neck with inlay, Part III will be painting the body and Part IV will be the electronics and putting it all together.

The plan for Part II will to purchase an ebony fingerboard and do the inlay.  Then separate the rosewood fingerboard from the existing neck and glue the new ebony finger board to the existing neck. Obviously the first step was to decide on the inlay for the fretboard.  This was not an easy decision.  I had to way my minimal (but steadily increasing) skillset with what I "really" wanted.  I feel for this project I have decided on a good compromise.

I have decided on the open hexagon.  This design was actually part of a Martin Limited Edition.  Since the guitar body will be black and the fingerboard ebony (I am considering painting the actual neck black also) I wanted to stay with white Mother of Pearl (MOP).  I thought the design simple but elegant.  The routing should not be an issue which will leave me to focus on all the other things that need to happen.  I ordered the fingerboard yesterday from Stewart - MacDonald and should receive by the end of the week. 

They come preslotted, radiused and cut.  I can then do the inlay and sand them down.  On the existing neck, I will have to steam and pry the old fingerboard off of the neck which I have never done before.  Once the old fingerboard is removed I can then glue the new one on.  I will then sand down the neck.  I want to try sanding the back of the neck to an elliptical shape to custom fit my hand.  Then the plan is to either paint or finish the neck and then attach to the body once I have painted it.  As I go through the steps of the neck I will post them here...

Sunday October 18th

OK, this is going to be a process.  I ordered the material from Stewart McDonald.

I ordered some painting supplies which came with a book "Guitar Finishing".  The ebony fretboard looks nice, it has a lot of light brown streaks to it.  I also received some black dye in case I decide to dye the fretboard.  I also bought some unrelated items, chisels, potentiators etc...

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 As with any inlay project, time to get a visual on the end result.  I laid out the inlay on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 21st and 13rd frets for a total of 10 pieces. 

 

I decided on centered hexagons for the inlay design.  I then numbered the frets that I was using.  I then measured the Width and Height of each fret to be used to center the inlay on the fretboard.  

I then convered the area where the inlay was to go with white out.  I then take the measurements and draw a vertical and horizontal line in the white out.  This let's me see the exact center of the fret area.  I then glue the inlay down and let it dry.  I then take my scribe and scribe around the glued inlay piece.  This is probably the most important part of the process, getting an accurate inlay outline on the wood.

Here is a photo of the Inlay glued to the fretboard.  Notice the cross in the middle of the hexagons that lets me know where my center is.  The project would be a failure if the inlay was not lined up correctly.

Here is a close up of the hexagon routed out about 90%.  I leave the perpendicular corners to a chisel although splint out is common in ebony.  

I use a dremel tool with the braces and it works very well.  I usually use a 1-3/32 router bit depending.  Frequent fitting of the Inlay caused me to break about 4 pieces.  Although I consider the Inlay of high quality it is extremely fragile.  But for a good tight fit you need to frequently check.

As always I then glue the inlay in the fretboard usually overnight.  The next day I will sand up to about 220-280 depending on the pores in the grain.  Finer for larger pore and coarser for small pore.

Stratocaster Project

First you need to know where it came from. Here’s a picture of it with its full finish. It was literally a $120 guitar. The finish had several nicks in it and had peeled in one location. I decided to chemically strip it for a couple of reasons and now having done it, am glad I went that route. Took all the hardware off and the neck, taped up the inner cavity because I had just finished putting copper foil down. You can see it peeking up in the second pickup position (lower left corner). You put copper foil down and solder it to ground which will protect the electronics from any RF interference through the pickups…

Then I applied a some toxic solutions… Although it looks dramatic the actual chemical breakdown took quite awhile. While I noticed some small bubbling after 15-30 min, it took about 10 hours and several scrapes and re-applications of the stripper.

 That paint job was tough! To make it worse, what looks like wood below was really a plastic “undercoating” that wrapped the entire guitar. It only minimally interacted with the stripper. It took me three days over the weekend to get it off.

Then a lot of sanding. Luckily I went out and bought a nice orbital sander to do most of it, but there was still about 4-5 hours by hand put in, especially around the horns. I had to take a wooden dowel, wrap sand paper around it and rub it that way. Below you will see wood and the “coating” still stubbornly stuck in some spots. That stuff was tenacious. I still haven’t cleaned out the innards yet.

A vision – I really debated over how to finish the guitar. I was leaning to a natural stain given the coloring. I later discovered that the bottom (I think it is basswood, cheap) has an alder (has a nice tone, fender uses it a lot) veneer on top of it. I really didn’t find that out until later when I sanded too much L. So at that point I decided to go chrome black with a super high gloss (David Gilmour anyone?). To customize it I wanted to try my hand at inlay. I decided I would do two inlays. One of a Ying Yang. I thought with the guitar being black and with a white pick guard, that would look perfect. The other was the silhouette of a white dove (shown on black material). I chose that because of the lines. I thought I could do it and it looked like something that would definitely compliment the guitar. I found a website that sells these, the guy runs it out of his home in Oregon, his name is Andy, really nice guy. Anyway, he imports the shells directly from Vietnam and the inlays are mother of pearl and abalone, and the work up close is just stunning. They really catch the light and throw back a spectrum of colors.

 This is my first attempt at any inlay. I literally have never done this. The hardest part was trying to decide how to route the circle. I really thought there must be an easy way to do it, but to no avail. I ended up just trying to do it free hand. One of my “best” qualities (as you probably already know) is I can be downright stubborn at times. I used a sharpie and drew around the circle. I then took my router and started in the middle and just kept making the circle bigger until I just reached the outer black circle. Then I used a sander bit on my router and kept sanding and testing the inlay until it fit… I did practice this technique seven times on a scrap piece of wood (and I am glad I did!)

Here’s a picture of the inlay in the guitar. I think it came it out a lot better than I was expecting! I purchase a gouge and a carving knife and will attempt the dove. Once they are all in than I sand, paint and apply the finish which will take about 8 weeks or so… I am building the electronics so once the paint is done, I slap on a new pick guard with new pickups and new wiring, bolt a neck onto it and string er up!

For the second part of this blog, please see a Stratocaster Project Part II