Hi everyone!
I've been away from the forum for quite some time now due to some health issues which are now being managed much better. I thought a great way to get back into swing around here would be to join the challenge!
I recently had a new housemate move in with me, a friend of mine who is a CAD/CAM designer and 3D animator. We've been working together on a guitar that he's been building since before we met, mostly fixing up a few problems with his finishing. He used the CNC at his job to do the machining, and has done an admirable job for his first.
He's also been sticking around while I work on other jobs and is very eager to learn, which is great to have around.
He had some Queensland Maple left over from his neck blank, and asked if there was anything that I could do with it. Here's a picture:
As you can see, it's slightly oddly shaped, and there are some indexing holes that I would have to work around. I could probably build a couple of necks with it, but thought I might try something different. I had a think and played around with the dimensions in a vector program to see what I could fit in the available blank, and thought it would be perfect for a 6 string lap steel.
I've never played a lap steel before, so this is certainly something new for me.
I decided to aim for about a 21" scale, and tune to a low C6; I wanted to be able to play in a lower range than an E-standard guitar, and it's my understanding that lap steel C6 is generally tuned to c 130.8Hz, so I decided to go with C 65.4Hz tuned low-to-high C E G A c e with 52w 39w 32w 28w 22p 17p strings which should give me a pretty evenly progressive tension from treble-to-bass, which is something I much prefer than any of the off-the-shelf string sets for guitar from the major manufacturers.
Anyway, onwards and upwards. Here you can see the first cut I made in the blank after I had leveled some of the surfaces a bit with a jack plane.
I shortened the blank where it became narrow, and this will be the bridge end of the body.
Here I eyeballed about a 10° angle.
My saw didn't stay perfectly on track, but it wandered to the outside of the cut. It just means a bit more work with 62-1/2 block plane.
Here's the surface leveled, and you can see some checking in the wood that wasn't previously apparent. Fortunately it lies outside of my planned layout.
Time to bring the body down to thickness. I need a bigger bandsaw!
It took about 30 minutes to resaw through the whole blank. Pretty tiring.
And here you can see the ugly result. I don't do much in the way of building, as I'm doing full-time repairs for guitars and amps for a living, so I'm not particularly well set up for large-scale wood working. But I can certainly get the job done with a bit of patience.
This will need a bit of cleanup with the jack plane.
I was originally planning making this a slotted headstock with vertical tuner buttons, and here is some basic layout work. As you'll see later, I changed my mind.
And here are the tuners and basic orientation I was planning at first. Note that the tuners may look reversed, especially when compared to a lot of other lap steels with vertical buttons, but if you rotate them 180° in your mind, you'll see that the strings would wind onto the shafts in the usual direction. This is because tuners are designed to have minimal backlash in only one direction, and will not hold tune as reliably if used in reverse, and will also wear and potentially fail prematurely. I was surprised at how many lap steels I saw that had vertical tuners oriented backwards when I was doing a Google image search for some inspiration.
I was thinking about doing some sort of scroll, flourish or "open book" type end treatment at first, but with the straight sided headstock, as soon as I drew that first pencil line I knew that that was going to look the best. Simple, but stylish in my opinion.
My experience with resaw-thicknessing the blank encouraged me to pull my old bandsaw out of the corner and get it working again. I'd bought a benchtop bandsaw years ago when I was young and stupid and didn't know any better. Nothing wrong with a decent benchtop bandsaw, especially the type of stuff that I would use one for most of the time, but apart from the terrible build quality (wheels nowhere near co-planar and very little in the way of adjustment), it also had a non-standard blade length of 1400mm with 200mm wheels. At least here in Australia, most small bandsaws have a blade length of 1572mm and 230mm wheels. I couldn't be bothered brazing up a blade myself, or having one custom made (especially given the poor performance of the tool), so I took inspiration from another member here who had made their own "riser kit" from a piece of timber. I sawed through the hollow rectangular steel neck with a hacksaw, and carefully fitted a large piece of timber that runs the full new height of the saw. With careful adjustment I was able to get the wheels co-planar, and the timber was fitted into the hollow steel frame with a mallet fit. Before I'd started this I had placed a weight over the the mouth of the bandsaw and measured deflection. After I had extended the neck with the timber, I performed the same test to make sure I had similar rigidity to the structure, and was pleased to find that it is actually more rigid now than it was originally. It now fits a standard and easily available blade length, and I've gained almost 100mm of cutting height. It is now a useful tool again, and might even be able to manage some light resaw duty.
Anyway, the first task I put it to was trimming down the other side of the neck.
Here you can see that I've decided against a slotted headstock, as the angle for the outer strings to the nut would have been far too extreme. It will be a little more tricky reaching the tuners from the playing position, but it'll be fine.
I also used the bandsaw to thin down the headstock, and then used the 2" drum on my Luthier's Friend to make the transition to the neck.
Anyway, this is the progress I've made so far. I've decided that I would like to use a fretboard with frets (even though it will not be fretted, obviously). I think it will suit the aesthetic I've got in my head. It will also give me an opportunity to teach some basic fretwork to my friend for a non-critical application. So, I'm going to order an Indian Rosewood blank for that. I've also got some bits and pieces floating around for the bridge, haven't decided exactly what I'll use. I also plan on winding a humbucker for this, so I'll make sure to get some photos of that process.
Thanks for stopping by and looking!
