Adam's First Build - AST-1BK

Hi fellow guitar builders! Here's the build diary for my AST-1BK kit. It' taken me a few months from purchasing this kit until the build has started, as I've been moving house and building other woodworking projects, but now the time has arrived to get stuck in!:D It might still be a bit of a 'slow burn', as it's now winter here in Tassie, and painting it on warm days may take a little while.

As this is the first guitar I've built, I decided to go for a relatively easy kit - that way it doesn't matter too much if I muck it up! I'm thinking that this one will be a dark royal blue body (solid colour spraypainted), complimented with the black hardware. I did have some reservations about choosing blue, because I'd really like to build an LP-style guitar, with a stained blue flame top. However, nothing wrong with having two blue guitars I suppose...:cool:

Here's some pics as the kit arrived...

Kit parts all laid out:
https://i.imgur.com/D7rnEtTl.jpg

Getting started - tuners in and neck seated. Not too bad a fitment; no sanding needed at this stage.
https://i.imgur.com/1yh8Dtel.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ceNwiIal.jpg

Checking scale length - looking forward to a smaller length than my SG!
https://i.imgur.com/ymvqXtzl.jpg

Checking the straightness of the neck. I used some cotton in place of the strings, because I didn't want to crack open a fresh set, and didn't have some old ones lying around - still achieved the same result.
https://i.imgur.com/yYFzaI2l.jpg

All good so far!

Headstock Shaping

I wanted something that was a little challenging in regards to the headstock shape, and I didn't particularly want the standard ST shape either. I liked the small notch or 'forked tongue' idea on other guitars, but I just needed to figure out where and with what other shapes it could work with. I also like the idea of two different levels rather than a single surface, hence the second curve.

With a bit of mucking around with some paper and pencil, I came up with this:
https://i.imgur.com/OIUDeJPl.jpg

Cutting it out with a scroll saw and plenty of filing and sanding got it to this stage. I'm now just waiting on a micro routing attachment for my Dremel to turn up to rout out the lower surface.
https://i.imgur.com/MbNbHUSl.jpg?1

The main surface will be the same colour as the body, and the smaller lower section will be black, to match the hardware and pickguard.

Fitted back with the body - might not be to everyone's taste but I don't mind it!
https://i.imgur.com/71YTHNel.jpg?1

I like that headstock design.

I always use the crappy kit strings for that alignment check. They're never going to get used once built.

Hello ThatTassieBuilder, welcome to the forum.

Good luck with the build. I also believe you can never have enough blue guitars, and I also have a blue stained flame top LP style on my to do wish list.

I like the headstock idea as well.:)

I love the headstock design... I wish I could have shaped my guitar build's headstock as well. No i have glued mine. Cannot take a saw to it now.

Good luck

Sent from my NE2211 using Tapatalk

Headstock Shaping - Part Deux.

I figured the easiest way to get the lower section trimmed down was to use a router - but it'd have to be pretty small! Luckily I have a Dremel, and they have an attachment available to turn the machine into a trim router, basically. One week after ordering a knock-off one from eBay it arrived, complete with an appropriate milling bit. I tested it out on some scrap pine, then crossed everything that wasn't necessary to holding the Dremel straight and true, and milled down the headstock.

just after milling it down (Dremel in the background in case anyone's interested in doing the same). A couple of burn marks from the bit not clearing well enough, but they cleaned up:
https://i.imgur.com/j3PFKjBl.jpg

After a cleaning sand:
https://i.imgur.com/KxckURGl.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ORzJT9Tl.jpg

I was pretty happy with how it's turned out. Not the crispest of curves, but there might be a bit more cleaning up when the top surfaces have been painted.

The Idea...

I found a site where you can take a whole bunch of guitar designs and colour and accessorise them to whatever you like. A few minutes later (and after using Photoshop to get the approximate headstock shape), I was able to get the idea that's in my head into a more visual medium. ;)

This is basically what I'm going for. I'm undecided about the large '82' on the body yet; not sure about the positioning or the font, but I might see what else I can find. In my mind I'm going for a race car semi-outlined number, that's kind of a squared off lettering. There's lots of fonts for the numbers, but not a lot with lower case letters for the headstock (which is a bit hard to see in this quick sketch, but it's 'acs' in lower case).
https://i.imgur.com/8DjqNNEh.png

You can clean up your curves if inclined with a sharp chisel using it like a scraper and the sides won’t affect your dropped level if ease right of on the force.