THE DRILL...

Here it is - one of the most nerve racking things I've had to do to a guitar.

Holes need to be drilled. This should be no big deal, but for some reason, I was really nervous about screwing this up (no pun intended). Hopefully, since you are reading this, you won't be. After I went for it and came out unscathed, it really was no big deal. Just Do It!

So for the control plate and the pick guard, I left the bridge in place, and put the control plate and pickguard on the guitar. I wiggled them around a little until they looked pretty symmetrical, and marked the holes with a pencil. I'm sure the factory workers at Fender did something similar. These ARE production guitars after all! 

The tuners were the same way. Warmoth drills the holes for your tuners to fit through already. You'll have to put them all in place, make sure they are in line, and mark the holes for the little screw on the back of each tuner.

Strap buttons were a little more interesting. I started with the bottom one here because it was easier. What i did was measure the height of the body (as it is laying on it's back), divided by two, and marked the guitar in pencil. Then I took a straight edge and squared it up to the bridge plate, aligned it with the middle of the middle adjustment screw, and marked the top of the guitar indicating center of the body. Then I took a straight edge on the bottom of the guitar and marked that center line across my previous mark. This is where I drilled my hole.

Make sure your drill is in line by running a long straight edge down the center of your guitar and look over it as you drill.

I used white felts in between the strap buttons and the body. I had these laying around, but you can buy them cheap from StewMac in black or white.

The top button was a little trickier - I just had to eyeball where to place this one since there is no symmetrically to the shoulder here. Use the "look over a straight edge as you drill trick" here, too. Line it up to be in line with the bridge. You don't want this button to be crooked. It'll be very obvious.

Not bad, eh?

Here's a useful tip - measure the end of your screw against your drill bit and put a piece of tape around it to mark your spot. This way, when you reach the depth you want, you'll see your tape flag brush away all the sawdust from your drilling area and you'll know to stop.

For any of you out there who are unfamiliar with Dunlop's StapLok system, here's a few pictures to explain.

You push the button on the strap as you put the end of it into your guitar's button, and then let go of it. It should be locked in place then! Yay! No more worries! I am addicted to these things. I retrofitted all of my electrics and basses with these. It's really nice on my Flying V and my Thunderbird. If you have one, you probably know why.

All done! almost...

My daughter Nola helped me out on this next step

Hard to capture on film, but I started rounding over a few edges on the pick guard. I was afraid I'd cut myself on the sharp 90 degree angle on that new bakelite. Ouch!

Here, I'm lining up the bigsby. Talk about scary! I'd never owned a bigbsy before, let alone installed one! I consulted my expert, Mark, over at Bronson Guitar Works in Scottsdale, AZ. They do all of my setups, and have done good work for me in the past. He calmed my nerves about this process and I got back to work. Don't sweat the small stuff!

According to Mark, the trick is to center the bigsby on the bridge, and make sure it's square to the bridge. The rest is esthetics. Here, I've already marked the middle of the bar with sharpie (line this up with the middle screw of the bridge), and I'm checking to make sure I'm square. Don't trust your eye - use a ruler! The tremolo arm will throw you off!

Mark your holes

See 'em?

Mark your depth again and *eek* drill!!

Wax your screws again

DONE!! almost...

Next up... Dremel the bridge plate to allow strings from the Bigsby, and hopefully prep my garage for spraying some lacquer!!

Test fit EVERYTHING!

I decided to dry fit all the parts and drill all the necessary holes before I sprayed the finish. This way, I won't have to worry about cracking my beautiful new finish with a drill bit. I have a feeling the factories do something similar, but I can't be sure. So here are some pictures -

This hole was missing on my Warmoth body when I first got it. I had to call them up and send a few pictures, and then ship it back to Washington so they could drill it. They reimbursed my shipping and were very good about fixing the issue right away. Check for this kind of stuff, though! You don't want to have the finish all done and not have a way to wire your pickups to the control cavity!!

First up was the bridge installation - this was easy because Warmoth predrills the string-through holes and the bridge mounting screw holes.

All I did here was "chase" the screws with wax. The wax acts as a lubricant against the wood, and makes chasing brand new threads into brand new wood a lot easier. Later, before spraying finish, I'll be cleaning the wood VERY WELL with Naptha and Lacquer Thinner which should remove any wax that makes its way to the surface in this stage.

The neck plate screw holes in the body and the neck from Warmoth were the same - all I had to do was put the screws in there and turn!

Here's the wax I use. As you can see, it's just plain old paraffin wax from wal-mart. I run the threads across the wax (against the grain), then I screw it into the wood. Try one without wax and then try one with it. There is a difference!

