My first plucked string instrument was the mandolin, which I started to learn how to play at about 4am on my 16th birthday. I’d been listening to my dad play guitar for my entire life, but I never wanted to learn it. It had too many strings for my taste, I guess. Anyway, I eventually came to my senses and started learning guitar, beginning on one of my dad’s old acoustics – a humble but dignified Silvertone.

Like all teenage guitar players, I soon wanted a taste of something a little more powerful. I convinced my dad to embark on a quest to restore his old guitar, a beautiful 1973 Fender Telecaster Deluxe (a project for which I will eventually do a retrospective blog post). I loved playing that guitar, but at a certain point a man has to own his own guitar. Plus, I was tired of having to be so careful with such a precious instrument. Out of this desire was born my endeavor to build my own guitar, and the topic of this post.

My house was built in 1853. My grandfather bought it in the 60s and my dad grew up in it, only bringing his family back to his childhood home in 2008. It was in bad condition so much restoration work had to be done. As a result, there was a lot of original wood from the house left over. This isn’t just any wood – it’s heart pine, circa 1850. After having been part of a house for so long, it has seen so much change in temperature and humidity that it is extremely stable and does not warp. Pine is a sappy wood, of course, but after 150 years the sap has crystalized! I learned this first hand later on when I smelled the wood after cutting with a hot saw or Dremel bit.

My mom always wanted us to do something with the old wood, so I proposed the idea. Soon enough, my dad and I began assembling the body blanks. The body started as one of those long floor joists on the middle shelf in the picture above.

Measure twice Cut once That’s gonna be a long guitar

As you see, there is enough wood for two body blanks. Maybe a bass guitar? The cardboard cutout is my body and pickguard design. They’re both original designs. The body is mostly inspired by two popular guitars: The Telecaster and the Ernie Ball Music Man Axis. However, I wanted the bottom to be more rounded than either of those, more like a Gibson. The pickguard shape is entirely original – I just thought it looked good with the body shape. I wanted to cover as little wood as possible while still having some satisfying curves. I thought about doing a no-pickguard design, but decided it was too difficult and risky for a first project.

Next came the fun part. Woodworking! Thankfully, my school (Georgia Tech) has a fully equipped studio available for student use. Woodshop, Metal shop, 3D Printing, Laser and Waterjet cutters, the works. First I cut out the body outline with a jigsaw. I know many people use a bandsaw for this, but the blade on the one there was too thick and they didn’t want to change it. Jigsaw worked fine. Then came the routing. Hours of routing with that little Dremel attachment, which turned out to be a wonderful tool for the job. I wouldn’t have wanted to do anything larger with it, but the precision it affords is great. The scariest part of the whole project was when I had to route the very deepest part of the cavity (near the output jack – the switch needs a deep pocket) freehand because the Dremel attachment wouldn’t go lower. I must have only been a centimeter from the back of the guitar!

Goodbye corners Ready to go Thought I was done here. Was very wrong.

The Dremelling continued for many hours over many days, but there were other developments along the way. If you look at the body closely in one of those pictures, you’ll see there are cracks throughout, and one giant elongated hole near the upper pickup. My solution was to fill them with wood putty. More on that later…

Beautiful Don’t look! Sneak peek

Oh look, a neck. I bought it online. Yes, I know. I’m a terrible DIYer. At least it was from a reputable seller. It’s the Replacement Neck for Strat Guitar from Stewart McDonald. Maple construction, Rosewood fretboard, a satisfying satin finish, and a cool skunk stripe on the back. All around a great buy for the money. I did have a problem with it being shipped with some weird glue on the very end of the fretboard. It wasn’t a huge cosmetic problem, but I ended up taking it off with a razor.

Now let’s talk about the pickguard. I made a model in AutoCAD of my design, which I originally drew on paper and the cardboard model of the guitar. After much careful measurement and planning, I took it to the water jet cutter, which made quick work of the pickguard blank (which I also bought from StewMac) and left me with a beautiful cut matching my design precisely.

I’m basically a hacker It’s a huge machine! I only used a tiny corner. It ain’t called a WATERjet for nothing Cleanup Sneak peek #2

Back to the body. After much more routing and sanding and fretting over whether everything fit and looked just right, I finally declared it done and not in need of any more wood removal except for the mounting screw holes, which I would do later.

Here’s where I made a mistake and learned about a second mistake. The first is that I used wood stain on this naturally gorgeous wood. As you see in the previous picture the wood looks kinda gray and dry. I knew my final product had the capacity to look much richer. What I didn’t realize was that the color was already there in the wood. Thankfully, my stain had two lucky properties. First, it was very light in color. Testing it on normal yellow pine hardly changed the color of the wood. Second, it was oil based. Turns out, what I really needed was a good oil rub. The combination of these two qualities saved me from potentially ruining my guitar body. Could it look a little better if I had used proper finishing oil? Probably, but honestly I’m just thankful I didn’t destroy it.

Of course I tested the stain on a scrap piece of the same wood, but I didn’t realize my mistake until the moment that the oil-based stain hit the much larger piece that was the body. Have a look for yourself at the difference. It felt like magic.

