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!