Purpose of this Blog

My name is Matt Haskins and my son Elias is in Jacqui Canfield’s Room 10 at Sycamore Elementary. I build guitars as a hobby and was planning to make one for the annual school auction in the spring. It occurred to me last month, however, that it might be both fun and educational for the kids in Room 10 to help me with some of the build. I discussed the idea with Jacqui and we decided to turned this into a class project.

When I discussed the project with the children I explained that I was going to do some of the work on the guitar in my shop at home. There are both safety and practical reasons for my decision to do this. Some of the tools and machines I use to build guitars are quite dangerous if used improperly so it’s best if the kids are not around when I use them. Some aspects of guitar building also take time and practice to master. I don’t want to frustrate the kids with tasks beyond their abilities nor take up too much class time with this project. So I’ll have the kids do as many things as they can and the rest I’ll do at home. I’ve created this blog for Room 10 kids, their parents, and anyone one else interested to see the building process that goes on inside and outside of class. Please feel free to post any comments or questions you have about the project.  

(One note--there are other pages following the posts on this main page. Click the "Older Posts" link at the bottom of this page to see them).  

Build Teams

I decided to break the kids into teams to work on different parts of the guitar. I did this to help keep things manageable and to also guarantee that every child would get an opportunity to help with the guitar if she or he so wished. I'm happy to say that every student in Room 10 has volunteered to participate in the project. And so far things are going great with this team concept. When I come to class I ask the appropriate team to come help and we get to work. By the time the guitar is completed every team and every child will get to play their important role in bring this instrument to life.

The Build Teams are:

1. Design Team

2. Paint Team

3. Electronics Team

4. Truss Rod Team

5. Pickups Team

6. Assembly Team

The Project

The guitar we are building is replica of a Fender Telecaster. The “Tele” is a classic design and one of my favorite guitars. And since we hope to sell this guitar at the school auction I wanted to pick a design that is popular with guitarists.

The first assignment for the Paint Team was to decide on three potential colors for the guitar. I had the Paint Team look at traditional Fender Guitar colors on the class computer. After some debate the kids on the Paint Team selected "Sonic Blue,” “Sherwood Green,” and “Fiesta Red.” All three are great colors and anyone of them would have looked beautiful. With the three potential colors selected, the rest of the class and Jacqui voted on the color they liked best. The class picked “Fiesta Red” by a fairly wide margin. Red with a little bit of orange mixed in, “Fiesta” is a beautiful color and looks great on a Telecaster. Here are some pictures of a 1959 Fender Telecaster in Fiesta Red. The guitar is a little beat up but that’s what an electric guitar looks like after it’s been played for over 50 years.

 

 

More to come soon!

 

And Work Begins.

Here's the wood for the guitar body. I'm using Alder which is a common wood used to make electric guitar bodies. I like to use Alder because the tree is plentiful in North America.

The boards were a little long so I cut them down a bit. Because it can be difficult to find a single piece of wood wide enough for a guitar body, it's common to glue two pieces of wood together to create a single larger board. That's what we are going to do with these. 

If you are going to glue boards together it's very important that the edges are perfectly flat. If they are not flat the area where the two boards meet, which is called a "Joint," will be weak and might break someday. I have a special machine called a "Jointer" which makes board edges and sides flat. Above you can see the nice flat edges of the boards after they went through the jointer. When we glue these boards together the joint will be very strong. The last place this board will ever break will be along this joint.

 

The boards are ready to be glued together.

 

 

With the glue applied I clamp the boards together and leave overnight 

 

After the glue has dried and we have a strong joint, we want to make sure our board is perfectly flat. (This is very important when you are building things with wood). Here I'm using the router in something I built called a "router sled." I put the board in the router sled and adjust the bit so that it just barely touches the wood. After this I slide the router over the board taking a small amount of the wood off the top. You can see in the picture above the sawdust that is left after the router cuts the board. After passing the router over the entire board the top is perfectly flat. Once this is done, I flip the board over and do the same thing to the other side.

 
And now we have a strong, flat board that is wide enough to make a guitar body out of. Next the Design Team will trace the pattern of a Telecaster body on blank from a template I've made. This board is off to Room 10! 

  The kids on the Design Team traced the guitar from a template on to the wood.

   

 

 

After rough cutting the body I attach the template and use a router with a pattern bit to flush trim to take the body down to its final size.

 

 

 

The result. 

 

 

 

 Next I route the cavities for the pickups, electronics and neck pocket.

 

 

Drilling the holes for the screws that will attach the body to the neck.

