Well, the project that seemed so straight forward at the onset was anything but. BUT, it’s done. Terrific Tele twang and a finish that meets my original vision.

So, what went wrong? First the rough ash body that I bought off eBay was really dicked up. The neck pocket did not line up with the bridge through-the-body string holes, the slot for the volume/tone pots was off and the whole on the body edge for the cable jack was also the wrong size. What a jerk.

However it was not just the ‘body jerk’ who screwed up, the $110 Schaller gold adjustable roller bridge had three adjustment screws cross threaded. And one of the string retainers for the neck was missing one of the rollers.

I read the other day that learning to make guitars is a ‘process of trial and error’. That’s not completely true. It is a process of overcoming the inevitable error.

Here is my pearled white undercoat transparent blonde lacquer finish. The pickups are from Pete Biltotf at Vintage Vibe Guitars. I use only Pete’s pickups these days.

The name? Snowstorm.

On 'Parts Hold' AGAIN!!!

What a complete waste of time as I ‘order a new bridge, wait, check fit; REPEAT’. I am trying my fifth bridge now as finding the right shape, color and configuration to cover the errant holes the vendor drilled in the body and make a functional but still attractive guitar is really proving to be a challenge.

And, ‘NO’, the vendor never returned my email where I explained the various basics on guitar making that he clearly has never learned.

Pick a bridge any bridge!



Hopefully today, the ‘magic piece’ will arrive.

MacGyver Time Again

As I have said many times, building guitars is not for the faint of heart or those without a little MacGyver in them. Seems like something always goes wrong and many times after hours upon hours of work.

And so it is with '18'. The body that I bought from a vendor with 100% perfect rating is misconfigured. The pocket for the neck does not align the neck so the strings meet the bridge. As you can see in the picture the bass side string runs off the neck at the heel. One solution is to rerout the pocket for the bridge pickup but that will not work as the old pocket would then be too big and a hole would show on the bass side of the bridge assembly.



So, what now? Besides the harsh email to the supplier where I questioned is lineage, parental genetics and made a now regretful comment about his mother. The only solution is to use a different bridge, one more like a traditional hard tail Strat. Also, I will need to figure someway to move the bridge pickup (which will now be naked in the hole.) more towards the treble side of the body as it does not line up with the revised string orientation any longer.

What a completely needless amount of work and compromise because some moron sold a defective piece and I simply trusted that the geometry was correct given the many comments in the feedback section. Oh well, time to move on and we still need a name for 18.

It Is Never Too Late to Slowdown

Well, this little quickie has come to a crawl. The reality of my ‘experiment’ with some different paint combinations and fillers did not match my vision for the finish. It looked kinda like that ugly ‘pickled oak’ furniture from years ago. So, I sanded much off and bought two lacquer finishes from ReRanch online; transparent white and Fender blonde. I used some of the white as a base coat over the sanded original finish, applied blonde in various thicknesses and began the process of building up the clear.

Lacquer has a property that is both terrific and challenging. And that is, each coat slightly melts into the prior coat. That is terrific if you are layering clear over clear. But, challenging if you hoping to leave the base as is and apply clear without melting into the base. Maybe there is a sealer out there that I don’t know about. I’ll check with ReRanch folks

Anyway, the guitar finish is coming along fine now and exceeding my original vision. Though pictures don’t do the finish justice, here is a glimpse of the what the completed guitar will look like.

The Big Wait

Sanding, finishing, sanding, finishing, waiting for more paint to arrive, sanding, re-sanding, waiting....

The Quick White Bunny

I am always amazed at how much quicker these solid body projects go as compared to the acoustic guitars. Particularly when the neck and body are premade. Back to the project. I am pretty happy so far with the unique way in which I am finishing this guitar. It is almost one of those ‘relic’ finishes as I apply coats of white pearl acrylic, sand it down to almost bare wood and repeat. Here you can start to get a feel for how this guitar will come together from this shot. Not sure if I will keep quite so much wood showing. The plan is to complete the acrylic under coat and then apply layers of lacquer. At that time I will tone down the silver white with a little yellow and amber tint bringing out that antiqued look.

Long Time No Blog

My eighteenth guitar project and none more exciting than this; inspired by The Reverend Billy F’s Bolin Tele.

Where do we start? I have a Fender licensed all maple tele neck (though not reversed like Billy’s) and I bought a solid ash tele body from Barry Johnson in North Carolina. Found his offerings on eBay. The body came pretty rough but a beautiful piece of wood. The bridge pick-up is a custom from Pete Biltoft now living in Oregon. I have used many of Pete’s pick-ups over the years and I love them.

Unlike Billy F’s grunged up model, I wanted to keep the look and feel of his guitar but make mine a little classier. I like the semi-opaque look of BFG’s tele and I like the lack of traditional pick guard including the route out for the missing neck pick-up. I have decided to finish the guitar with a pearl white body but sanded very thin on the top, much like Billy’s. To ensure that my baby is a little classier, I am installing only gold plated hardware. Get the image? Keep working on it, you’ll get it.

Let’s go build this puppy. First step is to find some way to fill in the deep grain grooves that come with ash, which is much like oak that was very popular a few years ago. I found a white acrylic filler paste at Woodcraft and applied a few coats in between a lot of sanding. I also have found that applying thin coats of thick, sticky liquids works best with an old business card or the side of thin sliced wood working like a spatula.

At this stage, the body kind of looks like those women in the comedy sketches with the creams all over their face. Well, try sanding it off sweetheart.

Number 18 (We'll find a cool name later.)