The Introduction....

I'm cliff and I like to build guitars. (and the support group says, "Hi Cliff!)

I built my first solid body electric guitar back in 1994 and I've been hooked since.I started building guitars because I couldn't find one or buy one that was built to my standards. I never liked Fenders and figured out early on that Gibson's were way overrated.I told myself that I could build a solid body electric guitar as good as anything available on the market and that's how it all begun. I haven't built a lot guitars since '94 but I've built enough.
Every guitar is a learning process and thank god for the Internet because that is where I go to learn.

Recently I built another guitar. This one was make of Mahogany with a Carvin thru the body neck made of the same wood. All the parts were Carvin except the tuners which were Spezels. all the hardware is gold plated. Turned out great but it's not quite what I want so I'm off to build another and hopefully better guitar.

I've been hording a piece of tiger striped hard rock maple that my father-in-law gave me years ago and I finally figured out how to cut out the body using a plunge router. The wood is almost perfect but it does have some bark in it but I think it gives the wood a little character.

Here's a shot of the wood:
Note that the top half is still rough from being cut out with the plunge router. A little trick that I learned the hard way when cutting out hard rock maple. Take it slow and easy. Take off about a 1/8 to 1/4 in at a time and make multiple passes. I use a 1 HP Craftsman router with a template bit that has 1/4 cutting depth with the ball bearing at the top of the cutting surface. I let the bearing just ride on the edge of the body template and take it around real slow. I keep lowering the bit a little at time until the router has maxed out its depth. What remains is about as thick as veneer and that I cut out with an electric jig saw using a fine tooth blade. I then smooth out the edges using my drill press and a 2" sanding drum. Later on I'll explain how I route out the cavities using my drill press as a router.
My camera needs to recharge so I'll post pictures of the router and the bit along with the process of using the drill press as a sander tomorrow. Later.