Shaping The Body With Chiselled Features

The plan view of the guitar was as far as I had really got with my full sized sketches - I am not known for possessing any great depth. To carry on the fish pretzel theme that I started on the headstock, I want the body wood to look a bit organic, to flow and overlap rather than just sit there and look heavy and cumbersome. So this requires a fair bit of wood removal to make it happen.




At first the router was used. This is great for removing material, but in this case is self-defeating. After a while, all the flat surfaces that the router needs to sit on have been buzzed away, leaving a choice of it sitting on precarious 'islands' of the original height, or freeform use. Hmm, sounds like a trip to A+E is only seconds away if I try that too often, so it is back to the manual methods after this brief flirtation with power tools.




Chisel! The word sounds a misleading - like a chisel is used to stab at the wood and rip a bit out. With a decent (and sharp) chisel the ash can be worked with a bit of effort. Ash has a large grain pattern and it seems to change from quite easily workable in some parts and really hard in others. This takes some getting used to, but understanding this helps to work with the wood and not against it. I had to keep sharpening the chisel on an oilstone throughout the shaping.





Between major bouts of chiselage (what a good word - I wonder if it exists?) sanding the contours with a block helps to blend the shaping into pleasant curves.

There are a few places on the body, inside the teardrop shaped cutouts, where it is difficult to work on. This could be why nobody else makes a guitar body that looks like this?




Here's the body parts pushed back onto the neck. All the shaping and radiusing apart from the the initial rough router work has all been done by hand (and aren't those hands feeling sore!). The top has been shaped so that my forearm will have a nice resting spot. From the front the central walnut stripe is just about visible.

The truss rod channel and positions for the fboard lights are just visible further up the neck, at 3rd and 12th fret positions.

It isn't easy to see in the photo, but there is still a way to go. The body is still proud of the neck in places, and the bottom of the guitar needs to end in a curve (the neck is just sawn at an angle at the moment).

The next step is to think about where I place two volume pots, a 4-pole pickup selector switch, the 1/4" jack socket, the pacman leds on/off switch & select button, the pacman led circuit board and the batteries. No problem, I'll put it all in one of the holes...