Got a cardboard mockup of the uke taken care of, and the wife approves.
Drew out the parts onto the foamboard for 3d models but havenāt cut the parts out yet.
Started submitting orders for some of the major parts for both instruments. Bridges, tuners (for the guitar), and so on. Will order the uke neck this week and also try to get the uke pickups ordered. If I donāt hear from the guy who is winding his own mandolin pickups, then Iāll probably just buy the Seymour Duncan mandolin pickup. Iām holding off on the Seymour Duncan pickups for my guitar until I have a better answer for the uke, since Iāll be able to save on a little shipping by ordering them together.
When I saw that thing, it got me to thinking of all the times it would have been really useful and a lot more accurate than eyeballing the tiny bubble level in my drill.
The way I figure, even if my work on the instrument bodies is terrible, Iāll just be able to get a different piece of wood and re-do them. But if I do a nice job, then weāll have some really nice instruments. My rough math is telling me Iām probably going to spend about $2k or maybe a little less between both the guitar and the uke. And going off what Iāve been seeing, those instruments would sell for around $1k-$1500 for the uke and somewhere between $3k and $6k for the guitar.
Just placed an order for some walnut turning blanks. I would have loved to get some āhighly figuredā wood, but the dimensions for turning blanks were too close to what I want to wind up with for an end product than Iām comfortable with. Itās WAY more wood than I need, but it at least gives me enough to work with and experiment with. Making the turquoise/resin tops is going to take a little experimentation.
I think I might send some of that wood over to my dad for the rough-ish turning. Heās got an actual wood lathe. If theyāre at least roughed in, Iāll be able to make the tops and do the finish sanding with my drill. I was looking into my own little lathe setup and I suppose I could get a tiny little cheapo thing but Iād rather not buy a piece of junk thatāll mostly just take up space. Postage for a small turning blank will be a lot better and his bigger lathe with better tools will give a better end product.
Still trying to dig up info about uke pickups. Itās weird. I find all kinds of posts from people building a solid-body electric uke but getting sound samples of whatever pickups people use has not been easy. The only one Iāve found so far is from a guy who hacked up a p-bass pickup for his flying v electric uke.
Iāve found people mentioning this guy as an option, but nobody describing how these sound. Pickups
The sound samples Iāve found from some of the cigar box pickups are uninspiring, to be honest. Some sound pretty good but itās not clear whatās going on. A lot of them sound pretty weak. I may wind up needing to just take a flyer and just pick something.
Got a response from Steve Ryder just now which is great because Iāve been leaning towards his pickups. I fired off some questions for him about pickup choices.
So the design Iām going to get my neighbor to laser engrave onto the headstocks is going to be some variation on this:
I need to convert it over to a vector graphic and while Iām at it, I think Iām going to go with more open eyes. Such as here (but I donāt like this angle as much for this purpose). The idea I want to convey is that the owl is looking out of its roost cavity, which is inside the headstock.
Just an initial mockup using an online tool. Going to see if this would be good for my neighbor to use or if theyād need some adjustments to it. I think itās fantastic and looks better than I expected with the squinty eyes. I thought I might want at least one open eye, if not both.
Haha thats pretty cool. If you were going for a metal guitar or if you wanted to make a statment you could consider putting a mouse in his beak. Nothing says metal like a bird of prey about to eat its freshly caught meal.
For this particular owl it would be more suitable to use frogs or songbirds instead of mice. Iāve only seen 1 rodent stashed in the box. But it murdered the entire wood frog population in the pond behind my house in one night. And it has stashed a number of different songbirds in there at different times (starling, eastern bluebird, cedar waxwing).
Iāve been putting together a shopping cart of the misc bits (mostly electronics and finishing supplies) for a āfinalā order. Most of it isnāt anything I need immediately, but the long drill bits will be important for the wiring channels. Thatās still a bit off yet so this order wonāt be a rush.
Iāve been mulling over what to do about the control cavity cover (Iām going to try to do this with just a single cavity for each instrument) and call me crazy but I think I want to try to make a cover out of some 1/8" walnut and use teeny rare-earth magnets to attach it. Would match nicely with the walnut on the control knobs.
I do want to have a roadmap in mind for the steps I need to take throughout the process, so Iāve been looking ahead. I have in mind the sort of finish I want but I wasnāt exactly sure how to get there. And of course Iāve read about spalted woods needing special treatment so I wanted to dig deeper there, too. I think I chose a good slab. Enough spalting to give some visual pop. But everything feels really solid still. I canāt find any spongy/soft bits. That bodes well for my finishing options, as so far it seems like Iām not going to need to do anything special to harden the wood. With that in mind, I am planning to use Tried & True Original (linseed oil & beeswax). Everything Iām reading tells me it provides the best āfeelā, and is fairly easy to apply, though it takes a LOT of patience to get a suitable finish. I can work with that.
Shielding/grounding is going to be a āfunā subject to do a deep dive on.
Iām no expert, but he two holes in the center of each of the slender dark areas make me think this is ambrosia maple. The holes being made by the ambrosia beetle. Spalted maple has lots of squiggly black lines and is caused by a fungus.
The Schaller is a nice looking bridge. The string spacing adjustability could come in handy if some other piece of the neck geometry puzzle is off a bit. Not having to drill the string through holes is an another nice feature. There are not a lot of ātop loadingā bridges out there.
Based on the price, I was skeptical about this ātop loaderā bridge from Musiclily, but it was well made! Fixed string spacing though.
Hipshot also make very high quality locking tuner you may want to consider as an alternative. They also sell alternative buttons if you want a custom look.
