Christine

Those sanding/carving attachments look very useful, they could easily remove too much wood very quickly if you don’t take care. Honestly for what you’re planning a spokeshave or a rasp would be very fast and safer

Check to see if any of the solder joints look dry and tin the end of the wire under the bridge in an eye around one of the anchor screws 

Does the same thing happen with any other instruments when plugged in? Could be a general domestic earth issue (or so I’ve read) 

4 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Yes - that's a bit of a problem here too.  My 'workshop' is the width of a small bench butted up against the wall 

Still - might be worth me having a look at if I could build one if I do any more acoustics.

It doesn’t need to be that big for acoustics but for bodies with a cut out then you need the extra reach which suddenly doubles the size 

I made one of those jigs out of some birch ply, 2 drawer slides and a couple of springs, it works very well but it takes up some space in a small workshop

So here’s hoping there’s some real adjustability left in that truss rod then 

Here’s a pic of mine, 4” beech tops and 4” square Welsh oak frame along with 2 rows of Lignum Vitae bench dogsIt’s quite high just above waist height as I used to get a bad back with my old one. This one is about 30 years old now and still as good as new 

You really don’t want a bench to be too wide unless you have a specific reason for it. My working surface is only 450mm although I have a 250mm tool well behind it with a further 200mm surface behind that too incase I need the width but in 40 years I only ever have a handful of times. With a narrow bench you can do stuff like clamp something to it from the rear so it’s out of your way and things never get to far away so you have to stretch 

Whatever you use it will have to be quite small, MOP will be a challenge but streets ahead of a sticker. I'm away for two or three weeks now, I'll be waiting with bated breath to see the outcome of your thinking

I would have killed for that in 1976/77

Aside, what have you got as a stand? Post a picture

It's just crying out for some mother of pearl in that headstock

Draw it out, that will give you a better idea of how thick your blank needs to be. If you go super curved you will need to make the concave back very deep, will that be comfortable? Or leave it heavy or hollow, perhaps @Andyjr1515 has more informed advice than me here

You could mix some white with the blue to pale it off a little to make it not need a scratchplate?

I wonder if copper leaf would act as shielding?

The trouble with wax is that absolutely nothing will stick to it other than more wax. Oil or lacquer or whatever is out of the question after you've used it, it gets into the pores of the wood and gets far deeper than you imagine. It looks wonderful and shiny for a while but finger marks so easily.

If it has never been waxed then and you want a bit of a sheen to it then I would recommend Teak oil, just a little and often rub it in and buff it with a cloth and let it dry overnight. Over a few applications it will develop a decent shine and be far harder wearing than wax could ever be. Teak oil is better than the likes of Danish oil because it has less additives that will eventually build up and fill the pores which play a big part in how that wood looks (as would wax eventually too)

8 minutes ago, owen said:

I think I am over the lathe thing (even though it was exciting), but I could make a bowl will a flat bottom which only curved at the extreme edges.

I'll shut up

13 hours ago, owen said:

The lathe option would give a certain line which there is no way I could get with hand tools, but the by PM and various posts I am beginning to think the hand tool thing might be a go-er.

Thanks everyone for their willingness to guide. I am going to buy some really big paper.

The other (lesser) trouble with the lathe thing is it would work well as a disk but not as a guitar shaped thing, the curves would be a lot deeper at the neck and bridge than anywhere else. That does raise the possibility of using a very high bridge and having the neck following the approximate line where it joins the body so that the body actually wrapped around you. A bit like an angled neck done to extremes,  which is right up my street

If it were me I would build up the binding first, making a former for the bent bits.

Start at the top, cut the mitre on one first, a small disc sander is ideal for making tiny adjustments as you can keep the angles perfect. Once you have the mitre on one side of the top binding do the other in the same way until the insides of both mitres meets with the outside corners of the routing, glue that in place with something like a slow drying superglue (or thin fast drying if you hold it in place and let capillary action take it in).

Then do the two sides, getting the mitres with the top perfect first, then do the bottom ones, glue those before fiddling with the curved bits

It looks like a medieval weapon of torture from the back and very beautiful from the front, amazing 😀

3 hours ago, owen said:

Thanks everyone for your encoursgement. It will be your fault. I am thinking about getting a piece of scrap wood, having it turned and then seeing if I can wrestle it into shape. It will be 310mm at it's longest by 280mm at it's widest. How deep do I need to leave it for neck pocket,  pickups and control cavity?

The neck pocket depth and angle will depend on the curve of the body, the height and position of the bridge in relation to the thickness of the body, with a curved body you will need to make sure that the strings clear both the top and the pickups if that makes any sense. These are best worked out by drawing it out full size before you even look at wood (I use the back of some wall paper to draw on )

A problem I'm foreseeing is how to mark out and position the cavities in the body once it's been turned. A jig will have to be made and then how do you clamp the jig to the body in whatever way that needs to be done, all stuff that is very easy when the body starts off flat. OK if you cut those first then the turner looses the places on the front where he can screw to in order to turn the back. Speak to a turner first to see what they say about sensible options for work holding, he/she might have some good ideas, I'm afraid I know very little about lathes.

