Slackjaw
Junior Member
- Messages
- 185
Greetings,
A long story, but here goes. I started building my own guitars during my Freshman year of High School (1980-81). Being left handed, I had a keen interest in doing my own thing, since my options were limited (and also inspired by EVH). During that time, My parents had recently moved into a new house, and in the garage... the previous owners left behind a two-inch thick kidney shaped table. Of course the first idea that came to mind was, "Man... I should build a guitar out of that!" and away I went.
I had no idea what the wood was... the table top was entirely covered with a thick yellow varnish. Turns out, it was solid black walnut! So I proceeded to strip the varnish and trace out my design. I really liked flying V shaped guitars, but hated how you couldn't really sit down and play one. So my idea was to use the shape of the top edge of an Explorer, mirror flipped at the mid-line, then a V cut out of the bottom. I didn't have a real Explorer to trace, so I just eye-balled it (when I later came across a real Explorer, side-by-side the angles matched perfectly).
Having my design ready, I took a woodshop class with the sole purpose of building my guitar. Of course the instructor had other things in mind! I had to complete all required projects before I could even begin, which meant waiting until nearly the end of the school year. Partly being impatient, and partly not wanting to transport the entire table to class, I cut out the rough outline of the body with the only suitable tool I had available at home... a jigsaw. After drilling starter holes at the intersections, I thought I was leaving enough margin for error, staying at least a half inch away from my line, but... NOPE! The two-inch thick walnut did a number on the blade. Everything looked fine from the top as I was cutting, but as I was finishing the inside edge of the second "leg", the blade bent underneath and carved a slight bevel out of my intended design.
While I waited throughout the school year, I began acquiring hardware (a large chunk funded by Christmas money!). A place called "Capt. Whizeagles" in Portland (Oregon) had a small cache of very rough Danelectro neck blanks left over from the factory when it went outta biz in `68, so I snatched one of those up for $50! Early 80's Guitar Player magazines prominently featured Joe Perry with his Lawrence-loaded BC Richs', inspiring the rest of my fitment which included a Bill Lawrence L-500 for the bridge, Dimarzio Super Distortion for the neck (! - total green horn move there), Leo Quan Badass black and gold bridge, and rounded off with a set of gold Ibanez fine tuners sporting pearloid knobs. Hot damn!
So the school year finally comes to an end... the body is done! Over the summer, I broke out a can of Flecto Varathane, sprayed, assembled, and wired it up. You could imagine my anticipation! Plug it in... hey... wha....?? I CAN'T PLAY THIS THING!!! After all that... my first left handed guitar... and it was like starting over!!! For two years, I had been practicing on a RIGHT HANDED old 60's Kay hollowbody (BIG RED) that some kid found in his grandmother's attic and then gave to me. Though I made a valiant attempt, it was too frustrating so I just continued to play right. Also, this being my first and ill-researched build... there were problems. "Scale Length" became a concept only after I discovered that I had mounted the bridge too far back, so it would never intonate. I also botched the nut slot, taking too much wood out of the fretboard whilst filing it by hand. The nut itself was an ugly chunk of brass thing, with deeply cut slots. Oh, trial and error!
During my Sophomore year, I started in on my next project (STUMPY) right away (The instructor lightened up on me after seeing how cool my first project turned out, so pretty much gave me the run of the place). I had been over at a neighbor's house, and he told me about an old black walnut stump his Dad had curing out in the shed (imagine that!). I don't know if he even got permission, but he offered this stump to me. SO I hauled it to school on the bus... bark and all! For this design, I used the basis of my first one, but added an arm and cut off a leg (I saw Buck Dharma at Oregon Jam 80 and thought his guitar was pretty cool). Upon cutting into the stump, I discovered there was serious checking going on throughout the log, so had to build my plank out of about 9 laminates (!). During this time, I had a lot of interested parties who wanted to try their hand at building guitars too, so I would help them along. I was the acting shop foreman! Another guy I was friends with but was in another class, seriously botched his "Strat" project and gave up on it. He sold me the remains, hardware and all for $50. Most of which I ended up using on Stumpy, including his cheapy strat neck (even though he had drilled through the heel).