 

I use an old bridge as a template to drill the holes for the strings to go through the body. Because the drill bit can drift a little even with a good drill press, I only drill half way through the wood.

 

 

I then use this board that I made with a small pin that fits exactly into the size holes I just drilled. I line this pin up with my drill bit in the press and lock it down. Now when I drill the rest of the way through the guitar body from the other side they should come out perfectly straight.

 

 

 

 

 After this is done, I use a larger drill bit for the string ferrules. This turned out great. A perfect straight line.

 

 

Now the last thing to do with the body is round over the edges. It's back to the router table.

 

 

 

 The body is done and ready for paint.

The kids trace the outline of the neck on the wood. Maple is a traditional wood used on this style of guitar. Like the alder we used for the body, maple is a good choice because it's grown domestically and is not endangered.

After rough cutting the neck I reattach the template and flush trim it with the router.

 

 

Next the kids on the Design Team marked the location of the holes for the tuning keys with the template. When I get home I use the drill press and this is the result below.

 

 

 

Again the kids help me mark out the cut for the headstock.

 

 

 And now for some real fun! Most guitars have a piece of steel that runs through most of the neck called a truss rod. This helps keep the neck straight. For this type of neck a slot needs to be routed the back of the neck. This is a jig I made to help make this route.

 

 

 

The jig in action. The rails on the side keep the router straight while making the cut.

 

 

The finished result.

 

 

 

 

Along with the route on the back of the neck, holes need to be drilled into the top and bottom of the neck for the truss rod. For this job I've also made up some other jigs to make sure the holes are in the correct locations and at the proper angles. Here is the jig for drilling the headstock.

 

 

 

The truss rod goes into the neck through this hole and is secured with a metal metal nut. After this we'll glue in a small piece of walnut to fill in the hole. The dark walnut contrasts nicely with the lighter maple making it a nice decorative touch.

 

 

Here is a little side by side before and after shot. The one on the left is another neck I'm working on. The one on the right is our neck for the project after the walnut plug was cut down and the sanded.

 

 

 

Now to drilling the bottom of the neck. This hole allows access to a nut that adjusts the tension of the truss rod.

A nice clean hole exactly where it should be. The jig did it's job.

 



 

 

With the slot cut and the holes drilled, it's time to make the truss rod. Here the kids on the Truss Rod Team mark and cut the steel rod.

 

 

 

 

 We then turn to putting the threading on each side of the truss rod with tap and die tools. (I love this picture).

 

The children did a great job and we now have a perfect truss rod.

 

 

 

Here's a picture of the adjustment nut at the heel (bottom) of the neck after we installed the truss rod.

 

 

 

 

One more truss rod related task left. Filling in the slot on the back of the neck. As with the plug in the headstock, walnut is the traditional wood used for this job. This dark walnut stripe in a maple neck is called a "skunk stripe." Here's a bundle of walnut strips I made some time ago.

 

 

 

 

After picking one out I took it to school for kids to trace the shape with a template and begin the shaping process.

 

 

 

 

After some careful shaping we have a skunk stripe that fits neatly into the neck. Now it's just a matter of gluing it in an clamping it up.

 

 

 

And there's the skunk stripe.

 

 

 

More to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A guitar neck has a small curve on the fretboard. This fretboard "radius" makes the guitar feel more comfortable while playing. For this guitar I'm going to go with a 9.5" radius. Below is the sanding block that we used to achieve the radius.

 

 



 

With some double sided tape we stick the sandpaper to the radius block.

 

To help keep the radius consistent while sanding I use this jig to keep the sanding block straight while sanding.

 

 

Here's one of the Room 10 kids sanding the fretboard.

 

Now it's time to cut the fret slots. The fret slots must be cut very precisely. For this I made a slot cutting jig and and different templates for the job. I attach the fretboard or in this case the entire neck to the template below and place it in the slot cutting jig.

 

 

The slot cutting jig keeps the saw straight while an index pin fits into the template making sure the cut happens precisely where it should.

 

Before moving on I double check the radius and fret slot depth.

 

 

And the finished result.

 

 

For the fret markers we're going to keep it old school and use Bakelite which was an early plastic and what was originally used on the Fender Telecaster. Here I'm cutting the fret markers out of a sheet of Bakelite.

 

 

Marking out the neck where we'll locate the fret markers.

 

Drilling the fret marker locations.

 

Drilling is done.

 

 

 

 The fret markers installed and sanded flush.

 

 

The kids and I repeat a similar process with the "side dots" on the side of the neck. Here we've glued the side dots in.

 

 

 

After we sand the side dots flush all of the markers are in there proper locations.