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Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:23 pm
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Ceri that is looks Great so far! When done on the headstock you are going to put the Cericaster (Made in the U.K.) Well thats getting ahead of things that work is good for sure.

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Post subject: Re: Saving a trash body
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:05 pm
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Ceri wrote:
OK. This one is down to Forum User Orvilleowner: about a week ago he mentioned that he'd like to see the cut of my jib, guitar buildingwise. So happens, I have a project in hand, so I may as well share it ...


Okay, right back at ya! First, I will take credit for this thread, thank you very much. Second, "cut of your jib"? Keep your jib well covered, buddy!

I will enjoy every installment of this adventure! Tres cool!

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Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:09 pm
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Nice project :wink: looking forward to seeing the final "after" pics. 8)

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Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:50 pm
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Hello Ceri,

Nice approach to diagnosing a problem.
From what you've shown us it'll be no
suprise when you complete a spot on axe.

As always Cheers.


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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:47 am
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Ceri, Thanks for showing the neck pocket work that you did. Very nice by the way.


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Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:24 pm
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Ceri, what a great recovery so far.
I wish you all the luck in the world w/ this project. But I think with your know-how you don't need luck. 8) 8) 8)
I think we have all been burned by E-Pay at one time or another so do her up my friend!
Keep us updated.


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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:06 am
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Wow! Great work. Best of luck to you, looks like your headed in the right direction. I will definitely keep an eye on this thread. Thanks for taking the time to post.


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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:16 am
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Thanks y'all! Very encouraging and appreciated.

Oh man, these pickup cavities are giving me more trouble than I expected. New problems keep revealing themselves. Hopefully I'll have something to show - tomorrow...

By the way:
Orvilleowner wrote:
"Cut of your jib"? Keep your jib well covered, buddy!

Thank you, I will! "I like the cut of your jib, young man": that's a Monty Burns-ism, isn't it? That's where I got it from, anyhow...
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Cheers - C


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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:26 am
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Damn a few days off the forum and i missed a lot of interesting events.....sorry to hear about the bad sale with eBay Ceri.
Seems like you have a lot of things planned for this body and i really like the way you making the thread flow.I only wished the Admin pinned this topic for future reference especially those who are enthusiastic about creating their own strat from scratch.
Are you sure you're not a carpenter or handyman?For someone with so much enthusiasm your skills are pretty neat Ceri.
I'm still wondering as to how you manage to get the center line for the body and trace out the neck pocket and pickup routings etc etc.You have a dimension for that or something.

Anyhow i hope this topic stays on top and updated.Keep it up Ceri....a lot of eyes are on this project.

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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:40 am
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belphedeus wrote:
I'm still wondering as to how you manage to get the center line for the body and trace out the neck pocket and pickup routings etc etc.You have a dimension for that or something.


Hi Belphedeus: that's a sensible question. I measured across the width of the neck pocket to find the center at that end of the body. And I made another measurement just south of the trem cavity, at the widest point of the body. Join 'em up and we have a center line on the front of the bod. Easy enough to then project that line round the ends and onto the back of the guitar.

The right angles were then found with a plain old draftsman's set square. Measurements widthwise for the pickup and spring cavities can be taken from that center line.

I also have some templates derived from an American Strat of mine: I'm hard at work with those right now and hope to show the results tomorrow...

Cheers - C

PS I really don't want to pretend to be something I'm not. I am neither a carpenter nor a guitar tech. Just an enthusiastic meddler - and well aware there's folks here better at this stuff than me.

But thank you all for your most flattering comments!


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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 2:24 pm
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Ceri... You are very brave soul. Did I mention talented too? Excellent work so far. Your name should definitely go on the headstock when finished. Oh, and make a photo book of the process in rebuilding this "Garbage to Gold" story.

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Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:33 pm
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Sorry you got raked. It is interesting to see that you are repairing it rather than burning it, good for you. Your work looks extremely good (I could never do what you have so far). I am looking forward to seeing your project finished.

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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 5:44 am
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[Friday] Right. Belatedly, more progress to show.

Neck pocket done: tried out the neck in it and it's going to work. So on to those horrible pickup cavities. To recap: the cavities are crooked, irregularly shaped, and have those stupid circular router holes in the corners. Nikininja says people do that to compensate for making the body from wood that's too thin. Never knew that but it sounds convincing to me.

However, one of the few things that isn't wrong with this bod is the thickness. So those holes are unnecessary and I'm going to lose them. Here's a reminder what the front looked like at the start:

Image

Another issue: the bottom of the front two pup cavities is uneven and damaged by the router, no doubt by trying to lift it out before the blade had stopped. We've all done that - once... (There's plenty of tearout round the corners too, and that dark area along the wire channel is where a torn out chunk has been glued back in...) So I'm also going to rebuild the floors of those cavities. The rear one is OK so I'll just plug and cap the hole in that one.

