Leaderboard

If you want to see a serious pro, here's a thread -> (+ scraping bindings)

stubhead

Master Member
Messages
4,669
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/telecaster-discussion-forum/117238-coming-thread-near-you.html

Ron Kirn is one of the heavies in the bolt-neck crown, he still does it all by hand, one at a time. Tom Anderson, Suhr, and others are inching more and more towards the assembly-line methods - nothing wrong with that, the more great guitars the better. But in this thread, even though I don't like the fittings of the final "telecaster" - borrowed from a late-50's Gibson L-5 - the detail of the posts on wet-sanding the finish are great, you might not see some of these tricks anywhere else. P. 2 he uses a steam iron to raise the grain prior to finishing and he's a nut for making perfect little tools out of scraps to get everything just right.
 
Well I just went through that whole thread, That was awesome, thanks stuby, I love that kinda stuff.

 
Like wow!

I, too, went thru that whole Thread.......extremely detailed and obviously Mr. Kirn has his shyte together.  :o
 
Nice thread. He's a talented guy and does great work. Pretty reasonably priced, too, if you'd like one of your own. I've been passing a link to his Strat build tutorial around for a couple years now. If you enjoyed the Tele thread you just read, you'll love the Strat thread. It's on his own site, rather than a forum. Takes you from raw planks of wood all the way to deliverable, with a lot of great tips along the way.
 
I can't for the life of me figure out why this thread hasn't got more replies from us people here.

Any of us on this forum with a little space, a few tools and the patience to follow instructions and think sequentialy, could easily build a guitar from scratch, and after a few tries and learning a few tricks could make your own guitar as good as anybody
 
Maybe so. But, there's more to it than that. $1,500 to $3,000 worth of tools would have you well set up to do pretty much all you needed to, but where do you put them and when can you use them? Obviously, someone who can afford to build more than one guitar can afford to be set up to build stacks of them. But, you can't really do that in the kitchen, right? Tough to open the oven door with a 14" bandsaw in front of it, and you can't move the bloody thing because there's a 12" floor-standing drill press not too far away, not to mention the rest of the toys. Plus, get sawdust in the old lady's eggs just once, and you'd swear you were being accused of nailing puppies to the wall with gutter spikes. Sheesh!
 
No theres not more to it than that,  I think you could easily spend 1500-3000 bucks on tools.

But you dont have to, you don't need a bandsaw, a 30 dollar jigsaw will work fine, slow but fine, an 80 dollar router, 30 bucks worth of files and rasps, 20 bucks for a pile of sandpaper, spend big bucks and buy a Straight ruler ( 10-20 bucks.)

I'd say you wanna buy a few good quality clamps to clamp templates down, all the scrapers and special tools you make yourself. 

I say a router, and less than 100 bucks worth of other tools and you could easily make a great guitar.
 
thanks for the reminder saw that thread a while back, i have used his ferrule alignment  method with great success.
There is some really talented  people on that forum, for all things  Tele its a one stop forum.
 
Back
Top