River guitar - Scratch build

Hi All

My next build is well underway!

This time it is a resin 'River Guitar' based on the Les Paul shape.
The whole thing is an experiment as I have not worked with clear cast resin before although I have plenty of experience with epoxy resin working on too many yachts over the years.
It was watching a video of Ben at Crimson Guitars that forced my hand on this one.

I managed to find a nice plank of oak with a live (waney) edge - not the most interesting edge but it will do.
The resin I used was Glass Cast but I believe that most of the clear resins will give the same results.

First job was to cut the oak to rough LP shape and build a mould matching the shape as closely as possible (resin is expensive and you need to minimise wastage. The live edge of the oak was coated in resin and 24ct gold leaf applied.
The mould is lined with plastic tape to ensure there are not any leaks and also to make it easy to separate from the guitar body

I managed to pour it in one go but I failed to seal the oak properly first which meant I got some bubbles trapped in the river. Once cured, I drilled the bubbles out and patch filled them and they disappeared.

Shaping the top of the LP shape was hard work as the edge 5/8inch is flat and the body bulge then starts. Sanding resin is hard work even with 40 grit pads and a belt sander.

Pickups are Warman Drivetrain hb's coming in at 29.87kohm each. I have no idea what this will sound like but I am also fitting dpdt switches for series/parallel choice on both.

Bridge will be a home-made thing using a maple and walnut lamination. I will turn the studs on my lathe from brass.
So far I am undecided on trapeze or stop tailpiece.

The neck is being made from American Tulip wood (not Poplar!) with an Ebony fret board and Jescar Gold EVO frets.
Tulip wood may be an odd choice but as I said, it is an experiment in many ways.
Currently I have cut the neck blank roughly to shape and will fit the truss rod tomorrow.
Locking tuners and bone nut arriving monday.

The body is fully sanded and painted black using Aerocolour airbrush paint, ready for its next coat of resin. I will take photos tomorrow and post them.

Couple of shots of the body casting. Sorry for the quality.

Cheers
Ricky

I have zero experience with resin. Will it be easy to route for the pickups etc, especially as the routes will be both resin and wood? I know woodturners seem to have no issue, but a lathe and a router are very different propositions.

Two similar builds happening at the same time! https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ad.php?t=10921

You’ll probably need to set the bridge posts in with resin as I doubt you'll be able to simply hammer them in to an undersized hole, as the resin is likely to crack. But I’m sure you’re already familiar with these sorts of things.

Yes Fretworn. routing for the pickups and neck etc will be challenging. The problem happens when you transition with the router from resin (very hard) to the wood (softer) and the router bit bites in a different way. I will just take it extremely slowly with the small router/trimmer and use a template guide. I will keep all the cable runs in wood which will mean repositioning the switch from the top shoulder to somewhere below the bridge - not sure yet.

Simon. You are right about the studs in resin - cracks are not a good look! I am building the bridge myself so I plan to make it wider than normal and will 'bridge' the resin so the studs will probably go into the wood as well. However, I do have that problem with the strap button and the screws for the pu surrounds.
Do you think I could set those screws in resin or will the screws be able to cut their own thread (with a pilot hole) or should I tap a thread and use small bolts (which I have)??

These are the sorts of issues that I enjoy! Easy would be boring.

Cheers
Ricky

JimC knows far more about this than I do. I know he’d recommend drilling and screwing into partially set resin (and then remopving the screw so it doesn’t stick), which is a bit late now for your body. But I assume you could drill a bigger hole than the screw size, fill it with more resin and do the same when that’s partially set. I’m sure he’ll be along soon.

I think I would tap the holes and use machine screws if I had the tools and skill set. That's got to be the best result. Be worth casting a little bit of resin in a pot to practice cutting the threads if you haven't done it before in that material.

As far as bridge posts, yes, I think I'd drill out fractionally oversize and set them in fresh epoxy if they don't end up being in wood. A mad idea has me imagining reshaping holes in the river to an eddy shape, not round, and then using white coloured epoxy to fill the holes so it looks like white water rushing round the posts. Maybe my imagination is out of control?

I'm no routing expert, but I can think of a few occasions where I wished I'd made a jig that restricted movement in every wrong direction, no matter how unlikely, but I don't recall an occasion when I said to myself I wish I hadn't made that complex jig that made it impossible to go wrong.

Thanks Jim and Simon.
I have drilled into resin soaked mahogany and then screwed in coach-bolt type screws but that was on a rebuild of a 1964 50 foot ketch.
Slightly different scale of things.
I have also drilled and tapped into resin type material but never a clear cast resin so your idea of doing a test piece first is the way to go.
It just so happens that I have a cup with about 3/4 inch of resin setting right now (left over from coating the back of the body - photo below).

