Guitar Building

Confession: I may well be the world's slowest guitar builder. The latest project- a Telecaster-profiled hollowbody, has been on the workbench for- well, for a long time. In hopes of nudging myself to speed up the so-far-glacial pace, I'm going public with some in-progress photos.

I start with two slabs of poplar, glued and bar-clamped together.

 Next, I use a router and an MDF template to rough out the body shape...

And then cut out cavities in the body. As you can see, I've adopted a benign neglect policy when it comes to dust collection.

 Now I glue together two 1/4" pieces of maple for the face of the guitar body.

Using every clamp I own, I glue the face to the body.

I never cared for those skewed f-holes on the Fender Thinline Telecasters. I copied the classic f-hole from my National archtop and cut it out of the body using files, drills, sandpaper and X-acto knives.

I use a template to rout out the neck pocket in the body, along with cavities for the electronics.

Next step: adding binding to the body and carving a neck- stay tuned!