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.

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!

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.

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. 

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!

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!

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!