Monday, September 3, 2012

Dawn of the Final Day - 24 Hours Remain -

Before I go anywhere with this post, I have provided appropriate background material to enjoy whilst you read this blog post. If the previous link does not suit your taste, then enjoy this instead.

I woke up on Labor Day morning with an overwhelming sense of trepidation. The day before, I had decided that the guitar body was completed, and the only step that remained was the assembly of the guitar. This was the final step, and after 3 months of (sporadic) hard work, it had all culminated into this final moment. Kicking off my blanket, turning off the alarm that had been ringing since 11:30 AM, and rolling out of bed onto my dog-eared climbing magazines, I was ready to take on the morning.

Well, then I decided I had to eat lunch.

After lunch, the day finally started. Figuring out the proper course of action, I sat the guitar in my lap and started working. The first part that had to go on was the pick-guard, since it sits underneath the neck of the guitar. Mounting this meant I had to thread the output jack wires through the v-shaped hole connecting the output jack cavity to the electronics cavity. This ended up being the most frustrating process, since the wire kept on getting stuck somewhere in the hole. After 30 minutes of random poking, I managed to finally thread it through by pre-bending the wires and then grabbing them from the other side with a pair of tweezers. With this out of the way, I screwed the pick-guard in place, then soldered the output jack to the wires and then mounted that too.

The bridge came next, because why not. After aligning the bridge and screwing in the screws, I put the claw on the backside of the guitar and attached the screwed that hold the bridge in place. Now, when I use the tremolo bar, a.k.a. the whammy bar, the springs will snap the bridge back into place. Next the guitar neck was mounted. With the assistance of some clamps that I still had not returned to the robotics lab, I attached the neck without too much difficulty.

Now, all that was left was the cathartic stringing of the guitar. This was literally the last step. If you don't know how to string a guitar, here's a basic rundown: You thread the string through the bridge and then up along the neck to the head of the guitar where you string it through its appropriate tuning key. Then, you pluck the string as you tighten it, to make sure you don't tune it too far, and to loosen the string up. So I sat there stringing my guitar, and listened to each string as they slowly started singing their song. One by one, each string began to play the right notes and then before I knew it, they were all singing in harmony together. After 3 months of hard work, the guitar is finished.

Fuck. Yeah. 

The Final Step in Painting.

Obviously, I did not update the blog last week. I was unfortunately busy and didn't have time to put on the additional coats of lacquer that I wanted to. Putting on lacquer is a time consuming process because of setup and clean-up. On top of that, I have to wait two hours between coats to properly give it time to dry. But lucky me, I was able to make up the lost time with a 3-day weekend! Thanks, Labor day!

So, on Saturday, I setup the garage like before and sprayed the guitar a second time for that additional coat of lacquer. After two spraying sessions, I decided that I wasn't making any significant improvement by adding more lacquer with the spray-gun. The trouble was is that the spray-gun was spraying a very 'coarse' coat. The lacquer was going on smooth, but not completely smooth as what would be ideal. After giving sanding a try, I realized I was rubbing off the thin coat of lacquer in areas when I wasn't careful, and it still wasn't enough to make it smooth. Clearly the spray-gun wasn't working out, so I had to think of some other way to apply the lacquer smoothly. I decided to call it a day and sleep on it.

The next day, I woke up with the brilliant idea of putting on some lacquer using a paintbrush that I had purchased a long time ago (remember when I was going to do the rose?) Using a paint brush, I coated an area around the electronics cavity as a testing area to see if my idea had any merit. I checked back two hours later and amazingly, my genius plan.... didn't work. If anything, it still had that 'coarse' texture in the test area, only now it was thicker.

I sat there next to my incomplete guitar wondering what I could do to possibly to smooth out the body. As my gaze wandered around the body though, I realized that the 'coarse' texture was actually very consistent across the body of the guitar. I decided that using the spray-gun was the original genius plan and that this was the design I was going for from the very beginning. So, reasonably satisfied with how the guitar looked, I concluded that it was ready to be assembled.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Putting on the Lacquer.

Damn.

This whole project had been going so well. The lacquering turned out to be a bigger pain than I had even imagined. I started the process the same way that I had started all the other painting sub-steps. I set up the garage in a similar way as before, with the cardboard on ground and the guitar body hanging above. Then I sprayed it, like I had done dozens (?) of times before that and left it to try.

