My first Warmoth Tele

woj74

Junior Member
Messages
153
Proudly presenting my first Warmoth project:

Neck: Warmoth Pro padouk/ebony neck, standard thin contour, nut 1-1/16", Gotoh tuners, brass nut, gold fretwire.
Body: One piece ash - hard to say if swamp or hard but rather hard, the body material & all work made here in Poland where i live.
First routed on a CNC router by my friend and then by myself sculpted tummy cut and heel contour,edge radius and fine sanded.
Finish applied by myself: cherry dye,polyester primer/sealer,black acrylic car finish burst,polyurethane 2 component finish ( 3 coats), sanding, buffing with Farecla polishing paste.
Electronics: Texas Special pickups,4 way switch,volume&tone 250k.
All gold hardware - no single screw in any different color.
She plays in my personal opinion and my friend's opinion great. He 's a professional musicial with much expoerience in live gigs and studio and was really astonished.I had already recorded at his recording studio a couple of riffs and can say she rocks. I will continue recording session probably next week and when it's done post some music.

So far thank you Warmoth and all you people on this forum.

 

Attachments

  • PICT0291.JPG
    PICT0291.JPG
    30.4 KB · Views: 942
  • PICT0306.JPG
    PICT0306.JPG
    34 KB · Views: 857
  • PICT0308.JPG
    PICT0308.JPG
    36.1 KB · Views: 1,023
Man, that is incredible! That finish is something else, it is deep and brings out the figure of the wood.  I can't believe you started with just a plank o'wood!  Seriously, great work my friend!
 
Nice build!  :eek:ccasion14: I predict someone will "suggestion box" Warmoth get some of that Polish Ash...
 
Woooo I like it.  The finish reminds me of the SG I did two years ago.  I really like how you did the edges.  Very very nice.
 
Reminds me a little bit of an acoustic I played with the spruce top stained to look like mahogany. Realllly nice
 
Hey man. 
Great looking guitar........Good Work.  :hello2:

I love the bursting.  Thats a great choice of colour.

Nice one.
 
Nice one!! Great project and congrats on going from a hunk of wood to that. Especially love the finish.
 
Thnaks guys for your positive opinions. I was really afraid to place the pics and wait for your feedback. I wouldn't like to be boring but if any of guys would like to know more deails about building and finishing process i'm ready to post it. And...i went to my friend with that guitar and when his emotions settled down he asked i need to have a similar one. He's more about hard rocker and would need sth like Axis with tremolo so we're just "brain storming" about bridge, pickups and other hardware but one thing remains constant, cherry/blackburst gloss finish. I still have two blanks of the ash and probably would veneer it with flame maple on the top and peghead, we'll see. Again thanks for your encouraging words. :eek:ccasion14:
 
if any of guys would like to know more deails about building and finishing process i'm ready to post it.

Uhh...of course we want to know more!  We have a sickness that compels us to know more!  Please tell us more!
 
OK, here we go

The idea was to have a custom Telecaster vintage look with a touch of modern solutions which make playing more comfortable. Nothing relic or orthodox vintage. Also idea was to DYI as much as posibble with my skills and available tools. I decided to buy neck and hardware at Warmoth and body due to high shipping costs to Poland, customs fees and first of all due to plan of DYI contribution was processed locally.
Neck wood: padouk/ebony was the desire of raw wood feeling and bright sound. Warmoth pro construction.
Pickups bought at www.musik-produktiv.de in Germany for quite competitive price about 120 EUR.
I went to my local sawmill wood supply, selected from tens of them and bought a plank of ash. Around 100" long,20" wide and 2" thick. The plank was originally twice longer but needed not that much. The piece i bought was enought for 3 bodies but only 2 pieces are clean without any gnarls.
The wood was already dry but also seasoned in my house for severel months. Cost of raw wood was around $50.
When working with power tolls i smelled sth like olive oil and i was right since ash belongs to olive trees family.Maybe you know that maybe not.
First i thought i would cut the body with a jigsaw or a bandsaw but then remembred about my local guitar tech who built by himself a CNC router just for that purposes. That way when Warmoth parts arrived and turned to him to do that body shape and neck pocket routing.
Next step was final shaping (tummy cut, heel contour,edge radiusing) and fine sanding, lots of sanding paper from 60-280 grid used for that. Comfort contours shaped by a sanding disc on a drill and then fine sanded. Quite obvious but never bad to remind especially with woods like ash to not to touch the wood with sanding paper in your fingers. ALWAYS use a sanding block unless you like "waves" on the surface. Power tools help a lot when fine sanding front and back of the body.
Next step was drilling string through holes. A standard drill in a drill press wouldn’t work since press' arm is to short to get to that place on the body so i used a drill holder which looks more like router and works the same and was really happy with result. Ferrules sit pretty straight in the body. Another remark - for wood drilling use wood bits with pilot pin . Metal drills don't work fine with wood. You will not get right diameter and they will chip edges.

