Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello all. I'm a new member to this forum and hope that I will enjoy my stay here. I'm going to write a summarized introduction paragraph as I see it as bad manners just posting away without a proper introduction.

My name is Christo, I'm a 21 year old financial management student in his final year. Want to study for my honourary degree next year. I live in a place called Pretoria in South Africa. I have been playing guitar for the past 3 and a half years and been wanting to build one myself ever since. My main musical influences range from melodic metal to blues and everything in between. I have basic woodworking experience, did it at school level for 2 years and have built a biltong (our form of beef jerky) carver and a wall unit.

Ok, now that that is done with, I've been planning a first build for a couple of years now, doing constant research and finnaly decided that NOW is the time. I have a whole month of holidays between my semesters.

I went out today to by the wood I'm going to use. African Mahogony, Maple and got a block of off cut Imbuya for free. Lucky find and I paid about $50US for all of it. I'm planning on a MusicMan EVH Wolfgang build, but will see as the dimensions will cause a lot of the Mahogony to waste. The dimensions of the Mahogony block I acquired is 930mm x 310mm x 45mm, but the dimensions for the Wolfgang body is 505mm x 382mm, which means I'm just 70 odd millimeters short. I feel it would be a waste of good wood to cut it in half.

Anyway here are some links to the pictures I've taken today:
The Mahogony piece
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa38 ... 009036.jpg

Maple planks (I have three 1,2m planks)
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa38 ... 009038.jpg

Maple, thickness of plank
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa38 ... 009039.jpg

The Imbuya piece
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa38 ... 009037.jpg

Thanks in advance. Hope to get all of your inputs.

EDIT: English is my 2nd langauge so please excuse any oblivious grammer mistakes.

hey! just wanted to welcome you to the OLF, and wish you the best of luck on your build! keep us updated as you go along, because it is always nice for new builder or people who plan to start a first build to see what other people achieve on their first and if you have any questions on whatsoever, this is one of the many really good places to gather information from, as you will see a lot of the members here are highly experienced and generous people

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Olivier Gauthier
Montreal, QC

Will definately do so. I have a an update allready lol.

I did some more work today. I started with the templates.


The board I did the template on, I think the measurements I got for the Wolfgang body might have been wrong, but I adjusted it so it would fit my Mahogony block. At the end I rescaled it to 80% of the original dimensions. I put a refernece of the width of my Ibanez in as well.



Here is the rescaled paper template on my guitar. I think it looks amazing. I printed it over 6pages (actually just printed on 5 of them) and it worked out to be the exact size. I printed out the picture as is and measured the outermost points. I them worked out the % it had to be increased and printed it on word.



The template after cutting it, still need to smooth out the lines along the horns



Next to the paper template.

I want to ask a question. My template doesn't fit my body blank. After I rescaled the original design it still lacks half an inch and I dont want to make it smaller. I'm going to add strip of something else between the Mahogany halves and glue 'em all together. I have a question though, what wood would work (No alletaration intended) the best with the Mahogany. I was thinking about either Walnut or Maple. Walnut is a bit expensive in these parts though. Any other ideas on what wood would both look and sound nice with the outer Mahogony pieces?

Thanks you guys.
Christo

Some more pics of the wood I'm using. I sanded them down a bit and wiped down with a damp cloth to get the grain alive.

The Mahogany,


The Imbuia,

I think you can,t go wrong with maple in the middle

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Olivier Gauthier
Montreal, QC

Christo

I am in Delmas if you need any assistance with the build.

Jeremy

Thank you Jeremy, I'll definately shout if I need help.