So, imagine my horror when I came back later to find that the first coat I put on was far too thick, and the lacquer had actually dripped a bit on various parts of the guitar. I tried to rub off the drips with my finger, and while that helped just a little, it actually ripped part of the base coat of paint off, revealing the white primer underneath, as well as a gaping gash across the guitar body. It's made even worse because this gash highlights how many layers of primer/paint that I put on there. I even tried to sand off the lumps with my extra-fine sand paper. No dice. Sanding actually just ended up sanding off the freshly sprayed coat of lacquer around the lump, but not the lump itself. I had to stop from fear that I would sand off the base coat before I sanded off the lacquer itself.

So what to do? I decided to fix up the areas where the primer was revealed by using a black marker to color it in as a quick fix. Looking back, I guess I could have just taken the old base coat and tried applying that with one of my paint brushes, but my panicked brain must not have been functioning properly, probably because the lacquer fumes had gotten to my head. For the gashes, themselves, I didn't know what to do, so I decided to trudge forward and keep on applying the lacquer, with thinner coats this time.

Funny enough, I actually spent the whole weekend doing this. I started Saturday morning and stopped applying the lacquer Sunday evening. And I guess I took the "thinner coats" mantra to heart, because at the end of all this, I don't feel like there's enough lacquer on the guitar. I can see parts of it that look pretty glossy, but they're not as glossy as other parts of the guitar. This likely happened because of one of two reasons: 1) The guitar was hanging, so part of it likely dripped down to the lower part of the guitar and 2) I didn't spray a very even coat. The trouble with point 2 is that it was difficult to tell where I had sprayed and where I had not. I started using a headlamp to help identify the 'wet' areas, but apparently that wasn't enough.

So, I don't think the lacquer coat step is finished yet. I'll try again next weekend, and maybe I'll think of something to do.

Thanks for reading.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Once you go Black...

I will admit right now that I was a bit more productive this weekend than my last blog post would have led you to believe. The work depicted in the last one was actually completed on Saturday, and while I wrote the blog post on Sunday, there was more work that was completed in the early mornings of Saturday. As the title may have led you to believe I have successfully applied my base coat of paint. 

Unfortunately, the frantic cleaning that I had done at the end of Saturday was not good enough. While the black coat went on beautifully, the paint gun would occasionally (some might even say frequently) spit out large flecks of primer. These specks were coated in black paint and were rather large. I thought that once it had dried, I would be able to sand off the large bits. Unfortunately, it led to the side effect of just scraping off the layer of black paint on the ball of white primer, and this was only the first coat! I kept on spraying more coats with the hope that the primer specks would eventually stop coming out, and while the frequency of the little balls of white evil slowed, they just kept on coming. 

But then I happened to have an absolute stroke of genius! Or rather, knowing me it was probably innovation breeding from laziness. The white specks that were appearing all over my guitar will now be my new design! Of course, I will also take a toothbrush and some of that white paint I purchased when I painted the rose (hah, remember that?), and using that technique I learned back in high school art class - read: kindergarten - I used the toothbrush to fleck white paint all over the guitar. So now, with the black background and white specks... I have achieved..... SPACE

Or a space like a effect, rather. And what a perfect accident it is! With the recent landing of Curiosity on Mars, and my involvement in the space industry, this design really makes quite a lot of sense. And if anyone really doesn't enjoy the space theme, I can always write it off as being 'artistic.' And... here it is!

The paper bag is to keep it from being stuck on the carpet. 
So now the final stretch of painting awaits me. The lacquer. It's terrifying not just because breathing it in is extremely toxic, but because this is the final, irreversible step. Once it's coated, I have to be happy with what I see, because if I'm not, I have to sand the whole thing down back to the wood layer, and that would be a pain, which is undoing 2 months of (intermittent) work! Okay, I'm making it a bigger deal than it actually is. But painting is almost over, and I'll update you all this coming weekend. Wish me luck. 

Thanks for reading!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Applying the Primer

The day has come. 

The part of the project that I have been dreading has finally arrived upon me. I can no longer make up excuses like "oh, I need a right angle drill before I can paint" anymore. All I can do is bite my tongue, close my eyes, and jump head first into my paint cans. Literally. 