Finishing: Was really stranded, natural oil, danish oil, shellack,nitro,polyurethane etc. The choice was polyurethane. I have some expoerience with shellack. I think natural finished are nice but chemical ones and definitelly more durable.
After continuous visits at home depots where you can buy beautiful nice cans with "perfect" substances - that's what labels say i found a wood finish supply store where i got everyting i reaaly needed. The problem was they sell wholesale quantities so i negotiated as small qunantity as possible. Dye, primer and finish cost me around $35.
Preliminary grain filling: Since coudn't get famous Stewmac grain filler or similar i used a thinned black wood filler and than sanded acces off,
Dye: acetone solube - great choice of colours at theplace I finally found myself and the choice was to match padouk blood shade. Results on pictures. Dye applied just by a piece of old cotton t-shirt. Smells moderate bad.
Primer/sealer: polyester. Base +2 other components added inn ratio 2%. Applied by kinda credid card tool. Than levelled with sanding paper. Horrible stinking stuff.
Burst: the idea of bursting appeared when i unexpectingly sanded off some dye on the edges and in the comfort contours. Bought 100 ml of black acrylic 2 component car finish and applied by spray pen (we call it aerograph) with 0.3 mm jet. It’s usually used for artist spray painting
Final finish: 2 component polyurethane gloss finish. 3 Coats, sanded-sprayed-sanded etc. Last sanding started with 1800 grit, than 2500 grit than used a angle grinder with adjustable speed and a buffing sponge with Farecla G3 paste. This stuff is used for buffing car finishes but works perfectly with a guitar.
Applying finish was quite a problem since I was doing it in winter and it was to cold for “outdoor show” so it was partially done in my bathroom covered totally by pvc foil. The bad smells almost led to a divorce. The worst was the polyester, with acetone was not that problematic as my wife spreads the same odour when decorating nails.

I used the old and good method of fake neck bolted to the body and a stand made of spare pieces of wood which worked perfectly.
Brass nut shaped by file and sanding paper, since I have no expensive nut files I used for unwould strings a cheap metal blade filed to proper thickness and for would strings a small metal file. No problem with that and no need to buy special tools. It’s good to file the slots in a vise otherwise the slots would become curved and strings would buzz.
Electronics soldered by a soldering station. A cheap but good working stuff – 10 times better than a trafo soldering gun. Besides some say trafo gun induction may damage pickup magnets.
Not really sure but wouldn’t experiment with that. Besides a very useful tool-a vacuum pump for sucking off solder when de-soldering. Cheap and perfect thing.
Several frets required leveling, you can buy a level measure tool but again a credit card works perfectly when detecting swinging on not leveled frets. Just cut out one of the edges to have right lenght for frets from sth like 17th to 22nd . An expired card is what I mean.

The slight problem occurred when I tried to mount the neck pickup directly to the wood. With 22nd fret extension you need to remove neck to remove pickguard and then you can adjust pickup height. That’s why I drilled mounting holes in the pickguard for easy adjusting. Of course I could route pickguard in the place under the extension fret but found it easier to drill two holes. Differences of sound by direct mount and pickguard mount are subject to a different discussion already ongoing on this forum.

That’s more less all about it. Hope there’s at least one person to go though the whole text. Sorry about my language, English is not my mother tongue.
 

Attachments

  • body_routed.JPG
    28.9 KB · Views: 551
  • comfortcontours.JPG
    28.5 KB · Views: 548
  • grainfilljob.JPG
    36 KB · Views: 542
  • dyeing.JPG
    35.9 KB · Views: 560
Dude.  I am English and let me tell you, your use of English is great :icon_thumright:.  Way better than many English people I've spoken to, I ashamed to say  :sad: .

And as for your guitar work, I'm seriously impressed.  Fantastic improvisation with tools, and a brilliant looking ( and playing?  and sounding?) result.

Good stuff my friend.  What are you going to build next?

 
I, of course read the whole thing too!  And your English is much better than my Polish!  :laughing11:  Sounds like it was an adventure and a learning experience.  It has got to be very satisfying to pick that thing up and play.  Once again, It looks incredible and it is a fine piece of work! 
 
woj74 said:
The bad smells almost led to a divorce.

:laughing3: I can't stop laughing!

Uhhh! You did in your bathroom and you're MARRIED???? Holly God, you must have a very nice wife!  :icon_biggrin:
As I have said before: great work! It looks totally pro!
 
NonsenseTele said:
woj74 said:
The bad smells almost led to a divorce.

:laughing3: I can't stop laughing!

Uhhh! You did in your bathroom and you're MARRIED???? Holly God, you must have a very nice wife!  :icon_biggrin:
As I have said before: great work! It looks totally pro!

The bad smells in my bathroom almost lead me to divorce too, and I havent even built a guitar in there.  And I'm not married.. :icon_tongue:
 
jimh said:
The bad smells in my bathroom almost lead me to divorce too, and I havent even built a guitar in there.  And I'm not married.. :icon_tongue:

:laughing3: :laughing7:
Oh God I can't breath!!!!!!!!!!!
 
jimh said:
NonsenseTele said:
woj74 said:
The bad smells almost led to a divorce.

:laughing3: I can't stop laughing!

Uhhh! You did in your bathroom and you're MARRIED???? Holly God, you must have a very nice wife!  :icon_biggrin:
As I have said before: great work! It looks totally pro!

The bad smells in my bathroom almost lead me to divorce too, and I havent even built a guitar in there.  And I'm not married.. :icon_tongue:

Don't kill me brothers, can't stop laughing, i meant bad chemical smells. O heah, it's quite obvious that bathroom and bad smells in  male's imagination lead to peristaltic activities  :icon_biggrin:
 
Back
Top