ES4-B 1st Build

[pablopepper]

Personally, I drill all holes after finishing. But I'm usually pretty confident I'm not going to drill in the wrong spot (I double, triple and quadruple check EVERY measurement). Drilling all your holes first means you can do a complete dry build and string it up to make sure everything is where it needs to be and fixed before finishing if needs be. For your first, I think it's probably a good idea. If you need to move the bridge or something, it's going to be a lot easier to hide the fix.

To enlarge pot holes, I use an appropriate sized drill bit in REVERSE and with no pressure other than the weight of the drill. If you can get a piece of wood underneath the hole to drill into it will lessen the chance of tearout. Or, safer alternative, get yourself a reamer, like this one

[fender3x]

Thanks, Pablo. That reamer looks like a great tool. Will have to loo km for one!

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[fender3x]

Was able to *mostly* make the pickup rings today. This was my 2nd attempt. The first was a failure that emphasized why, of all my tools, I fear the routers the most. I screwed my template to a piece of maple. The rout is for a lipstick tube that is about 5/8" wide. So I used a 1/2" forstner bit to clear out wood from the center of the template, to make it easier for the router...



...but not enough material. My router bit is on the large size (1/2") which was too close to the same size as the fortner bit I used to remove material. Add that my piece of maple was quite thick (3/4"). All I heard was "wham!" You can see the result. It actually bent the screws that were holding the template in place.

2nd go round went much better. First, I drilled two starter holes at each end of the template that were 5/8", the removed most of the rest with the 1/2" forstner bit. Had to be really careful because the template is only a hair wider than 5/8. I started the router in one of the 5/8" holes, and then removed material VERY slowly being careful not to let the router bind.

This time it went smoothly, and I got a good rout. Man maple is hard!

Next step was stand the maple board on one end and remove 5/16" of the material out of the middle of the 3/4" side of the maple chunk. That was slow and smoky on my cheap little table saw. After that I just cut the four sides to the right dimensions.

I still need to sand the bottoms of the rings to fit the curved top of the guitar, here's more or less how they'll fit:



Keeping fingers crossed that I don't break anything during the sanding phase!

[andrewdosborne]

Great job fender3x!

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[FrankenWashie]

Was able to *mostly* make the pickup rings today. This was my 2nd attempt. The first was a failure that emphasized why, of all my tools, I fear the routers the most. I screwed my template to a piece of maple. The rout is for a lipstick tube that is about 5/8" wide. So I used a 1/2" forstner bit to clear out wood from the center of the template, to make it easier for the router...





...but not enough material. My router bit is on the large size (1/2") which was too close to the same size as the fortner bit I used to remove material. Add that my piece of maple was quite thick (3/4"). All I heard was "wham!" You can see the result. It actually bent the screws that were holding the template in place.

2nd go round went much better. First, I drilled two starter holes at each end of the template that were 5/8", the removed most of the rest with the 1/2" forstner bit. Had to be really careful because the template is only a hair wider than 5/8. I started the router in one of the 5/8" holes, and then removed material VERY slowly being careful not to let the router bind.

This time it went smoothly, and I got a good rout. Man maple is hard!

Next step was stand the maple board on one end and remove 5/16" of the material out of the middle of the 3/4" side of the maple chunk. That was slow and smoky on my cheap little table saw. After that I just cut the four sides to the right dimensions.

I still need to sand the bottoms of the rings to fit the curved top of the guitar, here's more or less how they'll fit:



Keeping fingers crossed that I don't break anything during the sanding phase!

Yeah, they don't call it Rock maple for nothing. I have found that you really need to have a router that spins up slowly, and you definitely want to do multiple passes at shallow depths, with a small diameter bit.
4 flute bits if you can get them (especially for the bigger diameters). I've a little 400W Ryobi Trim router that does okay, and a 1300w AEG Plunge Routing beast and neither of them is particularly happy having to work through Maple, its just hog the hell out of it, light cuts and as many passes as it takes.
I tried to use my electric plane to joint some Maple stock, boy was that a mistake! It went great on a really low cut, and then all of a sudden I hit a small knot and the planer blade exploded, bits of Tungsten carbide and shredded orange plastic (Planer housing shards) everywhere. Safety Glasses people, I can't stress that enough, USE YOUR PPE. I blunted two hand planes finishing the job that killed the electric planer.

[fender3x]

I wore glasses and a full face shield the 2nd time. Maybe better woodworkers can chime if I did something that I shouldn't have! I made my template to work on my small table router, which is rated at 1.5 HP. I did not make the template very large, so I was sort of committed to the table router and doing a single pass. This worked, but only by removing most of the material first, letting the router come all the way up to speed before cutting, and then going slow.

But FW has me thinking...

In retrospect, I could have made the template large enough to use my 3.25 HP plunge router...and that way I could also have done multiple passes.

I could also have used thinner pieces of maple. The reason I didn't is that I was afraid that thin pieces would be more likely to break while routing.

I am done, for now, and hope I won't have to touch the router again for the duration of the build! but if anyone's done this, I'd be interested in the best way to do it!

[FrankenWashie]

Yeah, I don't have access to a table router (I understand the trepidation, those will take a finger off of the unwary or careless). I've found in my early efforts, that the more energy I put into getting my templates set up right, the better and easier my final workpiece results were. Like I said I was primarily using my little Ryobi for general jobs before I bought the big plunge router.
The routs I did in my FrankenWashie rebuild were all template and tested first on scrap stock, when I was happy with the templates I remade final versions and then paid more attention to sealing edges and removing bumps and potential hang ups that the router bit bearings might strike.
Routers are handy but fraught with pitfalls for the unprepared or unwise user. I can understand why you don't want to touch it again!

SO are you going to do the sandpaper over the body profile trick to get the curve right on the Pup ring underside?

[fender3x]

That's the plan. I am told that wood rings are notoriously easy to break when sanding like this, but I havent found a better idea, so wish me luck and patience.

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[FrankenWashie]

You could try this, cover the top of the ring in masking tape and the top of a similar sized piece of scrap (Something flat, that you can easily grip). pop a few spots of super glue on the masking tape of both sides and then bring them together. This will both support the ring and give you a better hand hold for sanding. If you use the low tack masking tape on the ring side it should make it a bit easier to get off the tape. If it looks like its gotten super sticky then you can always leave an overhang of the tape and then slip a thin blade between the tape and the ring to ease it off.

Just don't press too hard on the block as you sand, as you could crack the ring with too much pressure.

[fender3x]

After HOURS of sanding I have one pickup ring. I am using 60 grit, which is usually pretty aggressive, but man, this is slow! I did some of my test cuts with 1/4" balsa wood, and was surprised how "test" wood ;-)

Sitting and sanding, mostly I thought about how there must be a better way to do this. Best idea so far would be to use double-sticky tape to attach the piece to the bottom of my palm sander. I could then attach sandpaper to the top of the guitar, with low tack tape like I am using now. Then I could hold the sander with the attached piece down onto the sandpaper.

...I'm not going to do this for the remaining piece because I am afraid that a power tool could way to easily mess up the top. But the longer I sand, the more tempting the idea...