Sheppzcaster - lfgss guitar build collab

Doodled a guitar a while back - sort of a telecaster dano mash up. Investigated building it myself and got put off - forgot about it for couple years.

Posted it recently on here and so top fella's be into helping me build it. Well... I've done the drawing and colouring in so far and i'll finish it up with electronics etc but the real work is by.... @christianSpaceman (body) and @rodan (neck).

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how is @Sparky not involved??

I heroically volunteered for what is likely the easiest part of the build, the body. We're aiming at the bottom iteration of the picture above, with the telecaster bridge and switch.

We had some conversations about what wood to make it out of. I always favour making my guitars as light as possible, and so usually make them hollow. However, that means that you have to chamber out the body, then stick a cap on top of it.

In this case, there would be no binding around the outside of the guitar to cover up any glue lines between the cap and the body blank, and given the finish that's going on it I wasn't sure if we'd be able to guarantee that they wouldn't be invisible.

All this meant that we'd likely use a solid body blank and after a chat with David Dyke about what the lightest suitable candidate would be, this showed up. It's going to be a two-piece alder body. Quite attractive, and already jointed, which I wasn't expecting.

I'll cut the templates from @Sheppz 's lovely plans over the weekend.

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Kicked off the neck today - truss rod channel routed, outline shaped, fretboard (roughly, still needs sanding) radiused.

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Who's going to be hand-winding the pickups? 🙂

I endorse these activities

Wanna ? Otherwise I’m buying them !

Strong like

My kind of thread. Love it, can't wait to see how it turns out!

Love it!
Where is the jack plugging in? On the side like a Tele or in the top like an SG (that would be my choice, and less routing required too)?

keeping it tele style for a nice clean face.

Outstanding work lads!! Really looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

Made a bit of progress on the body.

I've transferred the (excellent) plans onto an MDF template that we'll use for shaping later. This is done with a variety of sanding and filing tools.

I didn't bother with the pickup routes, as those will be positioned using a standard telecaster template which @rodan and I have identical copies of.

This shape is then transferred to the body blank. Little tip I picked up is to draw the cutting line with a washer so that it's a smidge bigger than the shape you actually want - it's easier to point the bandsaw at an actual line rather than 'outside' the line you want.

Annoyingly my bandsaw couldn't make the cut - it's a cheap thing which can barely make cuts the depth of a guitar body, and it needs a new blade. I'll finish cutting out the body once it comes in.

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A little bit more of the neck done - I’ve carved out the recess for the truss rod adjustment wheel, and shaped the headstock with the spindle sander.

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This thread is worth it for the washer tip alone

Following!

This is great. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

I did a bit of work on the body.

Having got it rough cut, I used a drum sander with a follower bearing running on the template to get it to its final shape.

Lots of people use a router to do this, but I much prefer this method - it's quieter and much less lower risk. Without a table it's very easy with a router to slip away from 90 degrees and nick the body. Given the finish that's going on this will (probably) not be fully opaque, we wouldn't be able to recover from such damage by filling or replacing wood.

Edit: you can see how blunt my bandsaw blade was on that picture... Looks like it burnt its way through!

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Then I routed out the various pickup and control cavities.

These were copied straight off a telecaster template, that way we know that if we place them from the back of the heel pocket they'll be in exactly the right position for the guitar's correct scale length.

The control plate is much shorter than the usual telecaster one. We've been discussing where to get ones from and have decided to have a crack at making and nickel plating our own....

It would be helpful to have that before cutting the scratchplate, which I need before putting the neck pocket in so making that plate will likely be the next step.

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I am absolutely loving this thread.. well done and thank you for sharing

I made some progress on the control plate. I picked up some brass sheet to make it out of - nickel plating will come later. I could have rough cut the shape and filed it down, but instead I thought I'd use a router and template to get the shape exactly right.

I made an mdf template of one end of a telecaster control plate by using a follower bearing on my router

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Then I mounted a bit of brass to that with double sided tape, and got the router set up to follow the mdf template

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The internet and a couple of friends suggested that it should be fine to use a normal router on metal if you lower the speed. Unfortunately, mine's not an adjustable router... So, I put on safety gear and just sent it...

It worked really nicely. Once one end was done, I flipped it over on the template and did the other

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All that was left was to drill a couple of holes. I messed this up initially by trying to drill with an old bit and a hand drill :) However, once it was all clamped in place, with a slow drill speed and sharp bits, it looked pretty good:

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Here it is on the guitar. Pretty happy with it - I've not really made anything from metal before, so even though this was pretty basic it was quite satisfying.

Next up is the scratchplate, and I'll get the bits of bobs needed to nickel plate this in the background.

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