As I've said many times before, the first layer of paint that needs to go on is the primer. It basically seals the wood, and preps it for the base color of paint (in my case, it's black). The first I had to do, aside from opening my paint gun, was make sure the viscosity of the paint was at an appropriate thickness. If it was too thick, the spray gun won't work properly, and I risk causing permanent damage to it. You test the viscosity using a nifty tool that they package with the paint gun. It's basically a little cup with a hole on the bottom. You dip it in the paint, and time how long it takes to empty out. If it takes too long, you have to thin it out with the appropriate thinner. Luckily, I didn't need to thin out the primer, as it was at just a thin enough viscosity to be used in the paint gun. 

The next thing I had to deal with was finding a suitable location to paint. I ended up choosing the garage, because it was indoors. Being indoors meant that I didn't have to deal with the wind or other elements of Mother Nature's wrath, and it is one of the lowest traffic-areas in the house, meaning I wouldn't disturb anyone else in their day-to-day activities. So, using all the newspaper and cardboard boxes I could find in the house, I covered up as much of the garage floor as I could. Then, to deal with the guitar, I bought some clothesline and strung it from one side of the garage to the other and suspended the guitar over the newspaper platform in the middle.
The finished product. Looks pretty damn good if I
say so myself!

Operating the paint gun ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would. After turning it on and being surprised by how similar it sounds to a vacuum cleaner, operating it is simply a matter of pulling the trigger, and fiddling with the dial to control the amount of paint that comes out. So, all I had to do was paint. 

Many thanks to my house-mate, Mike, for helping me out with the painting. He basically stood behind the guitar with a sheet of wood in order to catch whatever flecks of paint flew past the guitar. Otherwise, I'd have to explain to my land-lord why I decided to cover parts of the house in a new coat of paint. To protect himself, he wore an old sweater, and a skirt that he fashioned out of bubble-wrap. I ended up spraying 3 coats of primer about 1 hour apart from each other. Each coat went on like a charm, so I have to say that I'm ultimately incredibly satisfied with my purchase. The finished product was smooth and evenly-coated. 

The day had gone off perfectly without a hitch, but knowing me and my luck, I had to screw it up somehow. What did I do this time, you ask? I realized I didn't have the proper means to clean out the primer from my paint gun. Primer, being slightly different from regular acrylic paints, can't be cleaned with just water. It needs either paint thinner, or even better, denatured alcohol (and before you ask, it's completely different from isopropyl alcohol). 

Of course, I didn't have either of those. If I didn't properly clean out my gun though, I would again risk permanent damage to the gun, so I had to get some of those cleaners as quickly as possible. So, I hopped into my car and drove off to the nearest paint store as if I was re-enacting a race from Need for Speed: Underground. 

30 panicked minutes later, I was back at home frantically cleaning out my spray-gun. I did the best that I could, but unfortunately, a lot of it had dried out by the time I got back. Hopefully it won't affect the finished product too much. 

Thanks for reading!

Saturday, August 11, 2012

It Finally Happened...

I have finally received the right-angle drill! After about a month of intense life-changing events - wedding, comic-con, and a funeral - I have finally gotten around to reminding my co-worker that I needed to borrow this esoteric tool. Of course, when I borrowed it, the stars decided to not align properly (or maybe they did? )and I realized that the battery was close to dead and I had no charger. So I ended up having to wait another day before I could drill the hole. But one more day, relative to the 2 months of inactivity, isn't really that much. So, on a balmy August afternoon, I raced home after work with the charger and plugged in the Drill of Special Purpose +2, and prepared to work on the final step before painting.

Oh the irony though. It turned out, that the tool I had waited for was STILL too big to fit into the electronics cavity. Basically, my two months of activity was for wasted on false hope. However, a hole still needed to be drilled. As a spark of ingenuity (more of a "Why didn't I think of this sooner?"), rather than drill one hole straight across, I drilled two 1/4" holes at a slightly downward angle from both sides. They meet somewhere in between, and now I have a connected passage between the two cavities! Unfortunately, I also managed to scrape the drill up against the body of the guitar, so now there's a small blemish on what was once a perfectly smooth surface. That was probably karma for neglecting the guitar for so long.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

How Quickly Time Flies...