The nut came preshaped, but it was left intentionally too big. You will have to do a bit of shaping and sanding to get it to fit in the slot. You'll want it to be as snug as possible, but not too tight where you can't get it out again. Someday, you may need to replace it, and you won't want to break out a chunk of neck wood in the process.

I used my digital calipers to check the size, but you can keep trying it in the nut slot if you don't have one. 

These are the fancy sandpapers I mentioned earlier. So far so good!

The nut was a bit wide, too, so I sanded both sides equally to narrow it up a bit. 

Try to keep the surface of the nut flush to the surface of your sandpaper. Here I'm on the flat piece of my anvil, but any flat hard surface will do.

Ta-Da! I watered down some Titebond glue 3:1 and spread it all over the mating surface of the nut and stuck it in there. This will allow you to knock your glue loose and remove the nut later on down the road if need be. (side note: we are installing the nut now so we can spray finish over it, just like the factory does, but you don't have to)

This nut will need a lot more filing and shaping when the setup is done on it, but for now it's close.

Ok, this took some guts for me, you probably won't have issues, but I was nervous about screwing something up on my precious guitar body. It really isn't that big a deal though. Just measure twice, drill once, you'll be fine.

Holes needed to be drilled for the pickguard, control cavity, strap buttons, and the BIGSBY!! OH NO!!

more to come next post...

Build the damn thing already!

All right, I got all of my personal stuff out of the way in the last post. I'll try to keep the rest of this about the build process.

SO...

The first step was to gather all the ingredients-

Parts- (prices do not include shipping and are from 2013, may be different for you)

$208 Warmoth one piece ash telecaster body - vintage styling, unfinished
$197 Warmoth one piece quarter sawn maple neck - boat neck, medium jumbo frets, compound radius, unfinished
$62.96 Wilkinson adjustable three piece telecaster bridge chrome
$55.47 Grover 6 inline locking mini rotomatic tuners
$12.31 Dunlop Straploks
$141.67 Bigsby B5 tremolo
Stewart McDonald -
$33.11 premium telecaster wiring kit (comes with top hat switch knob and cloth covered wire)
$9.48 unbleached bone nut (shaped)
$6.84 standard telecaster jack cup
$29.95 bakelite pick guard
$.42 each- pick guard screws (5)
$5.37 roller string trees
$14.90 chrome telecaster control plate
$7.98 chrome neck plate with screws
$29.96 chrome string ferrules (I'm using a Bigsby, so these aren't necessary, but I thought they should be there just in case)
$7.04 chrome dome knobs 1/4" shaft (2)
and the controversial fender "spaghetti" style logo waterslide decal from sentinel custom graphics
$ 26.95
(this guitar IS NOT A CLONE, and I will never sell it, plus it's got warmoth logos all over it, so i'm not worried about trying to pass this off as a vintage guitar when it clearly isn't. I suggest you do the same, cuz that aint cool)

Tools-

I decided to mix my own color of laquer after reading Dan Erlewine's Guitar Finishing Book, so I had to buy some special tools and materials just for that step. You can purchase Warmoth bodies and necks with your choice of finish, although you pay quite a bit for that, and they did not offer the butterscotch blond finish that I wanted. You can also buy premixed spray cans of butterscotch blond lacquer from guitar reranch, but once again, this was not the shade I wanted, and it would not be finished EXACTLY like Fender did it in the 50's. Not everyone will be as particular as I am, but that's ok. I should note that I'm only getting close to what they did in the 50's, no one is really sure exactly how they did it back then.

I'm gonna have to buy a nice air compressor in order to spray the finish on this guitar, but I won't bore you with my endless research in that department.

I bought a cheap spray gun from Walmart. More on that later.

Here's the finish supplies I bought from StewMac-
Seagrave Vinyl Sealer (2 Quarts) $29.50 each
Seagrave Lacquer Thinner (2 Quarts) $19.79 each
Seagrave Clear Lacquer (2 Quarts) $28.16 each
Behlen Naptha Solvent (1 Quart) $11.25
Colortone Pigment White $13.35
Colortone Stain Vintage Amber $19.49
Colortone Stain Medium Brown $19.49

some of this is pretty expensive, but with the exception of the lacquer and vinyl sealer, you can finish A LOT of guitars with this stuff.

I also bought the sandpaper sampler from StewMac ($20.68) - you could probably do just as good on your own (Lowes, Home Depot), but I wanted to try the 3M no load papers, I'll let you know how that goes.

I already had a Postal Monkey case laying around (I am addicted to Craigslist, and sometimes I buy things I don't really need) so that was no cost, but I have seen some really cool thermometer cases just like telecasters came with in the 50's out there. Probably more money than you and I are willing to spend though...

Next up - I start to grow a pair and drill into this sucker!