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Well my design on my first "real build" is complete, but I figured I'd get some much needed practice in on a beater guitar before I start messing up perfectly good timber and while I'm saving for my bandsaw. Seems like a good idea right? Well, in thinking it through, this will turn into quite a project itself giving me valuable experience for my real build and if I screw it up it was just a beater guitar that hasn't been played since 2003ish.

The guitar in question is a peavey raptor from the 90s. For those not familiar it is a bolt on strat style guitar. I'm thinking about doing the following.

1) taking off the fretboard and replacing it with a zebrawood fretboard (from a piece I have that I decided not to use on my real build) and fretting it up to gain that experience. I found a nice tutorial here on how to do it.
http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/removal.htm

2) The body contour has a a nasty ding in it plus I don't like the contour so I'm thinking about cutting the top off just below the contour, stripping the back back down to bare wood, filling the strat style routing with scrap wood and putty, and putting a new chunk of wood (which will be painted) then a new top to get it back up to thickness. The top wood will be natural, something dark, but not really dark.

3) The back will be painted black. Top left natural and a rosewood binding will be put on. Thinking about doing this with the fretboard as well.

4) I will be filling the strat routing for the reason of adding a regular, non trem hardtail, something like a hipshot, and also putting in a humbucker in the bridge and single coil in the neck.

5) The headstock will get a veneer to match the top and possibly binding as well.

6) as far as finishing goes, I will paint the back black, the top may get a bit of a stain but I wanna leave it natural and then clearcoat the whole thing.

I think this should give me invaluable experience before I start my first build which will be a heavily chambered solid body with wood binding etc.

Has anyone else completely rebuilt a beater to the scale of what I am going to attempt to do? I would love to see before and after pics or hear any advice you have for me.

Dude, I think it would be easier to build a new body out of 2x4s. That's a lot of work you just said.

The fretboard thing is a good idea for sure, not a farfetched thing to do.

But doin all that whacky crazy stuff to the body? I guess I just don't imagine it producing good results.

Maybe what you could do though, to save a lot of that time, and a lot of work filling all those holes, is literally cut out the middle of the guitar, chunk it and glue the wings to a fresh piece of wood and go from there.

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I did the same thing for a client many years ago. I charged him a fortune to do it, as it was a lot of work. I pointed out that it would be faster to make a new body, but he was adamant. If you do choose to follow your plan, suggest you not use wood putty. Make your plugs fit as tightly as possible, and fill the tiny spaces left with epoxy or CA,

Good luck, and post pix of your work!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Just an idea right now. I mainly wanted to do it to practice binding with wood.

Sounds like some good practice and a lot of fun.

Go for it! What's the worst that can happen? It certainly won't be a waste of time, as you will learn something as you go.

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Old growth, shmold growth!