This resin task is all a waiting game. Resin goes off overnight but takes a couple of days to build any sort of structural integrity.
Patience is not my strongest point!

Bridge posts.
Yes, your imagination is out of control but in a really good way. I am now considering that :D. Another thing to practice first!

I have found that whenever I rout and the bit bites badly, it is always in the wrong direction and never into the safe area. For this reason I will use a template. It would not be so bad if routing into wood as I would use a chisel to create a trough on the outer edge and then guide the router toward that trough if that makes sense. A chisel is no use near resin though.

The photos below show the back with a coat of resin applied. It shows as uneven as there is a different rate of soak into the wood.
The dots around the horn are bubbles which require popping every hour or so for about 4 hours. It will require at lease 2 coats of resin before I turn it over and do the same to the top.

Cheers
Ricky

Looks sharp! Word to the wise as I am doing a similar build right now: make sure you wear safety glasses and a mask while routing the resin. It will throw chips like a mother. Going slow is definitely the key. You are totally right about the transition between resin and wood. The router will tend to jump and throw itself. Made my pickup cavities... interesting. Take it slow and you should be fine.

Thanks Cadebengert!
I couldn't believe it when I was writing my build diary - never seen a river guitar on the forum and then 2 on the same day - and both single river Les Pauls. What are the chances??!!

I know what you mean about the chips. I have had that on boat hulls too many times.I will remove most of the material with forstner bits or cabinet hinge bits using the pillar drill first and then use my trimmer/router slowly with a pattern clamped in place.
At the moment I am adding the layers of resin to the body top. It is arched so just poring the resin was not an option really. Slow but I have the time,

Good luck with your build - I will be watching.

Cheers
Ricky

D.A.N.G!!
The FrankenLab salutes you both! Wonderful stuff @Ricky, @Cadebengert!

I have been busy working on the guitar for the last couple of weeks. The small stuff always takes the longest.
Routing the PU cavities and the electronics bay took ages and wore out a few router bits - oak is hard!

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted a bridge that 'bridged' the river. This rules out the standard TOM bridge as it is too narrow and would mean drilling the inserts into the clear resin - not a good look.
So I looked to design my own bridge with 6 slots that each hold a small piece of fretwire to act as saddles. Bridges like this do exist - I think Simon Bardon was involved in a thread about one a couple of days ago.

The problem I had was how to make it height adjustable. This brings me nicely to my pet hate!
Have you noticed how the threads on the posts and inserts of the standard TOM bridges are all sloppy. I know the pressure of the strings holds everything in position but threads that are loose is just sloppy engineering! Rant over.

So, below are some pictures showing the structure of the bridge - it is not finished yet but I made the parts on my lathe and the bridge is made of maple and walnut. The saddle plate is maple and walnut topped with ebony.
I guess you can see how it will fit together.

Turning the threads was fun. I used the tailstock of the lathe to put pressure on the die and then turned the chuck by hand - last time I did that was when I learned the method at school over 50 years ago! (Lathe was switched off and unplugged for that before someone mentions Health and Safety)

Don't know if it will work but it is fun trying these things out!

Cheers
Ricky

Looks cool man. Nothing like having some good shed toys on hand.

It is sloppy engineering, but it also allows for the small variations in hole positioning and/or angle that occur in manufacturing, especially on template drilled and routed kits, as opposed to CNC drilled ones, which should be more accurate. No point having really tight fittibg posts if the distance between them isn't quite right, or the angle's off a bit, so you can't fit the bridge on the posts, or can just about fit it but then can't adjust the height.

I often use PTFE tape to tighten up any really sloppy post fittings. The tips of the threads wear away the tape over them so they make contact with the bushing threads for grounding purposes and you get a really firm fit.

Now if you just concentrate on the other end of the guitar and realise how much your untensioned string posts move about when wiggled, you'll be making your own machine heads next. ;)

Just finished making the wiring harness.

I decided (probably didn't think it out) that I would do a 'Jimmy Page' wiring job on it - 4 push/pull pots and about 100 metres of wire!

Jimmy page wiring here

Having done it, I thought that connecting the pu's to the pots in situ would be a nightmare so I have soldered tails instead and labeled them - easier to attach and shrink wrap.

Let me know if I have completely messed it up?

Cheers
Ricky

Its been a while since the last update but each job has been a little one and not worth an individual update.

Current position is as follows...

Body and neck complete and bonded together
Fretboard complete and fitted with Jescar EVO Gold frets (more on this further on).
All clearcoat done and rubbed back.

Now on to the assembly stage.

In another thread, I was discussing with Simon and McCreed about the new Jescar EVO Gold fretwire.

The wire I fitted was the 'medium' size so thinner than the more normal 'medium-jumbo'.
Also, I bought the wire pre-radiused to 10 inches.
Fret tang (bare) is 0.6mm and with the teeth it is 0.8mm.
I used a razor saw to cut the slots and then widened them with my fretsaw with a 0.5mm blade.
This is really the perfect size for the tang - tight but not so that you have to hammer the living daylights out of it.

