End Grain Telecaster Body

After making an end grain cutting board for my wife I thought this would make a fantastic looking guitar body. I had purchased fare bit of this northern ash that has gray streaks though it . The end gran formed really interesting patterns, this is how I did it!

I first surface thicknesed and joined two peices to make a standard sized guitar body blank approximately 14" 21" x 1.75". I made several semi-hollow body telecaster body's with these stock blanks but I though I should do something interesting with the last one I hade left. This is a time-lapse of the CNC cuts of the previous Telecaster body's I made form the other stock.

I then cut the body blank into 2" slices across the grain on the band saw and flipped them up on the end grain. this made and interesting pattern but it was even more interesting when I rotated ever other slice 180 degrees. this made the pattern tie into itself even more.

This part is a little challenging, I have since found that by applying slightly less glue and just a bit more pressure while spreading the glue out with my finger I can do one of theses glue ups in a much more efficient way. even so this takes some patience and determination to get all the pieces lined up and clamped together as the glue tends to lubricate the surfaces and the can be difficult to line up at first.

Then I simply used the drum sander to reform this blank into an end grain sold body blank. Then I created a model for the body I wanted to cut in Fusion 360 and post processed the CAM I generated to be run in MAch3 on my CRP 2448 CNC machine.

I finally cut the round overs with a hand router and a round over bit after smoothing the side profile cuts with the spindle sander and applied a finish of oil based polyurethane. Let me know what you think or if you have any questions. Up next The Neck!