Chuck’s ST-1M “Surfcaster” build

[Andy40]

Interesting Chuck....very interesting, good idea though

[Chuck]

Interesting Chuck....very interesting, good idea though

Let's see if it all works first!

[OliSam]

wow. that is some beautiful thought put into a project.
love to watch this one come out

[Chuck]

wow. that is some beautiful thought put into a project.
love to watch this one come out

Cheers OliSam, thanks for that - I guess part of the fun is not knowing exactly how they will come out!!

[Chuck]

So the pickguard looks like it's worked out! After glueing the veneer on the old one, and then doing some re-shaping of the whole thing, I drilled out the holes I still needed (there's a bright switch hole to be done, but the switch won't arrive until next week).



I think the shape looks okay with the body, and will certainly help with the painting I'm planning. One thing: by taking off the bits at the rear of the pickguard that normally "frame" the trem, I've lost a place to put a pickguard mounting screw. To solve this I'll be gluing a small triangle of wood in the cavity to give another mounting point - I'll take a pic when I get around to it to explain it better).



Finally I did a first pass on shaping the headstock. Seeing as there is a surf connection to this build I've tried to make it look like a couple of waves - I ended up taking a lot more wood off than I'd thought I'd need to but I'm pretty happy with the result. It just needs a bit of cleaning up.

[wokkaboy]

nice work Chuck what is the pickguard veneer blackheart sassafras ? looks tops ! Also like the headstock shape and you could probably open a beer with it haha
Looks like the body has been reshaped a bit of Jag shaping ?
What 2 single pups are going in ?

[Chuck]

Final update today: just finished the routing for the Freeway switch. Almost blew it in that I drilled the hole in the pickguard without establishing just how much room I needed for the rout. You can see the pencil lines on the body to show how close it was to messing up! I also did this rout with the dremel and the drill press... normally I break out the router for something like this so happy the new technique worked okay. You can also see the small wedge of wood I've glued on the far side of the control cavity - this is the one that the pickguard screw will attach to now I've cut away the normal bit of the pickguard where it would have attached (if that makes sense!).

[Chuck]

nice work Chuck what is the pickguard veneer blackheart sassafras ? looks tops ! Also like the headstock shape and you could probably open a beer with it haha
Looks like the body has been reshaped a bit of Jag shaping ?
What 2 single pups are going in ?

Cheers Wok. You may be right on the veneer species. I'd thought it was Tassie Blackbutt but I'm not sure. I guess the sad thing is that while it looks nice it's purely there for construction purposes as it will be painted over. It just happened to be the only super thin piece of veneer I had that wasn't wavy or cracked.

It does look like a beer opener... maybe I should try and fashion a stainless steel insert for it!!

And yep to the body reshaping - I guess this is the third in the trilogy of jag body mods. It's not too "jag-ey" though - I didn't use a reference when doing the reshaping, just a few pencil lines that felt right when I sketched them on!

The pickups I'm using are Entwistle AS57s, a neck and a bridge.

[wazkelly]

Looking good Chuck, in fact so good that it would almost be a crime to hide that veneered pickguard under a solid colour. Simply amazing grain and blends in so well.

[Chuck]

Looking good Chuck, in fact so good that it would almost be a crime to hide that veneered pickguard under a solid colour. Simply amazing grain and blends in so well.

Now you're making me feel really guilty about painting it! But I am going to stay true to my originally painting plan. At least this approach of gluing a thin veneer on an existing pickguard is something I now know works and could perhaps use it in another build - and not paint it!!