Here I am holding Stumpy, with my lefty standing up and the macerated strat body on the floor:
(to be continued)
A long story, but here goes. I started building my own guitars during my Freshman year of High School (1980-81). Being left handed, I had a keen interest in doing my own thing, since my options were limited (and also inspired by EVH). During that time, My parents had recently moved into a new house, and in the garage... the previous owners left behind a two-inch thick kidney shaped table. Of course the first idea that came to mind was, "Man... I should build a guitar out of that!" and away I went.
I had no idea what the wood was... the table top was entirely covered with a thick yellow varnish. Turns out, it was solid black walnut! So I proceeded to strip the varnish and trace out my design. I really liked flying V shaped guitars, but hated how you couldn't really sit down and play one. So my idea was to use the shape of the top edge of an Explorer, mirror flipped at the mid-line, then a V cut out of the bottom. I didn't have a real Explorer to trace, so I just eye-balled it (when I later came across a real Explorer, side-by-side the angles matched perfectly).
Having my design ready, I took a woodshop class with the sole purpose of building my guitar. Of course the instructor had other things in mind! I had to complete all required projects before I could even begin, which meant waiting until nearly the end of the school year. Partly being impatient, and partly not wanting to transport the entire table to class, I cut out the rough outline of the body with the only suitable tool I had available at home... a jigsaw. After drilling starter holes at the intersections, I thought I was leaving enough margin for error, staying at least a half inch away from my line, but... NOPE! The two-inch thick walnut did a number on the blade. Everything looked fine from the top as I was cutting, but as I was finishing the inside edge of the second "leg", the blade bent underneath and carved a slight bevel out of my intended design.
While I waited throughout the school year, I began acquiring hardware (a large chunk funded by Christmas money!). A place called "Capt. Whizeagles" in Portland (Oregon) had a small cache of very rough Danelectro neck blanks left over from the factory when it went outta biz in `68, so I snatched one of those up for $50! Early 80's Guitar Player magazines prominently featured Joe Perry with his Lawrence-loaded BC Richs', inspiring the rest of my fitment which included a Bill Lawrence L-500 for the bridge, Dimarzio Super Distortion for the neck (! - total green horn move there), Leo Quan Badass black and gold bridge, and rounded off with a set of gold Ibanez fine tuners sporting pearloid knobs. Hot damn!
So the school year finally comes to an end... the body is done! Over the summer, I broke out a can of Flecto Varathane, sprayed, assembled, and wired it up. You could imagine my anticipation! Plug it in... hey... wha....?? I CAN'T PLAY THIS THING!!! After all that... my first left handed guitar... and it was like starting over!!! For two years, I had been practicing on a RIGHT HANDED old 60's Kay hollowbody (BIG RED) that some kid found in his grandmother's attic and then gave to me. Though I made a valiant attempt, it was too frustrating so I just continued to play right. Also, this being my first and ill-researched build... there were problems. "Scale Length" became a concept only after I discovered that I had mounted the bridge too far back, so it would never intonate. I also botched the nut slot, taking too much wood out of the fretboard whilst filing it by hand. The nut itself was an ugly chunk of brass thing, with deeply cut slots. Oh, trial and error!
During my Sophomore year, I started in on my next project (STUMPY) right away (The instructor lightened up on me after seeing how cool my first project turned out, so pretty much gave me the run of the place). I had been over at a neighbor's house, and he told me about an old black walnut stump his Dad had curing out in the shed (imagine that!). I don't know if he even got permission, but he offered this stump to me. SO I hauled it to school on the bus... bark and all! For this design, I used the basis of my first one, but added an arm and cut off a leg (I saw Buck Dharma at Oregon Jam 80 and thought his guitar was pretty cool). Upon cutting into the stump, I discovered there was serious checking going on throughout the log, so had to build my plank out of about 9 laminates (!). During this time, I had a lot of interested parties who wanted to try their hand at building guitars too, so I would help them along. I was the acting shop foreman! Another guy I was friends with but was in another class, seriously botched his "Strat" project and gave up on it. He sold me the remains, hardware and all for $50. Most of which I ended up using on Stumpy, including his cheapy strat neck (even though he had drilled through the heel).
Here I am holding Stumpy, with my lefty standing up and the macerated strat body on the floor:
(to be continued)
