How About A FREE Electric Guitar Plan?

That's right, to celebrate Leap Year, I am offering a set of plans for both my Envirocaster guitars FREE OF CHARGE. This amazing offer will expire on the last day of March, so don't miss out. Collect them all! Share them with your friends or anyone who might be interested in building their own electric guitar. Click on the links below to get your free plan(s):

Envirocaster Single Cutaway Right Hand

Envirocaster Single Cutaway Left Hand

Envirocaster Double Cutaway Right Hand

Envirocaster Double Cutaway Left Hand

Cutting Out An Envirocaster DC Body

Today, I made a couple of Envirocaster bodies. Here are some photos of how one came to life:

I used a template made for me by Ronny at guitarbuildingtemplates.com.

The body is Alder with a flamed Maple top.

I used a Wagner Safety Planer to thin the body from 2" down to 1-3/4" thick.

To round over the edges, I used a 3/4" round over bit in my router.

Tomorrow, I will rout the control cavity and drill the jack and wiring holes.

Like Magic, One Long Board Becomes Five Bookmatched Tops

What started out as an 8 foot long, heavily flamed Maple board...

...quickly became 5 bookmatched tops.

The Plan For My Fretboard Radius Jig

As promised, click here to download the plan for my fretboard radius jig.

Here's A Video Demo Of My Fretboard Radius Jig

http://youtu.be/BNm5G84ht5A

A detailed plan will follow in the next day or so.

A Cool Way To Radius A Fretboard

I love building electric guitars, but the one task I never look forward to is generating the fretboard's radius. Like most small builders, I have always relied on radius sanding blocks to help do the work. The problem is, it takes at least an hour of vigorous work to get the job done. And that's for just one fretboard. If I have a stack to do, I'm in big trouble. My shoulders just can't take the work.

Over the years, I have tried a variety of jigs to help generate the radius, but none of them seemed to work very well. But then, after watching the movie "The Pit and the Pendulum," I hit upon an idea; What if I flipped the pendulum, attached the fretboard to the swinging end and ran my router along the centerline? I know that doesn't make any sense, but here are some photos of what I came up with:

The router slides along the top rails while the fretboard swivels on an arch from side to side. There are pins on each end, which can be positioned in different holes in order to change the radius to whatever I need for a given build. Best of all, I can even generate a compound radius! I can do a consistent radius from 7.5" all the way to 24" and everything in-between. If I place the pin on the nut end at 10" and the pin at the heel end at 16", I can get a compound radius. It really works and the results, so far after testing a couple of fretboards, is extremely smooth with only a 1/2" straight cut bit.

It only took me about two hours to make this jig. I used two sheets of 2'X4'X3/4" plywood, some woods screws, a couple of 1/4" screws for pins and a pair of skateboard bearings to help the router mount slide smoothly. If there's enough interest I'll post the plans for the jig. In the next day or so, I might upload a video of how it works as well.

The Next Round Of Guitar Builds Is Underway

I call this luthier porn...

For those of you with a keen eye, all the necks in this photo are lefties.

Bocote. Love the grain!

One-piece Honduran Mahogany body. This one aint for sale.

Two Maple fretboards with Walnut marker dots flank a Wenge fretboard with mother-of-peal marker dots.