Shellac is best applied with a rubber, a folded piece of cotton with wadding inside that can be loaded with shellac dissolved in alcohol. It's put on very sparingly over a few days, applied in a random figure of eight.circles pattern so the polish looks like a feint mist flash drying just behind the rubber. It's lubricated with a little mineral oil to stop the rubber sticking. It may take upward of a thousand coats each microscopically thin to get that sort of build up and gloss. You can cheat a little and put the build up coats on with a squirrel hair mop and cut it back before finishing with a rubber bit it never really looks the same.

The really difficult bit is the very end, getting the gloss, you apply it in ever more dilute concentrations, then finally it is wiped clean with a fresh piece of wadding loaded with a few drops of pure alcohol so the rubber is barely damp, that cleans off any remaining oil and leaves the full beauty of the French polished finish.

Not an easy finish to apply, it helps to practice on some scrap wood first and don't expect to get a finish like that one until you're very good at it, whoever did that knew what they were doing

4 minutes ago, DoubleOhStephan said:

Simply get a bunk bed and convert the lower bunk into a large tool chest! 

Exactly and with tools under the bed you could build your own bunk beds and safe money too

Sorry Owen, back on track

4 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

As you know, I live in a one bedroom flat - where would I house all the tools I would need? 

 

Under the bed!!

3 hours ago, owen said:

I truly love the idea of doing it all by hand, but I know I will get impatient/sloppy/over ambitous and cut too deeply or whatever. I only have to look at the extra grooves I have in my bathroom floor where I sanded it to understand the limits of my skillset. 

 

I did say this was the most difficult bit, you just need to tell yourself that you're not impatient. You need to start thinking "I'm going to do it and I'm going to get it right", you can do it, trust me. Sharp tools and control, cutting too deep is a result of blunt tools and no control, lots of small cuts instead of trying to do it all in one effin great wack of a hammer.

Do it all by hand is my offering, don't be put off thinking it's difficult, it isn't, the most difficult bit is deciding to do it yourself, honestly. Carving a top is just about putting the effort in and deciding which bits of wood you need to remove. I'd never carved a top before until I did the Twins last year, it was a lot harder thinking about it than doing it. It was only when I started removing wood that I thought "well yes, I can do this", I was really thinking I couldn't or would just mess it up. It took time and I got sore fingers but apart from that it was easy, honestly.

My biggest tip is learn how to sharpen your tools and set them up. With sharp tools you have control and with control you can do almost anything, that is the universal truth of woodwork.

The more you do yourself the more you'll get out of it long term, OK you'll need some help and advice but between us all there's no shortage and no excuse not to.

Here you are

The plain cabinet scraper is a vastly under rated tool, properly sharpened and prepared it can remove wood from the most difficult grain imaginable or it can smooth out a freshly sprayed or brushed lacquer in readiness for the next coat with absolute finesse.

Sharpening it is usually a problem, I'm not sure why, it's not really that difficult but it does need a little care to get right but it's not a long or difficult job. You'll need, a sharp engineers file, a set of sharpening stones, I use Japanese water stones 1000 grit (coarse) and a 6000 frit (fine),a vice,  a wooden guide block about 150mm long 75mm high and 40mm thick planed exactly square and a simple burnisher  (a good quality screwdriver will do for this).

The first thing you need to do is file the 2 working edges square so clamp your scraper in the vice alongside the wooden guide block so the top edge of the scraper is a hair above the wood. Now using the wooden block as a guide file the edge of the scraper flat without damaging the guide block unduly. You have now removed the remains of the last sharpening in readiness for the new one.

Now to hone the working edges: on the coarse stone which must be perfectly flat by the way hold the working edge of the scraper against it so the scraper is vertical using your guide block as a guide to keep it exactly square and flat. When the edge shows no more marks left from the file move on to the fine stone. Do the same again, then put the scraper flat on the stone and hone both of the faces. Go back to the guide block and do the edge again, then the sides. What you are aiming for is a perfectly square edge with a near mirror finish all round. Your scraper is now sharp but still useless.

Finally we need to raise the burr that does the work. Put the scraper in the vice so the edge is about 40mm above it. Take your burnisher, hold it horizontally, with firm pressure run it backwards and forwards about 10 times, this will harden the edge. After that continue but one side at a time carry on burnishing but ever so slightly tilt the burnisher down on the side you are working on, bit by bit until you get to about 5 degrees, with luck you should have a good burr, test it with your thumb. If it's there do the same again on the other edge before turning the scraper over and doing the other side. You should have 4 working burrs that will or at least should be capable of producing a near perfect finish.

That's about it really, it does take a couple of goes to learn how hard to press to get your burr how you like it. With time and experience you can skip using the guide block but I wouldn't recommend it for a good while and then only if you sharpen very regularly, it's very hard to keep that edge perfectly square while honing otherwise.

If you can’t get help before then I’ll be back home tomorrow and will give you a full set of instructions