DIY Guitar With My Diy Cnc Router

Hi, this is my second "big" instructable. It's a project that ... for the moment has taken me over 40 hours.

I'm building a guitar body from cherrywood and Ipé wood using my cnc router to route the contour and the pockets.

I will update the instructable in a few days, when i'll be done with the finishing.

I took the measurement from a gibson on the internet. I had to find how big is a "standard" guitar, so I draw a rectangle frame : 13.250" X 17.375" 

Then, I made a drawing that looks like a gibson, but all by my own so it's not exactly the same size. And I made the carved top.

It took me like a day to program the routing with the software. After I exported it to Mach3 on my cnc machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqkO7U4ndvg for the video.

1 step : Determining the size of the stock
2. Choosing the wood - I chose cherrywood because I had that wood at home, and I have found Ipé at the store which has a nice dark color.

3. Planing the wood and glue with carpenter glue.
4. Letting it dry for a day.

This is the part where ... I can't tell anything else than : look at the video :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJKw2rf6zAQ

I have found a epiphone lespaul special II for sale, not too expensive. So i'm gonna take the hardware from it, and the neck.

On the picture you can see that it's important that the neck is perfectly aligned.

I had to carve the guitar with wood carving tools.

I now .. i'm sanding with 80 grit paper, 120, 180, 220 and I will put some color on it.

This is the big day :P Applying the 50% Chocolate, 50% Strawberry recepie.

I used the sponge technique, as it goes pretty well. It's a water based dye called Saman, i think it's a Canadian product. You can mix any color you want to get the desired tone.

2012-05-04
After 2 days, spraying KTM-9 from www.lmii.com
I made some mistakes, at first I had orange peel on the guitar ( not enoug gun pressure ). And at the end, I had some spot with too much stuff.
So, I'll let it cure for about a  week and I will start the sanding process :)

I'm using saman hybrid varhish. I hope that it will do the job.

I am currently doing some tests with different kind of varnish/lacquer.

Those pictures were taken at the 6th layer of varnish. Still 10 to go ... minimum :P

After the 6th layer, I decides to level everything, using 320 grit paper. I sanded it down until it looked like a single surface.

BE CAREFUL not to sand too much , and use a sanding block !!!
( I had to make some touch up ).

To avoid this, you could wait for the 10th layer before leveling. That's the disadvantage to put varnish with a brush, since I don't have an hvlp gun.


OK, I changed my mind. Putting the varnish with a brush is a pain in the a**. This never level as you wish, so I decided after ... 10 - 12 layers to sand it down to a perfect evel and wait for my order from http://www.lmii.com. I ordered the KTM-9 water-based varnish.
It is compatible with standart 45psi paint gun, and you can apply 1 layer per hour without sanding between them.

I'll give you the feedback when I'll get the product !!

13-05-2012

I bought 500, 600, 800, 1200 sanding papers.

So i have sanded the guitar until I got to 1200 grit and don't see any more scratches.

After, I used a buffing wheel and the turtle wax rubbing compound ( othe orange one )

The next stepo was the Polising compound from Turtle wax ( the white one )

And the for the final, I used turtle wax, car wax ( the green stuff ). DONT TRY ANY LIQUID WAX, I have tried Mothers and Meguiare nano wax, and it kinda melt with the varnish and screw evething up, so BE CAREFUL.

After ... lots of sanding, I decided  to put all the part together and start the assembly.
The body is not as shiny as I expected :( but considering it's my first guitar, it's okay.
Maybe later when I will be in a good mood, I'm gonna disassemble it and try something else.

So, I have polished all the shiny parts ( the pickups )