The wood are cut-offs from a Murphy bed (Lori wall beds) we put together for the house which has since been taken down. The back I believe is Douglas Fir and the top is baltic birch plywood. The back started out as a 2x6 but it was so warped I had to cut it into smaller strips and then glue it back together before planing. I got a cheapo Wen handheld electric planer and it worked just fine.
Body cut out with the birch plywood top.
This is only the second guitar body I've ever made so I made plenty of mistakes. One was putting the bridge in slightly the wrong spot, so I had to redo that. I don't know how people get such clean and deep router channels. My bit does not go deep enough so I had to dremel out certain spots for the electronics to fit.
The douglas fir was so soft it would dent or scratch if you just lightly grazed it with anything. So, I decided to cover it with epoxy. Maybe not a great idea but it solved the problem. It created another problem which was that I could not get the drips/pooled epoxy in the inside of the horns smooth or flat again. I sanded and sanded and sanded (by hand) and it just couldn't cut the epoxy down enough. I tried using a sanding drum on the dremel and the paper wore out almost immediately. Ultimately I just got it "close enough" and gave up. That was a pretty good theme for the entire process. Close enough, then give up.
Tried white, but I hated it so sanded that off
Gold looked just awful too. Made every imperfection super obvious. Getting things flat and smooth is a huge PITA.
Finally settled on Lychee from Montana Gold. Looks decent from 5 feet.
All done. Well, mostly. I forgot to drill a hole to connect a ground wire to the bridge so it buzzes like a bee. If I alligator clip a wire from the bridge to the outer metal casing of the output cable then it's dead quiet so I'll just do that for now. I'll fix it when these strings wear out or until I get tired of the alligator clip, so maybe by 2023 or so. I'll need to buy one of those super-long drill bits. The bridge is still off by maybe 2mm too close to the treble side but I'm not moving it again. It works well enough and intonates. Top e is just a little close to the edge is all. Not winning any contests but it was fun to make something out of what would have been garbage. Now it's guitar-shaped garbage.
Thanks for looking!
