First guitar build - Strat

[StratoDoyle]

Hi,

I've started to learn to play the acoustic guitar with my almost 9 year son. Both having lessons from different teachers. He found a book at the library about building your own electric guitar, and hasn't been able to put it down for the last few weeks. So I did a quick google search and found Pit Bull and well here I am. A project for both of us to work on and if it all comes together we'll do a 3/4 Strat for him for his birthday.

Kit arrived during the week and all appears to be there. I've built re/built a number of things from motorbikes, remote-controlled planes to furniture. So this is a new challenge to throw into the mix.

The colour scheme for the guitar will be strawberry red for the body, chrome hardware, white pick guard and keeping the neck natural in colour. So with that in mind, my plan of attack is as follows:

1. Dry build the kit - ie put all the hardware in place, neck bridge etc before painting so I have all the holes drilled prior to painting
2. Disassemble the guitar and sand
3. Paint the body and varnish the neck
4. Once dry, re-assemble and do setup

Being new to guitar builds, happy to take any hints, tips, advice from the more experienced members.

Well I'll post again soon when I have some progress to show.

Cheers

Greg

[Shoota]

If you wet sand over drill holes it may swell the wood. I am building a 3/4 for my daughter and it's also my first build.

[stan]

sounds like a fair plan. give your finishes plenty of time to cure and it should go well

[Brendan]

Greg - for a first build, especially if you're not familiar with sprays, stains and wipe on finishes come out great and are easy to apply. DingoTone is a local (to WA) product made by our own DingoBass and he's put a lot of care into ensuring that it doesn't have any chemical nasties in it - especially for when there are father / son / daughter builds. Certainly worth a look and they come up a treat.

[StratoDoyle]

Thanks Guy's.

I'll be using 2-pac for the body - don't plan on wet sanding the wood. I've sprayed a number of things with this before - large RC planes, motorbike fuel tanks etc, so pretty comfortable with the spraying part. I've got some clear dingoTone coming for the neck, which ironically is the bit that I'm more concerned about.

Dry assembled everything today, came up pretty well. had to make a shim to get the neck incidence right - a piece of 1mm ply has worked a treat. Had one casualty during the disassembly though, one of the machine head screws snapped off ... I'd drilled pilot holes for all of them as well.



The only thing that I don't know what is/where they go are the keepers shown below. I'm guessing they might be for the pick-up wires? Hope someone can point me in the right direction with these.



Now that everything is disassembled again, the job for next weekend is sanding, some more sanding and then some more sanding to be on the safe side ...

[StratoDoyle]

I've managed to "fix" the broken machine head screw from the dry assembly. I did a bit of googling to see how people have removed them and came across the StewMac method of removing, cutting then adding a plug. Figured $90 bucks was a bit more then I wanted to pay for hopefully a 1 off error. More googling, came across a thread about using a piece of brass tube the same diameter or just smaller than the screw. Sharpen the end and gently turn it counter clockwise over the screw and viola it extracts the screw.

Sounds perfect, I've got plenty of small brass tube from my RC plane modelling. Unfortunately my closest match is a little bit larger. So plan B, use it like the StewMac tool to remove the screw, drill out hole to 1/4 inch to accept a tassie oak dowel - tassie oak was all I had and initially looked to be a good colour match.



There's the brass tube with the offending screw inside and the drilled out hole with the tassie oak plug. Luckily the machine head mostly covers up the dodgy repair.



Once the glue dries, I will drill a new pilot hole and off we go again.

[StratoDoyle]

Sorry guys, just discovered that the photos I uploaded yesterday didn't work. Hopefully I've got that sorted now.

[wokkaboy]

Hi Greg,
the parts you are unsure of are string retaining trees, they go on D, G, B, E strings. Shorter bush goes on B & E strings and longer bush on D & G strings. Mount them about half way between nut and tuning pegs
See photo attached

[StratoDoyle]

Fantastic! Thanks for that.

[Brendan]

Bent silver thing would be solder - chuck it out and get some good stuff from Altronics / Jaycar / or something like that.