This is a project I did a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but I’m still kinda proud of it, so I decided to put it up here. Well, that, and I am still waiting for components for ongoing projects…

I didn’t have access to a cnc back then so everything was done with manual tools. Actually, the reason I bought the Shapeoko is to eventually revisit this project and build a better version, custom neck included (for this one I bought a half-finished neck online).

I’m not going to post the whole build log in one article because it would be too long probably. Well… to be honest there isn’t going to be much text but I do have lots of pictures of the progress that are pretty self-explanatory!

First up: the design. 

Below is a mockup of the overall design. I didn’t want to do something radically different, but I still tried to design a body that was different enough from any established brand/model.

and a 3D design:

Click + drag to rotate.

I printed this out full scale on a grid and checked if it somewhat looked good size-wise.

 

After approval, I cut out the same shape out of a board of MDF, that would serve as a template.

The neck blanks I bought did have an already finished fretboard/truss rod-assembly. The headstock however needed some custom shaping.

For the body, I bought some mahogany boards. I had them planed by a carpenter I know.

After planing, I bookmatched them and glued the pair together. And yeah I didn’t even have clamps back then… Go figure… 🙂