Ah, I have finally made my return to this blog. I apologize, but it has been a long time since I've updated. Unfortunately, that is also the reason that my blog had remained so devoid of activity. Three weeks ago was my cousin's wedding, 2 weeks ago was Comic-Con, and 1 week ago I had a lot of household chores to catch up on due to my absence. Since weekends are the time that I devote to working on the guitar, very little progress had been made.

I know that last time, I said I was FINALLY ready to paint. However, like last time I realize yet another task must be completed before the guitar can be primed and painted. The output jack and the electronics cavity needs to have a connecting hole in between them to let wires pass through. Due to the size of the cavity and their location, however, this can only be achieved by a right-angle drill since a regular hand-drill can't fit in properly. Luckily, my coworkers have come to the rescue again and rode forth on shining steeds bearing a right-angle drill in their hands. Or at least they will when I finally remember to remind them at work to actually bring it to me. :/

So until I get it, all I can do is wait until I have the proper tool to get the job done. And then... painting? I shouldn't say that. I might jinx it.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Last weekend, I spent all of Saturday sanding my guitar. The process was a simple loop: 
  1. Find cracks, holes, rough areas
  2. Fill cracks, holes, rough areas with wood putty
  3. Sand until smooth
  4. Inspect surfaces
  5. Repeat if necessary
Simple enough. But I ended up going through this loop about 5 times. It turns out that cracks are pretty easy to miss the first time around, despite the fact that I was even using a magnifying glass to help me find them. Truth be told, basically the entire guitar has been covered up with wood filler and sanded down.

At the time, I couldn't tell how much sanding was required. My hands were rough from working on the guitar, that I couldn't feel it very well. However, the other day I brought up the guitar into my room (to keep it in a safe spot while I was away) and was pleased to find that it was incredibly smooth. Perhaps I even over-sanded? 

So, the guitar surface is as smooth as silk, so now, the next step is (for real this time) is painting. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to it any time soon. I have a wedding this weekend, and then San Diego Comic-Con the next. Since painting strikes me as an activity that will consume an entire weekend, I won't have a free one until the 21st. So, I'll be putting this blog on temporary hiatus. 

Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Very short post here. I haven't had the time to make a post recently, and I'll be away from home in the coming weeks. First, I have a trip to Chicago for a wedding, and then the week after is Comic-Con. I did a lot of work over the weekend however, and I have a post coming about that. I should be able get to writing it tonight.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Dealing with Holy Wood

The proper way to deal with holy wood is to build a crucifix with it. Unfortunately, this is completely irrelevant to the subject of this blog. On the other hand, I noticed that I am dealing with holey wood. A few days after my sanding session, I gave the body another inspection, and I noticed that the wood is filled with lots of holes along the grain. My guess is that these holes were originally the tubes that fed water up to the trunk of the tree that the wood is from. So why is this a problem?
Two pictures of the imperfections.
It's like a wasp. Small, but deadly, and looks bad when covered in paint.
A few years ago, I helped out with a summer research project by assisting with the construction of a fleet of wooden robots. The chassis of these robots were made entirely of wood, and we learned rather quickly that any imperfection in the wood, like holes, were especially noticeable after they were painted. So before I move onto painting, I need to fill the holes in with some wood filler and sand the surface until it is perfectly smooth.
Artfully placed wood filler and putty knife. 

So wood filler and putty knife purchased, I'll probably get down to filling and sanding out the body some time tomorrow. 

Sunday, June 24, 2012

The Sanding and the Drilling


It's been a long time since I've posted, and I apologize. The next step would be drilling some pilot holes for mounting some components, but I needed some tools before I could start with this step. Namely, I had a really lucky opportunity on purchasing a drill (you know, the thing I need to actually drill the holes) on Amazon. I happened to spot a daily deal that was selling a DeWalt drill that was normally $400 for $150. That was a lucky break. Additionally, I was also waiting on some clamps from a coworker, that I would use to hold the guitar body during drilling and to hold the neck to the body. Everything came together this past Friday when the drill arrived and my coworker brought his clamps to me. On the early hours of Saturday (10 a.m. during the weekend is pretty early for me), I set about continuing my project.
Notice the two shirts that I laid out underneath to protect
the guitar from the hard surface. Their sacrifice will not
be forgotten.


