TT2-10 Building a telecaster style guitar from scratch

Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

17th April 2010

Apologies for not remembering to photograph the dying process.

Basically I mixed a small amount of emerald green powdered wood dye with some methylated spirits. I then wiped it very quickly over the face of the veneer with some kitchen towel. This needs to be done quickly because it is dry to the touch quite literally in less than a minute. Probably closer to 15 seconds, so if it isn't done quickly you get smears.

As the kitchen towel breaks down it leaves little bits over the face which can just be brushed off after a minute or so as the spirit evaporates.

I then repeated the process with a nice dark 'reddy' coloured brown on the rear and sides of body.

You may notice in the pictures that there is a section on the face that looks like a lighter streak. The actual reason is there is an area that didn't take the green dye as well as others, or that the colour of the veneer in this section altered the fnished colour. In later pictures you will see that this lighter 'streak' is within a couple of grain lines.

Once I was sure the whole body was dry I covered the face with masking tape. This is so that when I am scraping the binding that the wood I have my blade fixed to doesn't scratch the surface and also so I don't leave any dirty marks from my hands on the face whilst in the process.

Next step was onto the binding. To my horror I found that the binding I had bought is just short for the guitar edge!!! I should have read the measurements better. So I have had to cut a 10cm strip from another length to complete it. This join is on the inside of the horn.

The binding proces is pretty simple. I started on the upper side of the neck join. Bracing the guitar in my workbench with a newspaper to protect it. I used a hairdryer on very hot to bend the binding to the first part of the curve. Then I put some superglue in the first 10cm or so and taped the binding down. A lipstick and paving slab was used to hold the binding in the tight little curve until it dried.

After a couple of minutes I turned the guitar around a little in the workbench and did the next 10cm. I repeated this process all the way around the guitar.

When the binding had been in position for a couple of hours I scraped it flush with a Stanley knife blade fixed to a piece of wood so that the wood can rest on the body and only the correct amount of blade is scraping. This worked well. Now off came the masking tape and the result can be seen below.








19th April 2010

Not much more to show at this point. I have sprayed about 10 coats of lacquer on the face and binding of the guitar so far and will have to leave it for a couple of weeks to cure before moving onto the back.







Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]