Ah, Iām no expert, either. Guess I need to dig up the details. After some reading and looking at the piece, it does look like itās ambrosia maple. Apparently a piece of wood can be both, but based on descriptions I read about the two, I donāt see the spalting. Cool!
Yeah, the full adjustability of that Schaller bridge was attractive to me, allowing me to adjust for possible sloppiness on my end. I wasnāt necessarily opposed to string through holes, but Iām not unhappy to be avoiding them.
I did end up ordering the Ratio locking tuners. I like locking tuners - my Les Paul has Grovers. But I specifically wanted to give the Ratio tuners a go because Iām intrigued by the gear ratios being different to even out tuning adjustments such that itāll take roughly the same number of turns to get the same change in pitch on all the strings. The finicky tuning of the low strings is annoying at times.
Iām thinking about having that same image engraved on the neck plate, also.
The walnut turning blanks I ordered just arrived. One of the pieces in particular has some beautiful quilting.
Who needs tonewood? Whyād I buy that fancy slab, anyway? Foamboard will do the job just fine. Might need a little reinforcement, but thatās not a big deal, right?
Got my 3d models sculpted up today. Iām quite happy with the shape of the guitar and my wife is pretty happy with the shape of the uke. Big thing to figure out now is control layout so I can get the control cavities figured out. Iāve been wanting to keep things fairly simple and just buy control cavity templates. I might be able to do that for the uke just fine, but I donāt know if thatāll work for my guitar. Iām using controls that donāt seem terribly common and the only layouts and templates Iāve seen for that are in a youtube video where the guy drew them up by hand and made his template custom right there in the vid. I think Iām going to have to do the same.
Iām seen some general-ish cavity templates that include the template for the cover (exactly what Iām after) but the measurements for them havenāt been quite detailed enough for me to decide if theyāll work for what I want to do.
Iāve decided that Iām ultimately going to seal the wood with epoxy. Thereās a little bit of cracking at the wide end of the slab and no matter what I do I wonāt be able to avoid the cracks entirely. The widest is maybe 0.5mm, so theyāre small. But I donāt want them getting worse.
Iāve been researching a variety of different products and I think the TotalBoat penetrating epoxy is going to do what I need. I think what Iāll do is pour some into the cracks/checks before I cut anything out to make sure those get stabilized. Sounds like if I use my heat gun to heat up the wood around the cracks (before pouring) that the epoxy will flow a bit better and penetrate the wood more (and therefore stabilize it better). And then once I get the bodies cut out and trimmed into their shapes, do a thin seal coat over the entire thing (which would then get sanded). Sounds like after sanding, the only remaining epoxy will be in the wood pores (and bug holes) and along with the oil finish to give the guitar an exceptionally smooth and buttery feel.
Iām having a bit of a router bit mini-crisis right now, too. Not sure how I missed it, but the bearing flush trim bit I got to trim the body to the template is a 1/2" shank and wonāt fit the trim router I bought myself (that one has a 1/4" shank). The router I rented is supposed to have a collet for a 1/2" shank, but that part is missing. It only has its 1/4" collet. So sometime between today and Saturday Iām going to need to get in touch with the tool library to make sure I can rent a router that actually has a 1/2" collet. I think I should be able to cut out the instrument bodies to shape next week. I plan to have the templates rough cut this week and I can spend the time sanding them to their final shapes over the weekend while the epoxy in the cracks cures. So assuming it doesnāt take the epoxy a week to cure, Iāll be routing the guitar body shapes. They do have a couple router tables and one of those might make doing the perimeter shape cut a lot easier.
So the other flush trim bit Iāve ordered has been ādelayedā (apparently indefinitely). It was supposed to have arrived on Friday last week. eyeroll So I think Iām going to have that order cancelled. Iāve shopped around and Iāve found at least one alternative at a store in another part of town. Thereās also a woodworking shop down there that might also have one in stock. I donāt need this bit immediately, but I do want to have it when I actually need it rather than be sitting around with my thumbs up my @$$.
The uke pickups also got delivered today. Wife better not complain - sheās getting hand-wound made-to-order pickups in her uke.
Decided to change strategies. I was working on MDF routing templates yesterday and noticed that the lack of precision of the sanding bits I was using in my drill were going to make for a crappy router template. I decided that what I needed to make sure the edges were good was an oscillating drum sander. Easy enough to check one out from the tool library. But at that point, whatās the purpose of using a router on those templates, anyway?
I decided when I returned the router (whose collet wasnāt the right size for the bit I would use) that I would pick up the sander and I would just sand the maple down to shape. Iād practice on the MDF templates and then just use them to trace onto the maple.
I worked on the uke body first because if I completely wrecked it, I have enough wood to make a couple more. I only have enough of the slab wide enough for the guitar body for a single one and barely even that. I was able to get the uke body mostly sanded down to the basic shape today. All thatās left is the area where the neck pocket will be, and for that Iām just going to hand sand it.
The uke neck also came, so I got to lay them out to get a general idea of what itās going to look like. Ooooohhhh, itās looking good!
For anyone wanting to do a low cost guitar build, I can strongly recommend the Musically products. I recently completely renovated a very cheap and in bad condition Squier tele.
I used Musically parts (brass saddles and locking tuners). They were super cheap but had good reviews and since it was a low cost re-build I bought them. I have been very impressed with the quality of those parts for a fraction of the cost of well known brands. In fact, I even replaced the Gotoh saddles on my high-end Strat build with the brass Musically saddles because they were really good.
There was really nothing wring with these parts, despite the amazingly cheap price. I would definitely use them again. The locking tuners have been really good.
or if you wanted to make a statment 
you could consider putting a mouse in his beak. Nothing says metal like a bird of prey about to eat its freshly caught meal.