The first set of holes I needed to drill were the holes for the neck. This is arguably one of the most important pieces of the guitar, and its placement is paramount. The total length of a guitar string from the bridge, the part of the guitar where the strings come from, to the stop point at the neck, where the strings stop vibrating, must be a near exact 25.5 inches. There is actually a surprising amount of math that comes from this, but I'll spare you the details and explain - no that would take too long - sum it up by saying that the guitar sounds its best when the vibrating portion of the string is at that length. Obviously, the position of the neck affects this distance, so I had to be as exact as possible. This is also why I waited so long for my coworker's clamps. The clamps were vital in holding the neck in the correct position.

The importance of the neck's position impacts the position of other items as well: the bridge and the pick-guard. The bridge is a metal device on the guitar that can be used to alter the overall length of individual strings on the guitar, for intonation purposes. So in case I ended up messing up the position of the neck, I still have some leeway, though not much. The pick-guard rests in between the bridge and the neck, and covers the cavities that house the guitar's electronics. So, the final position of all these items were dependent on each other, and it required a lot of adjustments before everything was positioned properly. After everything was placed, I marked the hole locations and drilled my pilot holes. Overall, I seemed to spend about 40 minutes positioning everything, and about 2.3 minutes actually drilling.
It almost looks sad...

Some other things that required drilling were the strap mounts, the spring mount, and the output jack panel. A small side-note on the output jack, the cavity that BYOGuitar drilled for it turned out to be too small. As a quick fix, I sanded down the edges of the cavity so that it would fit, but made sure that it still wouldn't show after being mounted.

The last few steps before painting are:

  1. Sand it.
  2. Sand it some more
  3. ?????
  4. Sand it one last time.
  5. ...then sand it again.
So after following steps 1 through 4, I set the body aside and turned my focus to the neck. Specifically, I had to mount the tuning pegs. Thankfully, the holes for the tuning pegs were pre-drilled, so all I had to do was screw the nuts to the tuning pegs, rotate them into position, and then fix them into position with a tiny screw. For the most part, nothing eventful happened, except that one of the screws stripped while I was screwing it in, so it's currently sticking about 1/16 of an inch. Unfortunately, not much I can do about it now. D'oh! Either way, the next step is painting. Cue dramatic music.

Thanks for reading!

Monday, June 18, 2012

The Parts Have Arrived

Oh, happy day! Finally, after waiting for so long, the parts that I had ordered for my guitar have arrived at last. The parts had actually arrived a bit later than they should have, due to a routine bit of maintenance that they had to run on their CNC machines. No worry, the parts were soon milled and now they have arrived in all their wonderfully unfinished glory.
There. It looks like a guitar. All done. 
The package came in a surprisingly small box, with all of its contents wrapped in foam wrap to protect its precious cargo. Upon taking all of the parts out, I was happy to see that everything had arrived safely with no major damage (at least upon initial inspection).

The body was the first thing I inspected, probably because it was the largest thing in that tiny little 2' x 3' x 3" box. This was the part I was most worried about since I anticipated spending the most time working on this. I was surprised to find out that many of holes had not been drilled; only the bridge and the neck mounting holes had been pre-drilled. Before I even begin the painting process that I had been psyching myself up for, I will have to do some wood-work. You can also note that BYOGuitar put their logo in the cavity to the right, where the neck is mounted. I'm glad they put it in there, because that would mean that once the neck is secured, the logo will be concealed from the masses.
The guitar body. MM GIRL LOOK AT TH-... eh, too easy.
Since I seemingly observed everything that came out of the box by order of size, the neck was naturally the next part of the guitar to be inspected. The maple neck is smooth, and the head of it is already finished. The only work I have to do for this part of the guitar will be mounting the tuning keys to the top with some tiny screws. 
I probably could have fit the whole thing into the frame. I'm just too lazy, though.
Next, the pick-guard. For those that don't know, the pick-guard is a part of the guitar where all of the electronics are mounted to. I admit, I was a little disappointed that I didn't get a chance to assemble this part. While I did know that soldering wasn't required for this to work, I was still hoping they'd at least let me mount some of these components myself. On the other hand, this does mean less work on my part. If I'm feeling really bold, I can always take everything off and put it back together.
The oft-hidden, inner-workings of the electric guitar.
The strings give the voice, these electronics give it lungs.
Last but not least, the rest of the small components came in plastic baggies. I think the biggest surprise by this lot was that they gave me a guitar plectrum (a pick, as they're commonly known). Like most guitar players, I already own about 2 billion picks more than I need, but I naturally cannot find any of them when I actually want to use one. Like some people and their shoes, a guitar player just can't have enough picks, so a pick here and there is a welcome addition. The rest of the contents consist of the bridge (left), neck plate, whammy bar, springs, tuning keys, and various screws for mounting.
These little bags make me feel like I'm assembling a chair from IKEA.
Happily, nothing seems to be missing and everything is in good condition. BYOGuitar's job is now satisfactorily finished. It now falls to me to pick up where they left off... those lazy slackers. 

