How do you go about making a template for an electric guitar?
There are a few simple stages before you can start working with a template:
• Planning, drawing and/ or printing a full-scale drawing.
• Cutting sanding and finishing the base template.
• Retracing and creating your master template. (Optional)
• Creating ‘supporting’ templates
Electric Guitars Body Shapes and Styles
The main groups of electric guitar bodies can be divided into three:
• Hollow Body Instruments
• Semi Hollow Body
• Solid Body Instruments
The shape and design of electric guitars developed and evolved in the last hundred years and today you can choose which you would fit your preferred style of music, fashion or guitar icon.
With all these different shapes and styles one can get a bit confused. Whether you are planning on buying or building your next guitar we’ll try and sort things out to get a clear view of what these guitars are all about.
Electric Guitar Nut Files – All about Nuts, Files and Slotting
The basic idea when slotting your nut is file the slots as low as possible (or to the players personal preference) without going too low and creating any buzz. You also want to consider filing the correct width of each slot, the angle and the spacing between slots. Other factors to consider are the tools at your disposal and the type and material of the nut itself.
Guitar DIY – How to use radius gauges
There a couple of main uses for the Radius Gauges
The first one is for checking the and adjusting the radius of the fretboard during the guitar construction, where we hold the Radius Gauge against the fretboard and look for spaces or bumps in order to eventually match the desired radius. The second time we us the Radius Gauge is when setting up the guitar with the string on it. At this point we are actually holding the Gauge against the strings themselves to see that they are matching the radius of the fretboard both in the nut area and the bridge.
Guitar Cutaway- Hit those High Notes
A cutaway on the guitar refers to a concave cut at the upper turn of the body of the guitar just side by side to the neck of the guitar. Such cutaways are created to grant ease of access to the higher frets or notes. Cutaways are carved into electric guitars and acoustic guitars however; electric cutaway guitars are more popular.
Useful Router Bits for Guitar Building and How to Use Them
What are the most useful router bits when building a guitar?
The most useful Router Bits for any guitar style are:
• Flush trim bit, AKA Template Copier.
Depending on the style of guitar you will also want:
• Chamfer or Round-over Bits,
• Straight Carbide Tip
• Rabbet Bit with multiple bearings