Nuts and Volts

Next step was to machine a dado (slot) around the blank’s perimeter using dado blades on my table saw. This was necessary because I wanted to inlay white ash around the body for an artistic touch. The light colored ash contrasts nicely with the dark Sapele. I did the same thing with the ash trim for a coffee table I built. (It always gets comments from the people who see it.) Of course, this is an optional step you don’t have to do if you build a guitar like this.

I mitered the ash corners to 45 degrees and fit the ash into the dado. In Photo 3, I’m gluing the ash onto the Sapele body. After the glue dried, I trimmed up the body edges on the table saw so the ash was flush with the Sapele.

■ PHOTO 3. Gluing the ash inlaid strip around the body.

You might be asking yourself at this point if I had plans I was working from to build this guitar. The answer would be no. I did, however, know the most important piece of information about the guitar I was building and that was its scale length (which is a function of the Fender style neck I chose to use).

Scale length is the distance from the nut of the guitar (above the first fret) to its bridge. In my case, that was 25. 5”.

It is absolutely critical that the distance from the nut to the 12th fret be exactly equal to the distance from the 12th fret to the bridge of the guitar. If not, the guitar will have bad intonation which — in severe cases — can make the guitar unplayable.

Luckily, the bridge I selected was adjustable which made getting the scale length correct much easier.

The guitar dimensions evolved as follows. First, I laid out and machined the neck cavity so I could insert the neck into the body. Next, I measured 12. 75” from the 12th fret and drew a line for where the bridge would be located. I placed the tailpiece 1.5” behind the bridge line and the bridge pickup position 1.5” in front of the bridge. Finally, the neck pickup was positioned as close as possible to the end of the neck.

Placement of the control cavity, strap buttons, and output jack are not critical, so I placed them where I thought they looked and would work best.

I built custom templates for my router for the neck cavity and for the pickup cavities (pre-made templates can be purchased from stewmac.com). I used a flush cutting router bit with the bearing on the shaft towards the router.

The bearing rides on the template to make correctly shaped cavities. This was kind of a pain because you cannot cut the full depth of the cavities in a single pass. So, I had to elevate the template on spacers, make a cutting pass, lower the template a little, make another pass, then remove the spacers under the template and make a final pass.

I machined cavities for the neck, both pickups, and for the guitar’s control panel. My guitar will have simple controls like a Fender Telecaster guitar: a three-position pickup selector switch, and a volume and tone control.

Craig lives in the mountains of Colorado and can be contacted at calhjh@gmail.com. When not messing around with music, electronics, computer projects, wood working or beer brewing, he plays in a rock and roll band and does a solo musical act around Colorado Springs.