Thanks for reading!

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Working on Painting "Skills"

So, by some acute attack of insanity, I decided a while ago that I would want to paint a design on my guitar before the lacquer gets applied. It's my own guitar, and I'd like to put that extra 'personal' touch into it. I've considered a few methods as well, stencils for example, but again, that personal touch had to be some artistic contribution of my own. To avoid some nasty reactions with lacquer if I used oil based paint, I would have to use acrylic paint. My next step was to pick up a paintbrush, and get crackin' at my artistic skills - the same skills that I haven't used since art class in freshman year of high school. At least I remembered what end of the paintbrush to hold.

I neglected to mention in my first post that the name of my first guitar was Rose. I gave it that name because of the color of its pick-guard. I admit that I feel guilty about abandoning Rose for a new electric guitar. To make up for it, I decided that the design I would draw would be a purple rose. Purple because lately I decided that I like that color, but more importantly, I believe that the rose will pay proper tribute to my first electric. Since I'm not terribly creative, and white isn't a guitar color I wanted (a friend already owns a white Stratocaster), the main body would be a simple black. I also figure that the purple on black would look kind of cool. After searching all the tutorials I could and watching hours minutes of YouTube videos, I decided I was as ready as I'd ever be. Walking out of a Michael's with painting supplies and $70 less than when I walked in, I began to paint...

Reveal your secrets to me!
After experimenting with some blending techniques, I got to painting me some roses. Some of them turned out okay. The first couple of roses I drew with very dark colors, to try and go for that "dark design that you have to lean in to see" appearance. To be honest, I think they turned out quite well. I would love to share a picture of the darker roses, but my camera is lacking an SD card (long story). The only camera I have then is my low quality smartphone camera... which doesn't even have flash. The pictures I took of the canvas turned out too dark to see any of the blending, so when I remedy the situation with my current camera, I'll update the blog with some pictures of those. In the meantime, I can also share a picture of the last flower I attempted to draw because I used brighter colors and was thus able to see it on my phone-camera. Voila!

Not pictured: The leaves that I painted upside down like a putz. 
I'm actually kind of proud of it. Unlike my government and economics class, I seem to have remembered something from art class. I think I'll continue practicing working with this flower design and color scheme; I have yet to try it against a black background to see how it looks.

Thanks for reading!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Painting a Guitar

I find it really amusing, that when I announced that I would be working on a guitar, the sequence of questions that followed was near identical from anybody. "Why?", "What kind?", and then "What color?" As important of a topic as it is, I won't address the "What color?" question until I've answered "How are you going to paint it?"

The guitar body I ordered is an unfinished body, meaning it hasn't been painted yet. The body I'll receive will just look like a piece of wood cut into the shape of a guitar, which leaves the job of painting entirely up to me. I could paint other parts of the guitar, such as the fretboard, but that would entail removing the frets in order to get to the wood for proper painting. Since this is my first project, I'll avoid the extra work and save it for a future project; sort of like why I'm not crafting the wood myself.

