Hey guys, just started a new build and I guess the Title will need a little bit of explanation.
Backstory
If this is a bit long winded don’t bother reading.
About 12 months ago Gary (my Beloved Lyn’s brother) passed away. He was a Pastor of a Church that had a Prison Ministry and while visiting inmates he made friends with one who was in jail for murder. In appreciation for all that he had done he made Gary an old fashioned wooden Pulpit. I am not sure if he was a trained carpenter or not or just didn’t have access to good woodworking materials and tools, but the pulpit was a bit “rough and ready”, but it meant the world to Gary and he took it everywhere.
It has been stored at my place for the last year or so while Gary’s widow (my Sister-in-Law, Bev) tried to see if anybody wanted it. Unfortunately it appears that nobody wants an old fashioned pulpit these days so Bev asked me to break it up and take it to the dump. I could see that was a hard decision for her, so I suggested that I make a guitar out of it.
While not actually a “reliced” guitar, it will be “warts and all” as I am trying to keep the appearance and finish as original as possible. So it may not be pretty but hopefully it will do justice to the original builder, and remind Bev of happier days.
I bought a Pitbull neck and will use standard PB Tele hardware and pickups from bits and pieces I have laying around from previous builds.
The Build
This will be a laminate body of pine and Marine Ply (for structural stability). My problem will be how to keep the original varnished finish of the Pulpit and blend it in with the sides and the back. The easiest solution would be a sunburst but I don’t want to remove any of the varnish and I am pretty sure that I can’t stain over it. Luckily I have a lot of off cuts to play with so I might have to do some trial and error stuff before I attempt the real thing.
As with all my recent guitars it will be build using hand tools only.
First step is to individually cut out the rough shape of the guitar from the 3 pieces of timber. Using a hand saw all the cuts are straight lines so it is hard to match them up. Obviously there is a lot of work to be done with my favourite toy, the Shinto File Rasp.
Every journey starts with the first step.
This is typical of how the pieces are cut
When all 3 pieces are roughly cut to shape I use 2 small locating pins (made out of a bamboo skewer) so that when clamped together all three pieces will stay in place. This is critical when it comes time to gluing the pieces together.
I can then start “routing” out the control and pickup cavities of each individual piece of the body.
Here are the back and centre pieces stacked together. You can just make out the bamboo pins poking through ready for the top to be put in place.
Next step will be to make sure all the internal wiring routing has been done then glue the 3 pieces together and start the final shaping process.
Cheers guys
rob
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