Adinol
Member
Greetings,
In another thread I posted some pictures of a home made "Gibson" ES-335 that I made for my kid. There were some very positive responses so I decided to share some more photos of some other instruments I've been making for/with my kid.
He saw Bo Diddley on YouTube and immediately wanted a guitar like that. But he had specific requests and changed some details.
It has to have a carver top and rounded corners, and a very specific shape for the pickguard.
Here's a photo.
You can't see that the guitar has a carved top, so you'll have to take my word for it. It's a neck through body. The neck is a laminate maple/mahogany/maple. Believe it or not, those pieces of wood are from forklift kickers (kind of like pallets). Near me there's a Lumber Liquidator outlet and I noticed that their forklift kickers and pallets are sometimes made form exotic woods. I believe their supplier simply has scraps that are not good for cutting into flooring boards and it simply makes more business sense to cut them into forklift pallets than to pay to dump them. I showed them what I've been building for my kid and now they are happy to give me whatever scrap wood I want.
The fretboard is mahogany from a curb side furniture find, dyed black with India ink.
The side wings of the body are old pine. I've been renovating my kitchen and those are from an old 2x4, dating back to 1908 when my house was built.
The back is just screwed in and it is made from the bottom of an old kitchen drawer. The pickguard came from the same drawers.
It is a short scale length (19.75") and narrow string spread. So, I wound my own pickups. The flatwork for the pickups are some pieces of acrylic sheets that (you guessed it) someone threw into a dumpster. Polepieces are neodimium magnets (I bought) and I also bought the magnet wire, the pots, stainless frets, tuning pegs, truss rod and two furniture bolts that are used for strap buttons. The internal lead wires are from discarded headphones that I found on the street. I just like the idea of using other people's garbage to build something.
My kid designed the headstock shape. It has a scrap piece of black acrylic epoxied on top. He wanted to write Bo Diddle Guitar on top, so I let him write it with his own hand, then I took a dentist's drill bit and engraved over his handwriting. I filled it with epoxy mixed with some leftover baby powder and sanded it flush.
My kid participated in most of the gluing, dyed the guitar red and also installed the hardware.
That's not the last guitar we built, but I'll do a follow up post later.
In another thread I posted some pictures of a home made "Gibson" ES-335 that I made for my kid. There were some very positive responses so I decided to share some more photos of some other instruments I've been making for/with my kid.
He saw Bo Diddley on YouTube and immediately wanted a guitar like that. But he had specific requests and changed some details.
It has to have a carver top and rounded corners, and a very specific shape for the pickguard.
Here's a photo.
You can't see that the guitar has a carved top, so you'll have to take my word for it. It's a neck through body. The neck is a laminate maple/mahogany/maple. Believe it or not, those pieces of wood are from forklift kickers (kind of like pallets). Near me there's a Lumber Liquidator outlet and I noticed that their forklift kickers and pallets are sometimes made form exotic woods. I believe their supplier simply has scraps that are not good for cutting into flooring boards and it simply makes more business sense to cut them into forklift pallets than to pay to dump them. I showed them what I've been building for my kid and now they are happy to give me whatever scrap wood I want.
The fretboard is mahogany from a curb side furniture find, dyed black with India ink.
The side wings of the body are old pine. I've been renovating my kitchen and those are from an old 2x4, dating back to 1908 when my house was built.
The back is just screwed in and it is made from the bottom of an old kitchen drawer. The pickguard came from the same drawers.
It is a short scale length (19.75") and narrow string spread. So, I wound my own pickups. The flatwork for the pickups are some pieces of acrylic sheets that (you guessed it) someone threw into a dumpster. Polepieces are neodimium magnets (I bought) and I also bought the magnet wire, the pots, stainless frets, tuning pegs, truss rod and two furniture bolts that are used for strap buttons. The internal lead wires are from discarded headphones that I found on the street. I just like the idea of using other people's garbage to build something.
My kid designed the headstock shape. It has a scrap piece of black acrylic epoxied on top. He wanted to write Bo Diddle Guitar on top, so I let him write it with his own hand, then I took a dentist's drill bit and engraved over his handwriting. I filled it with epoxy mixed with some leftover baby powder and sanded it flush.
My kid participated in most of the gluing, dyed the guitar red and also installed the hardware.
That's not the last guitar we built, but I'll do a follow up post later.