Many years ago, my uncle made a coffee table at school. After being passed around the family over the decades, it came into my possession with the instruction “make a guitar out of it”.
During my course at Crimson guitars, I bought plans for a Gibson explorer and made a body template, which I didn’t use at the time. This just fit the wood I had to work with without gluing on any sides, so it was decided. The plan was to make a guitar inspired by an explorer, rather than a copy, however I wanted to start with this shape initially.
Next, I marked out the outline of the guitar and set to work cutting it down to a size I could work with on the bandsaw
Once the blank was a bit more manageable, I moved to the bandsaw
Most of the offcuts were immediately recycled as tea light stands for Christmas, the rest went into stock for another day.
I took everything quite near to the lines ready to true up. I chose to use the Triton belt sander rather than the router table and template in this instance, mostly because I’d already decided I wasn’t going to copy the shape exactly.
Initially, I’d planned to use an Ibanez neck, hence the lump by the neck pocket, but later decided on a Dean ML neck, which I think works extremely well with this shape.
Although I’ve had my training to make necks and have no real issues making them, for some personal projects I still prefer to use off the shelf necks where I want to use a specific design.
At this point, a friend with a much bigger planer thicknesser than I currently have access to, processed the body, cleaning up the old finish, original saw marks and removing a small warp present in the wood.
This turned out very nicely indeed, but was now a bit too thin for what I had in mind. It just happened that I’d recently bought some umpteen thousand-year-old bog oak at the time and decided that would work well, making up the thickness.
The bog oak pieces were a hair too narrow to do it in two, but I discovered later that the joins could be pretty seamless when well-prepared.
Next I planed both edges of each piece with my number 7, ensuring offcuts would be planed ready to make up the extensions.
With the pieces ready, I initially glued up the two main pieces
And then added the extension pieces
This section was then cut to the explorer shape. The Ibanez heel shape was no longer necessary, which is why I cut it, leaving a step.
This project has been on hold for a short while to allow me to finish other projects in progress and give this my full attention when it comes to developing a remix on this classic shape, deciding on carves, etc.