Day One: Baby Steps.

The first guitar has been officially started. Sort of.

I guess I should say that the preliminary steps have been taken. As a first step, I went to Kinko's to have my plan printed out at full size. The plans are nice and detailed, and... in metric. As much as I hate multiples of ten, I decided that it wasn't a big deal since the plans were drawn at a 1:1 ratio. I probably will end up converting the units to Imperial measurements, just because I love America.

In my online research, I found a company that sells templates for several popular guitar models. Like this:

They also want 63 bucks for a guitar-shaped clipboard. I do really like the idea, though - so that in case any of you readers like the way this turns out, you can pay me to build you one (Ha). So, the first task was to build some of these suckers.

The easiest way to do that would be to just cut out the plan and trace around it - but obviously, I'll be needing the plan later. So, the first step was to trace out the guitar using a lightbox and some newsprint:

That part wasn't too difficult. I can draw a little bit. Here's a terrible picture of the finished tracing, glued up to a piece of plywood:


Incidentally, the board is a piece of an old show booth Keith had named "Santa's Workshop." Maybe this isn't quite as amusing to you, but the idea that I destroyed a piece of Santa's Workshop to make a guitar is pretty funny.

So. Traced, glued, and ready to be sawed. I am not proficient at using a bandsaw (yet), so Keith was kind enough to do the cutting. I took the cut pieces and sanded up the edges real nice like:

I've found that a certain amount of finesse is needed for sanding. I did a much better job with the second pattern (the one you see in the picture), so maybe there is hope for me learning how to do this woodworking stuff after all. Here's a picture of the finished body templates - we didn't have time to get the neck portion finished up.

Next week, I'll be finishing the neck template and beginning work on the body.