narrow double cutaway body style/templates

[swarfrat]

I'm looking for templates for a slightly narrower but still traditionalish double cutaway. Not necessarily vintage, just not weird for weirdness sake.  Weird for valid ergonomics is ok. My planer is only a 12" planer so - since it's so close to average guitar body width, I thought might find something that I could still run through the planer.

How wide is the soloist? Ibanez radius derived models (seen a few templates for those too) - or Sabre? Open to suggestions.

 

[bagman67]

Mustangs are narrow, if that look floats your boat.  You can always superimpose the pickup/bridge portion of some other drawing on the Mustang drawing if you're not into the short scale and wacky bridge.  Or go with the short scale length but sub in a flat-mount or tremolo cavity.

 

[swarfrat]

I have a number of conflicting ideas floating around. What gets built might be random. I'm shelving my botched ash body and going to work on 2x8 glueups for a bit. But one of the ideas was basically a soloist, but shoving the neck/bridge further into the body (not as much, but like a P-bass) so that my baritone neck feels more natural. Basically so frets 3-7 are closer to the same arm position as on a 25.5" scale strat.

I'm also wanting to play around with 1) huge roundovers 2) capping hollow bodies, 3) arched backs. Not in any particular order or combination.  The arched body sort of means the planer restriction is moot.

 

[swarfrat]

Took me a while to figure out how to do this in FreeCAD. I guess I could just lose some weight but .. I like it.
Body shape is a soloist - the import process created a bump on the horn that won't be there in the real deal, but it's not totally hideous. Also - I couldn't get the roundovers correct in CAD - those are about 1/4".

The actual plan is about 1.75" thick at the center, tapering to 1" thick at the wings, with a 1/2" roundover top and bottom - so it's actually completely rounded at the edges, and it's dished about 1" in the back at the center. I found a set of dish radii that work getting this out of a two piece body that's 1.75" thick (flat) and joined at about a 12 degree angle in the back.

 

[PhilHill]

Looks good. The fun part will be achieving those round overs on the face and back. Unless you have access to a CNC. If not I've seen it done with a router and an elaborate fixture. Hope it works out well for you, I'll be watching............. :headbang:

 

[swarfrat]

Do you mean the dished front/back or the edge roundover? Edge roundover is easy - it's just a roundover that follows the flat surface.  The dishing is done with a router profile template on rails.  Not that I yet have such a jig. However my next door neighbor has a 4x4 shop bot - and I made sure to help unload it so there would be favors to return someday.

 

[ragamuffin]

- and I made sure to help unload it so there would be favors to return someday.

:icon_thumright:

 

[PhilHill]

Do you mean the dished front/back or the edge roundover? Edge roundover is easy - it's just a roundover that follows the flat surface.  The dishing is done with a router profile template on rails.  Not that I yet have such a jig. However my next door neighbor has a 4x4 shop bot - and I made sure to help unload it so there would be favors to return someday.

Yeah, the dishing is what I meant. You sound like you have a good solution in mind though, good luck with it.

 

[swarfrat]

This is what I meant. though if my neighbor gets his shop not wired up first I might use that.

 

[swarfrat]

Mixing in a few ideas from the Nightswan, various Charvel shredders, and my own experience with baritone necks. Since at least the prototype will be 2x8 lumber, and it has a nod to then Night swan, perhaps I'll call it the Spruce Goose


This shoves the whole bridge/neck/pocket down towards the bridge by 1.56" or half the difference between 28.625" and 25.5" - to keep the 12th fret more or less where it normally is, and at the same time try to preserve proportions as much as possible (the full 3.125" down towards the bridge would likely look funny and mean a lot of reshaping of the upper cutaway to work.