Luckily, painting a guitar is pretty much the same as any piece of wood and plenty of help exists online to guide newbies like myself on how one goes about doing that. What it comes down to, is 3 (3.5?) basic steps:

  1. Prime the wood - The first step is to apply a chemical known as a 'Primer.' It is a vital step in the painting process because it prepares a porous material, like wood, to be more adhesive to the paint that is applied. As a side effect of the increased adhesion, the paint becomes more durable: it becomes less likely that it will crack or flake off. It also makes the wood more water resistant, though for a guitar, that isn't really that important.
  2. Paint the guitar - Now is the part that everyone expects: you paint it. At this step, you apply whatever color you want to the guitar. This part is entirely up to the person who is making the guitar. Not much more to really to say here...
    1. But actually there is. This is also the step when you apply your own designs (after applying the base color of course). At this point, you paint on whatever designs you want, whether it be skulls, flowers, ponies, guns, cartoon characters, or even a combination of all of those if you so choose.
  3. Apply the Lacquer - The lacquer is the glossy sheen that all guitars have and a similar variant of it is what gives cars their lustrous paint job. If you don't apply the lacquer, you'll wind up with a very matte finish, similar to what your painted walls look like. Great for home, not great for the stage. 
Oh my. Which one to choose?
Simple enough, right? Nope. The question that immediately needs answering now is "How do we apply these paints? During my research, I came upon three options: a brush, spray cans, and spray guns. Everybody who's been in kindergarten knows a paint brush. Unfortunately, their use really only applies to step 2.1, since the precision is great, but painting an entire guitar with a brush would result in an uneven, unprofessional appearance. Nope, have to try something else. 

Spray Cans are another option, which is a popular choice. Unfortunately, for my purposes, I am avoiding spray-cans. I want to do this project right, and a spray-can does not apply an even enough coating. The chance of dripping is too much for me. 

So then naturally, my last option and choice is the spray-gun. I chose this on a recommendation from my local DIY encyclopedia. He said that if I wanted to do it right, a cheap (relatively...) spray-gun would be the best way to get a smooth application of the paint. After juggling the cost of buying an expensive tool (they start at $100!) versus how badly I wanted my guitar to look good, I decided to go for the spray-gun. 
The Graco 2900. The 2900 means it's better than
2899 other spray-guns

The one I decided on was this one pictured to the left, image courtesy of Lowe's. I chose it basically because of how highly reviewed it was on most sites, and because of how relatively inexpensive it was. Additionally, the reviewers took special note to say that it was ideal for small home projects that don't require a lot of paint, perfect for a budding guitar painter. 

So that's it for this post. I had to get this implementation stuff out of the way; I figured it would be more important to explain what I was doing before I started chronicling the various steps I took along the way. From now on, posts will likely be shorter in length and will be more focused on my attempts at building a guitar. It's exciting for me, and I'm happy to share it with you all!

Thanks for reading!

Friday, June 8, 2012

Finding the Perfect Kit

After asking "Why", the next question is naturally "What kind?" I've already established that the guitar is going to be an electric, but what is it going to look like? What is the guitar model? There are lots of pretty guitars out there with lots of famous names attached to them: Gibson, Fender, and Ibanez to name a few. But to me, this question had been answered even before I fully figured out the why. It absolutely had to be a Fender Stratocaster.

Mm, Girl look at that body.
For those that don't know, the 'Strat' may be the most iconic guitar shape ever conceived. Designed in 1954, it's been used by a plethora of guitarists since then, including Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and Corey Richardson. The list itself even has its own Wikipedia page. Clapton played his signature Stratocaster, known as 'Blackie" for nearly 20 years! When he auctioned it off for charity, it sold for almost one million dollars. To put that in perspective, you could take that money and buy one million orders of chicken nuggets at McDonald's. Or about one gallon of gas. [Citation Needed]

To me, the Stratocaster was the best. Its sound, feel, and comfort were unparalleled to the other guitars that I've tried. The way it fits so snugly to my waist as I play can only be described as like wearing a snuggie made from beautiful, soft, sound waves. Pure. Bliss. So of course, the kit I was looking for was for a Stratocaster.

On my last post, I mentioned that I found some corner of the web beyond Amazon where one could purchase guitar parts and kits. To be honest, I found quite a few, but only two of them really caught my interest; the rest of them looked like those poorly designed web pages from the 90s with flashing text and outrageous font colors.

The first website of interest belonged to Ed Roman Guitars. It's a small company in Las Vegas that specialized in making custom guitars. This seemed like a promising start, since they had a giant collection of custom made guitars and even a section dedicated to their guitar kits. It even promised that its guitar kits  were of higher quality than anywhere else on the web. A bit cocky, but maybe that's what was needed to distinguish itself from the rest of its peers in this niche market. The wise thing to do though would be searching for external reviews on the site itself.