I found that the frets are actually easier to cut than the normal nickel-silver frets. The side cutter on my normal pliers just clipped through them with ease as opposed to 'squeezing' through the nickel silver.
They are harder to file or grind but polish beautifully. I cannot comment on durability yet but they are certainly harder!
Many people use Autosol or another metal cleaner/polish. I use T-Cut. There is another brand out there called Colour-cut which does the same.

I will definitely use EVO-Gold whenever I need (or can get away with) gold frets.

Tomorrow I will carry on with the installation of the Alnicov locking tuners, Warman Tonerider pu's and the electrickery stuff. Plus cut the bone nut.

I have still not decided on how to earth the strings but I have a cunning plan in mind which also involves the EVO Gold fretwire.

Photos!
Cheers
Ricky

Very cool Ricky! And thanks for the info on the Evo Gold.

May be just the lighting, but the frets don't look as "gold" as I imagined. I like the fret inlays too.
Look forward to seeing your grounding scheme. I hadn't considered the issue that poses with a see-through section where the bridge will sit... hmmmm...

Thanks McCreed!

It is the lighting. I can assure you that the frets are as 'gold' as the tuners and pu surrounds. I will take some more pics in due course that will show them better I hope.

Been working on the bridge today so earthing solution should be photo'd tomorrow!

Cheers
Ricky

Well, after having a few problems, I have finally finished the guitar.

I did think I had finished it last week but I was not happy with the thickness of the neck so in the end I bit the bullet and re-profiled it from a very fat 'D' to a far slimmer 'C' section. It is still a bit thicker than a true Gibson but I have used Tulipwood for the neck, not maple.

The earth for the bridge was solved by drilling a hole through the saddle position for the high 'e' and passing a wire down through the bridge into the electronics bay. The high 'e' becomes earthed and in turn earths the other strings via the trapeze. The wire can just be seen in one of the photos below.

The pickguard is a Les Paul shape but modified at the bottom edge because of the repositioned toggle switch.

So, what did I use?
Tuners are Alnicov Gold locking tuners. I am very happy with the quality (come in a nice box as well!)
EvoGold frets. Easy to work with. Also used for the small bridge saddles
Pickguard from Guitar Anatomy.
Pickups are Warman Drivetrains rated at 29.87 kohm and over 20 henries output. I have not tamed these yet and I think it will take several weeks to get the best out of them (difficult to get the treble response right).
Bone nut.
4 x 500k ohm pots with DPDT switches.
2 x 0.022uf caps
Wired to Jimmy Page specs giving 21 tone options on the switches alone.
3 way toggle switch.
Switchcraft jack.
Nameless trapeze.
Home made bridge assembly.
5 litres GlassCast epoxy. Plenty left but £90 cost!
Crimson Guitars water based stain Amber (Stunning Stains)
2k automotive lacquer (Omi Cron - evil stuff - be careful if you use it).

I have played it for a couple of hours or so and she sounds great.
The guitar is heavy but it is solid oak and epoxy is not light either. Well balanced.
Intonated perfectly. I was a little worried about this as the saddle positions are not precisely adjustable but by off-setting the bridge with the saddle in the best position the intonation came in just right.
Bridge height is adjustable as can be seen in the photos.

All in, it is about 250 hours of work!

Thanks to everyone for your support and comments.

Anyway, on to the pictures.

Cheers
Ricky

Woah! Somehow I missed this previously, but it's an amazing build

Nice bit of kit there Ricky. You definitely have some skills!

I like your bridge set up. Very clever, and looks great too!

Thanks Guys!
It was a challenging build, not least because I was using materials new to me.
The photos have not come out too well. It is actually polished to within an inch of its life! I will try and take a couple of beauty shots tomorrow if the sun comes out.
@McCreed. I know you can buy bridges similar to mine but they are mostly too short and would not fully span the river.

Cheers
Ricky

Those Warmans are based on the Kent Armstrong M-bucker (M for 'Mother') pickup that in turn was originally built as a custom order for my mate Max when he was working for Fender UK. KA then developed it into a production pickup. I've just taken out an M Bucker Hot from my RG ready to give back to Max as he likes them and I'm not that keen. This KA has a 28k DCR and my LCR meter measures 18.5H, so it sounds like the Warmans have a few more turns. A lot of the high DCR of this type of pickup will be down to the thin wire used to get enough turns on in a small physical space. The current KA M-buckers have 2 x 4 wire outputs so you can select individual coils within the 4 if you wish (rather OTT IMO).

I much prefer the sound with the who pairs of coils wired in parallel rather than fully in series. Still lots of output but far less dull than the all in series option.