It really helps to make full-sized drawings before you start a guitar project. But finding guitar-size paper can be a problem. My Home Depot has big rolls of brown wrapping paper outside that are a good size, I tore off a few yards. Below, I've drawn a plan on a nice big piece of cardboard I saved that was the backing for something. But how do you transfer these plans to wood? I don't want to cut up my master, I need some extra-large tracing paper. So I went to Staples, but the closest thing they had was still too small, and $20. So I went to the supermarket next door, and found this baking paper.
I picked all the scrap pieces out of the trash for this cool picture
This is a body made from 2x2 Radiata pine from Home Depot. This material is actually 1-1/2" square and gives you a choice of tight grain on two opposing sides and loose feathery grain on the other two sides. This is the tight grain.
The control cavity templates were reverse-engineered from a Gibson-style guitar. They are cut from 1/4" polycarbonate, while the matching cover template is MDF. Again, inspired by StewMac's design. StewMac does not include the cover template, they expect you to buy their cover.
This is the jig as I first built it, with a drill guide attached to the end. That doesn't work very well. The jig is made from 1x2s, 1x3s, and MDF for the base, mostly scrap. The eye bolts are used to secure the workpiece. The new router plate makes the centering block obsolete. Yesterday I sank a dozen screws into the jig itself to stiffen it, re-glued the rails, and semi-permanently mounted the pine spacer under the neck.
This is based on an older design I made from an even older piece of phenolic, which you can see behind. Phenolic is very stiff and strong, good for tooling, but you can't see through it. If you look at that one, you can see the giant hole I made for vision. I was barely able to adapt it to the small router, but the vision hole was useless.
Here is my new guitar workbench, gratis, courtesy of Home Depot for me to review.
"THE SLAB"
I added the drawers myself, and the side bins, to make a real nice piece of furniture. I pulled the drawers out of an old desk someone was throwing away last summer and tossed them in the attic for someday. Well, someday came - it pays not to be too proud on trash day - go price drawers, they're expensive. I made new matching fronts from a piece of floor molding. I also added the little shelves, vise, and power strip. The old towel makes a nice work surface for guitars. Of course, this bench is rated for 3000 pounds of abuse, but this one will never see that. Thanks, Home Depot!
This is a Martin-style single-acting truss rod. I built it years ago and never used it, and at this point, I never will. I am breaking it up for parts, so I thought I'd post a picture first. It consists of a 10-32 threaded rod in an aluminum channel. At the fixed end, at the lower left, the rod is set in a T-nut and the end is peened (hammered) over to keep it from rotating. The adjusting end is nothing more than a washer between the nut and the channel. Both ends are secured by bending the channel over them, then the center of the channel is cut down and everything is ground to minimal dimensions. You can find detailed directions online.
