CURSED OBJECTS

I’m picking up a bare telecaster body tomorrow I found in the local classifieds, a Mighty Mite neck turned up in the mail the other day, I’ve got a Bigsby B5 on the way, and a bunch of P-90’s sitting around… What on earth could one do with all these things? 

In a bid to relinquish myself of the title “Captain Of The Crazy Train” I’ve picked up during the sunken fretboard project, I decided I would take a little bit of time away from Cigar Box Guitar projects and have a bit of a tinker with a guitar I had put aside for this very purpose. 

During a total blackout couple of weeks, apparently I went on a total bender buying beaten up guitars from all over the place, the stranger the better. One of the guitars I picked up was a lawsuit era CBS LP Copy from around 1977-78-79…MID TO LATE 70’S. Before I went to pick it up I was sent a picture from the seller, and thought it looked in okay-ish condition, obviously missing a heck of a lot of hardware but, I was still okay with that. 

I was pretty into it even though the picture was not the best way to judge it so, I jumped in the car and took a 40 minute drive to buy it from him. Look, I’m not going to say the guy had lied about anything but, he had certainly bent the truth to the point that I think he must have made an art form of it over the years. The finish was, as expected pretty messy, scratched hazed, crazed, dinged and other short words to describe shite. That I knew, but the neck was what threw me, the thing looked like a roller coaster, twisting one way before a giant drop the other. I was actually pretty disappointed as I was looking forward to a vintage Japanese LP copy with a zero fret. I beat his price down as far as I could take it, I was pretty sure he was getting a tad angry at my appraisal, as he had originally wanted hundreds of dollars for what he thought must have been a rare find. Anyway with a price agreed upon I took it home and pulled it apart, the neck (bolt on) was something I worked on fixing up for about 2 months before calling it a day and putting the whole thing away.

Fast forward about 5 months and with a new outlook on it I have started working on it again. The neck is now long gone which is a shame but it was way past gone as far as fixing was concerned. There is something about the body though that I love, it’s semi hollow bodied and has a really nice tone to it, I have no idea what the timber is but I’d hazard a guess at cheapwood, but that doesn’t matter, I am totally into this thing. I didn’t want to do a complete refinish on it as it’s a bit past that point and hell, it’s an old guitar, so I will leave it looking old - ish. Some of the paint job had been really scratched up and it looked like someone had taken to it at some point with a screwdriver to further age it or something, anyways, I wanted to get the finish looking nice again, not factory, just, nice and clean, so out with the 1000 grit and steel wool. 

Before - 

After sanding and steel wool - 

By this point I was thinking of trying a Matte Finish but it’s really not as simple as just scuffing up a gloss paint job with steel wool, that in actual fact with simply goof up your guitar. So that idea long forgotten, I would stick to a gloss finish and, would get to all of that soon but first… 

Yeah the back had a little bit of buckle rash I guess… This, I have now taken back to natural timber, stained and started coating with Danish Oil. There was no way in hell I wanted to do a paint matching job on this one as, the whole point was for this to be a bit of a relaxing process. 

So it’s a bit too dark right now to take any more photo’s so I’ll get on that in the morning but I will say, it has in fact so far been a real treat just to work on something with no deadline or sense of purpose, just taking it easy. 

I’ve just started work on part of a build that I am trying my best to keep a positive attitude towards no matter how beaten by it I might feel at times.

Some of you who have been following along here for a little while will know all too we’ll that I simply consider myself a luthier in training, I make no bones about it as I know builders both local and from various parts of the world with over 20 years plus on me who still won’t call themselves luthiers no matter how amazing their guitars are. Anyways, I’m rambling on.

I was in the workshop a day or so ago, looking through my raw timber stockpile, I was looking for some timber that would serve nicely in size and feel for a neck to join a fretboard I have already made. Really simply I was having no luck, I do have some great slabs that will be great necks but nothing for what I had already made (yes a slight oversight in hindsight). So I was faced with a small dilemma. Thickness (shaving the timber down to size) by hand so that it would work or, come up with another option.

I mostly work with hand tools and while yes you can thickness a piece of timber by hand, I was really not feeling up to it at the time. I decided to use what I had picked out - some Tasmanian Blackwood and try something different. What I ended up going with, and what I’m still working on is a sunken fretboard. Really simply it’s like having a bound neck except the fretboard, instead of being routed and having binding placed around it, is set into another piece of timber.

It’s something I have never tried and honestly was not planing on trying for some time but in the spirit of at least trying everything once, I figured why the hell not.

Everything measured out it was now time to start.

So here is where things are at… I started with a chisel to get it started, then after thinking I was making life hard for myself, I picked up the hand drill and made some holes and chiseled some more. I honestly don’t have much of an idea, what I am doing, but I’m making progress slowly. It’s something I a purposefully not rushing and I hope I can keep that mentality, it’s hard when all you want is to see a finished product.

Until next long winded post.

Hey y'all, well I gotta admit to being a little bit absent this last week (and a half). The past week has been full of some fairly frustrating moments and I do try my best not to vent here. I’ve been working away in the background though, I’ve made three pickups at this stage but they are still prototypes as far as the design and material are concerned. There are a couple of new Cigar Box Guitars coming along as well, and fingers crossed I’ll be able to share a few work in progress photo’s shortly. 

To you guys, the folks who have been following the blog, I just want to say thanks for sticking around so far! And to everyone who has jumped on board recently, I’m stoked to have you here! Everyone gets an exclamation mark!!

Okay well it’s pretty clear to even me that I am rambling so I will finish things up with a question, would it be of interest to any of you for me to make a video on the process I use to build a Cigar Box Guitar? I’ve ben toying with it for a while now and think it could be fun because I’ve always wanted to use a “starwipe” in a video editing way and THIS COULD BE MY BIG CHANCE. 

Walking under those ladders was probably a little bit daft. 

So much Copper wire everywhere.

But I do have a working pickup made, with noting to put it in right now.

Over.