This is the only picture I have showing both the new and old colors Wow

Here, you see my second mistake. Turns out the “Stainable, Paintable” wood filler isn’t so stainable. All those white lines and splotches are the filler. In retrospect I could have learned this with some more research, but I made the mistake of trusting Elmer. I considered my options at this point, including just leaving it white and starting over on a new pickguard to cover it, but ended up trying my hand at using oil paints to cover it up.

What have I done?! Everything went better than expected

As you can see, it worked reasonably well. It took a long time to get the colors just right, and even then they weren’t perfect. The oil paint did end up matching the texture and shine of the oiled wood nicely. This stage of the process probably took the longest, actually, but mostly because of procrastination and timing – I had a pretty serious academic semester. Eventually I got it done and judging by the can of guitar lacquer, it must be time for finishing!

I decided to use nitrocellulose lacquer as opposed to polyurethane. Nitro is the more traditional guitar lacquer, but has been phased out in recent years due to toxicity and difficulty to work with. Looking back, polyurethane probably would have saved me some trouble, but everything ended up alright. I started with 2 coats of sanding sealer, separated by a few hours. Then, I wet sanded with 400 and 600 grit paper. Then, the long process of applying 15 coats of nitro with at least an hour between each.

Warming up the lacquer Blush. Eek! Shine before buffing Shine after buffing The finished body

I fumbled my way through the finishing process. At various points I encountered the classic problem of blush, the white haze you see in the picture. It’s caused by too much moisture getting under the layers of lacquer. It was then I realized the stupidity of spraying on a rainy day. I brought the body inside and thankfully the blush seemed to work itself off. I also found that rubbing with a tack cloth seemed to help. I guess it was acting as a kind of sanding compound, taking off small amounts of lacquer.

Finally the finish was applied. I waited 2 grueling weeks then went for final sanding and buffing. I wet sanded with 600 and 800 grit paper. I would have used 1000, but Lowe’s didn’t have any… Then, after doing some online research, I decided to stop by the auto store and get some 3M Rubbing Compound. Made for car finishing, it’s an abrasive finishing compound that buffs to a shine, which it absolutely did for me! I’m glad I took those before and after pictures of the lamp’s reflection. It goes from a vague blob of light to being able to see the shape of the CFL bulb!

Now that the body was officially done, the only things left to do were mount hardware and wire it up. I didn’t take any pictures of drilling the pickguard mounting holes, but it was straightforward. I just had to be careful not to crack the lacquer. I also mounted the tuning machines on the neck. I used all the copper tape I had left over from another project to shield the body, then did the rest with aluminum foil, which is really just as good. All those lines that bring electricity to your house are made of aluminum, you know. I was careful to cover all the screw holes in order to have a complete Faraday cage and a well grounded shield.

Cu & Al Can’t forget the output jack Probably should have cut the cap leads Troubleshooting

The wiring was very simple: just a variable voltage divider for the volume and a first order low-pass filter for the tone. I used 500kΩ Alpha pots and a .047μF Orange Drop cap. The switch is a CRL 3-way Lever and it is superb. Super smooth and satisfying action with no ambiguity between positions. Definitely worth the money.

The pickups I chose were Seymour Duncans. For the neck the SH-2n Jazz Humbucker and for the bridge the STL-3 Quarter Pounder Tele Lead. I wanted a very versatile sound that could go from clean jazz to biting leads. I was a little worried the bridge would overpower the neck, but ended up being satisfied with the combination. Yes, I know the tele bridge pickup is supposed to be tilted towards the neck on the low side and the poles are spaced appropriately for that, but I didn’t do it. At first I didn’t realize this issue, but really it doesn’t bother me. I prefer the look of straight pickups and the only tonal difference is that my lows will be a little twangier than SD intended.

Once I assembled it I had to take it back out to the shop once to do some troubleshooting. Turns out I was accidentally grounding the signal near the output jack! I also had one of the pots wired wrong. Fixed them and it worked! The satisfaction of putting one string on and being able to play it like a real guitar was incredible. After a little adjustment of the neck to make sure everything was aligned it was ready for final assembly.

The big reveal…

Spock approves. A perfect reflection of my Tigre mask from Banda Magda! I really like this knot that is cross-sectioned on the side

I am very satisfied with the appearance. After some setting up and a few more modifications like shortening the screws in the bridge and adding string trees to the headstock it became a very playable instrument. Really, it feels good to play. I was astounded at how nice it feels considering my imprecise methods.

An instrument this beautiful deserves a name. I found a frequency-sorted list of female names from the 1850 U.S. census and looked through it until I saw a name I liked. Charlotte.

Here’s a play test recording I put together real quick because I thought it would be weird to tell you all this about the guitar and not actually show you what it sounds like. Unfortunately the only amp I have to play it with is a cheapo Kustom solid-state, so you’ll have to give Charlotte the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully a DIY project in the not-too-distant future will remedy this problem…

I learned a ton during this project. It was a lot of fun and in the end I got a really cool instrument and didn’t spend a fortune. Next time will be even better, but I think I’m ready to move on to some other projects for now.

Thanks for reading.