Zagwert, you were absolutely right, the top does need reinforcing under it, the plywood sheet itself is as floppy as a badly baked pizza and will never be able to withstand the force of the strings pulling it. I had a thorough about how to make it without doing unnecessary work by crafting braces that doesn`t do nothing and was trying to keep it as light and simple as possible...












So I`ve been in the garage the last three nights making this:




Can`t get much simpler than that, and it`s rock solid. The braces are made from walnut so they should be hard enough to fight the pull of the strings. Next two things would propably be finishing the inner wirings (in case you were windering what`s that black spot, it`s to prevent the LED lighting the inlays from glowing through the plywood) and to glue the lid onto the frame. After that, finish the exess wood from the top, glue the birch veneers to the box, install binding stripes, stain, clearcoat, buff, buff, buff, buff, buff until I can see my teeth from it, install the rest of the hardware, tune and




Just hoping this guy won`t come before the first tests...

EDIT: [offtopic] haddang that walnut dust tastes AWFUL! Gotta have a mask on at all times when working with it...[/offtopic]

 

After a month of slow to no progress I finally managed to take the project a little closer towards finishing.



I glued the top onto the frame and shaved the exess off. First time I`ve ever used a top bearing flush trim bit on a router so it was a bit of a nerve wrecking experience...



I managed to smoothen out the "bulge" under the neck between the lines and shaped the arc under the headstock to it`s final form.


Veneers cut to shape. I had to put extra bits on both ends of the "horns" cause the veneer sheet was so narrow it didn`t cover the whole top.


I got a tip from a friend that the veneers should be taped together like this so they will press together when glued in place.



Made a slot onto a piece of plywood so I could use it to help press the veneers into place...


...and put a block of exess wood and a few strips of veneer into the box to support the top when glued.


Think there`s enough weight on there?

 

Last night I played around with Google SketchUp making some plans for my next project. What do you guys think about these:

 

Enjoying following this Mattson.

 

That design I drew haunts me. I`m not sure have I seen it somewhere or is it, as I`d like to think, my own brainchild. The closest I can come up with is the Bc Rich Warlock, but even that is pretty far from what I planned, the pics are the first raw form I had in mind and the shape is propably going through some subtle changes before production but if anyone knows this is already done I`d like to know. Some custom hand made one already existing I wouldn`t mind but replicating some mass-produced model wouldn`t make much sense to me...

 

Mina Damen och herregyd, Ladies and Betlehem, I Give You: MASTER EXPLORER!!!!










I battled with the veneering for a good while, trying different things, but finally had to give up and admit it simply cannot be done, at least with my skills... So, the fact in mind that this thing isn`t probably going to be played extensively, I took a short cut and coated it with a vinyl sticker. The sticker rolls a bit from the points where my leg and arm hits the edges, but I put reinforcement pieces there so it`ll hold. Possibly going to paint it in the future, but right now I was too keen to get to test if and how it plays.

And I`ll tell you, I was quite surprised when I first got it fine tuned and got a few notes out of it. There`s a small resonance from something, gotta check that out at some point, but what really got me is how LOUD it plays! Without comparing, I`d claim that it`s actually a bit louder than a regular acoustic guitar.

It`s a bit rough, not exactly finished with painstaking detail due to lack of motivation from failure to veneer it, but as what it is, a practice job to prove myself I`m capable of producing a functioning guitar, I`m all and all pretty happy with it. Maybe a wee bit proud too... The red stain shows a bit from the edges of the headstock but I was forced to paint it black cause I could not find red wood patterned vinyl. All other inner electrics work apart from the optic inlay fibers cause when I went to buy the filter capacitor for the tone switch I forgot to buy the resistor for the LED. Probably gonna do that tomorrow and get it sorted over the weekend.

It`s actually super easy to play once you get used to the fact that it has only four strings. It currently holds D`addario XL Nickel wound strings with diameters .052, .017, .013, .010, or E,g,b,e. I put one "bass" string for low notes and the rest from the high end.

I`m gonna have to play it for a while until I can post a vid of how it sounds cause I haven`t been playing much for a long time and am rusty as a blunt nail...

So, the next project will most likely be the Blue Sapphire guitar pictured above, but I`m fearing it`ll have to wait at least till summer, too many things draining the budget as is plus gotta prioritize the bike next so it`ll be ready for spring!