First job is to straighten up the front walls of the cavities and put right the bad routing of the wire channel. I made a right angle template from plywood and used it as you see here to re-route the straight edges to make them square:
Image

Now it becomes possible to lay my pickup cavity template over the body to see how things compare. Oh my: look at this:
Image

The lighting isn't ideal but I think you can see that each of the pickup cavities is routed too far forwards, and to differing degrees. That is very confusing, because it suggests the maker wasn't using a legit template: even if he'd put it on crooked at least the cavities should be correct one to another. But they're not. Maybe he just had a template for a single cavity and moved it about - that would explain some things...

The issue is confirmed when I try to put a loaded pickguard in place. It simply won't go in at all, and would be badly out of alignment with the neck cavity even if it did.

So I used my template to re-route those cavities in the correct positions:
Image

However, that has left the cavities even more misshapen, so some rebuilding becomes necessary. First, as you see in that picture, I made new floors for the front two cavities, having first routed them level. Here's that middle cavity floor being glued in place with a makeshift caul (you can also glimpse the corrected routing of the trem cavity):
Image

Now the really tricky bit: rebuilding the straight (neckwards) walls of the cavities to recreate their proper shapes. What I did was mould pieces of veneer to shape and then glue them in place, using wine bottle corks as clamps. That middle cavity was the worst: I think I needed ten or eleven veneers to make it right. Each one was glued for several hours before doing the next. And the cork wedges needed to be recut for every single veneer. I found I could do about two or three a day - which is what's been delaying this post. I didn't take enough pictures of this bit, but you get an idea from this one:
Image

The neck pickup cavity only needed a single shaped veneer to make it right: that's what you see waiting to go in. The other cavities have veneers wedged in place while the glue dries. And you also see a floor section for the neck pup cavity waiting to go in: I made a screwup with the middle floor and had to do the job twice, as you will be able to detect in a picture below...

Once the replacement wood was all in place it needed fine shaping in the corners. In theory I should be able to just use my pickup template to re-route them properly, but in fact it would be luck to get it absolutely perfect. So instead I used a small 12.5 mm / 1/2 inch drum sander mounted in a pillar drill to carve them out exactly right:
Image

Once the cavities were reshaped it was possible to put a loaded pickguard in place to test - at which point I discovered that the control cavity was cut wrong too, so the second tone pot was banging against the wall. So I used the drum sander to reshape that cavity too. And while I was about it I used a much bigger drum sander to reshape the belly cut on the back of the body, which was much too shallow (quite a common fault on home-made guitars). Forgot to take a photo of that bit - sorry.

At this stage I was able to bolt a neck in and rest the loaded pickguard in place in order to find the correct position for the bridge. Which was when I discovered that not only had the trem cavity been crooked, it was also routed a couple of mil too near to the neck. So I then rebuilt the neck side edge of the cavity in a similar way to the pickup cavities, so that there wouldn't be a gap visible in front of the trem plate.

You can see that rebuilt edge of the trem cavity in this picture, which also shows the finished pickup and control cavities. You can also see the sliver of rebuild on the curved edge of the neck pocket:
Image

I'm ashamed to say you can also see how I had to do the floor of the middle pickup cavity twice, due to a foolish mistake of my own... This next picture shows a detail of the bridge pup cavity. If you look at the position of the filled and capped router hole in the corner you can see just how far towards the tail the whole cavity has had to be moved:
Image

And that's where we're up to. Next there's work to do on the output jack cavity (which is too small) and round the back on the spring cavity. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Cheers - C


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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:04 am
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Nice detailed pictures Ceri....the pickup routing looked much much better from the original which looked rough and sloppy.
Its unfortunate that you didn't get to document the re-build of the trem cavity maybe its the same process as the neck pocket but i would like to see how is the trem cavity from the back.Any changes need to be made to the spring/claw cavity?
Any pictures of it?

Once again you amaze me with the nice woodworking.....keep it up Ceri!

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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 6:08 am
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belphedeus wrote:
Nice detailed pictures Ceri....the pickup routing looked much much better from the original which looked rough and sloppy.
Its unfortunate that you didn't get to document the re-build of the trem cavity maybe its the same process as the neck pocket but i would like to see how is the trem cavity from the back.Any changes need to be made to the spring/claw cavity?
Any pictures of it?

Once again you amaze me with the nice woodworking.....keep it up Ceri!


No, no: don't worry. The trem and spring cavities are coming shortly. Plenty to do there. It's only the front side of the trem cavity that I've done so far. Stay tuned!

And to you and everyone: once more, thanks so much for your friendly words. Makes the whole thing lots of fun!

Cheers - C


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