General Body Shape...

On Friday, towards the end of my day, my friend Ed and I made up a general shape for my guitar body.  Ed is a ticketed journeyman/master in fine woodworking with a background in high-end yacht joinery.  He and I have been friends for about 15 years and I have worked with him for the last two years learning a trade in custom furniture building.  Check out our website at www.tenondesign.ca.  Ed and I (and my brother-in-law, Nathan) will be building my axe.  Of course this means that I have access to a full wood shop for my guitar project, not to mention a real woodworker...

So on Friday, Ed and I made up a pattern for my guitar body.  Seeing as my guitar is custom, I didn't want to just trace an existing shape, nor did I want to get entirely crazy with a rediculous, artsy shape, so my shape ended up being a cross between a Gibson SG and Fender Statocaster.

Gibson SG

Fender Stratocaster

The purists among you (cough, Nathan, cough) will baulk at my "original" shape saying something like, "that just looks like a botched SG and Strat abomination!"  Well, my defence is two-fold. Firstly, the purists among you (hopefully with the exception of Nathan) have already abandoned my blog when I mentioned amp modeling - preferring, or course, real guitars and real amps and real money.  So I probably don't need to worry about you.  My second argument is that if I want an SG or a Strat, I'll go buy one.  I am simply taking my favourite parts of two pre-existing designs and combining them into something I can nearly call my own.

I like the double cut-away of both designs, but prefer the very slightly asymmetric top and bottom cut-away of the SG over the extreme unbalance of the Strat.  However, I don't love the pointy devil horns of the SG and prefer the rounder feel of the Strat cut-aways.  So without further ado, here is my design:

Custom Guitar Shape

Ed helped me trace the shape onto a piece of 1/4" MDF, erasing and redrawing until I was happy with the look of it.  Following that, I cut it out very roughly with a jigsaw, then quite accurately with a band saw.  Lastly, I sanded it all smooth with a spindle sander in a drill press and a block sander by hand.  Despite it being the first construction day on the project, I already goofed and over-sanded the part towards where the neck will attach.  I had to superglue some extra bits of MDF to where I had over-sanded to build out the material again to the full shape.  The first of many, many goofs, I'm afraid...