And how wise a decision it was. On some independent guitar forums, Ed Roman was generally regarded as somewhat of a prick and rather snooty when it came to guitars. Apparently his staff would also make it policy to push their expensive custom made guitars on their customers. This may just be the vocal minority and hearsay, and Mr. Roman may be the misunderstood saint of custom made guitars, but I decided to trust in the external opinions and search elsewhere.

The other option was BYOGuitar (the BYO meaning Build-Your-Own). I stumbled upon it on a recommendation from another forum. Another adventurous soul undertook a project similar to mine and had purchased a guitar kit from them as well; his review was positive and other customers of the site also echoed his sentiment. And happily, they have the Stratocaster kit that I so badly wanted.

As a bonus, there was a lot of customization one could add to the kit. You can change the lineup of pickups and swap out a Single Coil for a Humbucker (I'll go over these in a later post). You even had a few options on the type of wood the neck and body would be made of. A few clicks later, and the order had been placed. I decided to even pay an extra $13 to have it flown, rather than driven. I wasn't comfortable with the unfinished guitar bouncing around in the back of a Semi while being driven across the country.

And now, we wait. Or do we? Painting a guitar is probably the hardest task awaiting me... but that's another post.

Thanks for reading!


Thursday, June 7, 2012

The Beginning and The Why

So here it is. I am building a guitar. When I thought about the process from start to finish, I realized that the project would be one of my greatest undertakings. Seeing as how a lot of people demanded pictures the instant I informed them of it, it was only natural that I should document the WHOLE process, as opposed to just the finished product. Thinking about how to document it, a blog came up in my head as a great way to keep track of the whole process, with pictures and thoughts that I have while I worked on this. I've always wanted to start a blog, so why not?

One of the first questions that other people asked me was, "Why? Why build a guitar yourself when you can just buy a nice guitar for yourself?" For the longest time, I wanted an electric guitar. Okay, you've got me, I already own an acoustic and an electric.

The acoustic, I've owned for nearly 6 years, has been lovingly named Leigha. If you're curious on the history of the name, I'm sorry to say that I have no response to that; it was just a name that came up to me one day while playing, and it sounded 'right' in my head, so it's stuck with the guitar ever since.

The electric guitar, I had bought about 3 years ago off of Craigslist. I was happy to find a Squier Stratocaster for the low price of $50. It was inexpensive because the guitar had some electrical problems: some loose soldering and the sound cutting out. As a computer science major and somewhat savvy electronics guy, the soldering issue didn't deter me from this amazing deal, so I jumped on it as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, my 'savvy electronics' skill proved to be lackluster, and despite my best attempts, I couldn't get a reliable sound to come out of it without it randomly cutting out while playing (the problem was likely beyond just soldering). I then resorted to playing the guitar only at night, since an electric is a quiet thing, but even that eventually stopped. My electric guitar now sits neglected in my parents house.

So back to why I should build a guitar: I had recently begun searching for a DIY project to keep me occupied. My friends in the area had been keeping themselves busy with their own projects: a 3D printer, a ballista, a quad-copter. These are all fantastically cool projects, but if I ventured into it myself, the project just wouldn't feel like it was mine. I would have felt like a copy cat. Additionally, I realized that if I wanted to invest time into something, I would like to get something useful out of it. Not saying that the aforementioned projects aren't useful, I just couldn't justify it for myself.

One day though, it hit me: What if I build a guitar? I could get that  DIY project and that guitar that I have been looking for. Success! But my elation was cut short when, after some research, I found that making a guitar from scratch practically required "some significant wood-working experience." Since my wood-working experience extended to hammering nails and pretty much nothing beyond, I thought that my idea had died before it even began.

But while I was looking at guitars online, I came across an interesting note. It seems there were some obscure corners of the web beyond Amazon (gasp) that sold guitar 'kits.' These kits contained pre-cut wooden parts and all the electronics that I needed to make a working electric guitar. Joy! The project lives again!

So here it is. I am building a guitar, and this is my blog about the 'journey' ahead of me. I confess, I've actually already started this project about a week ago, and my research has been mostly completed (which took a surprising amount of time!). I'll keep on working on this blog in parallel, and hopefully it'll catch up to where I'm currently at.

Thanks for reading!