BUILD #1 - The Aluminum T-Beam guitar project *PICS*
Submitted by Alex on Wed, 06/17/2009 - 14:11
In this thread I will describe my design and construction of the Aluminum T-Beam guitar that I came up with. The first version is going to be a prototype built out of spruce and aluminum.
Here is a video of the initial version of Build 1:
Final version pictures:
Initial version pictures:
Cool!
Nice work! Sometime soon I'll have to try building a T-beam hollowbody.
Quick Features
Here are the quick features of this guitar design:
36 fret range
6 string
Aluminum T-Beam neck
Spruce body and headstock
Oversized dimensions to constrain proportion with the extra-long neck
Fixed bridge (Schaller toploader)
A mixture of thick/thin frets to accomodate playability and feasibility of fretting the high octave
Seymour Duncan humbucker pickup (model undecided yet)
A concentric volume and tone control for simplicity
Update 1
here is my progress.
Spruce body - Don't laugh!! total cost of wood: $10 from home depot.
Going to probably redo the body later out of mahogany, alder, or hard maple.
The body is prety thick in the center - 3.5 inches. (It is routed to house the T-beam completely - flush with the face of the guitar)
The wings are 1 3/4 inches.
Aluminum L brackets held together with epoxy steel.
The T-beam is marked up for 27" scale length. The line marked "36" is where the last fret ends. As you can see - pretty good access to the last fret.
My next step is ordering the 6 string bridge, and seeing how everything fits together.
The dots you see are where I am going to drill for screws. The screws will hold the neck to the body.
I am also thinking of screwing the fingerboard onto the neck using nuts and bolts, instead of glue. This will allow for swappable fingerboards. Something i always wanted. I am making a buttload of mistakes, but learning from some of it.
Update 2
Continued...
Yesterday I was forcing in the T-beam into the body slot, and I pushed too hard. The spruce body cracked completely down the center. I simply glued it right back together using carpenter's glue. Now, theoretically it should be stronger than before in that spot, because the glue holds with 2 tons of strength.
Sorry, some of the pictures are blurry, because my hands are shaky all the time.
Gluing the darn body back together, after it cracked:
Today I was hand cutting the aluminum with a jig saw. I had to angle the blade in order to avoid the saw frame hitting the metal.
This is only half of the job, as I still have to cut the Bottom leg part of the T-beam, which is twice as thick as the wings (2 CM).
The cutting took me about 4 hours to complete (including breaks). It was a tough job, and it left me very tired.
After cutting the aluminum, the edges become very rough and sharp:
Here we can see for the first time, approximately what the finished result will look like. I am thinking to paint it shiny black (if i can learn how to do that), then I will cut diamond plate (plastic or aluminum) and screw it to the Wings and the headstock. Say anyone know where I can buy some Diamond Plate sheets?
Update 3
The cutting continues... Using the hacksaw to cut off the "leg" of the T beam. It is 2CM thick. It goes pretty slow. This took about 4 hours of cutting time.
Fun times... I am going to remember this. Hopefully not too much aluminum dust for my lungs...
To my surprise, after cuttin the leg, the epoxy steel bond broke, and the brackets came apart. I think I clamped too hard when I was fixing them together, and there was not enough glue in the joint. I have redone the glue using standard 15 second superglue and so far - no problems whatsoever.
Filing down the edges of the beam.
Gluing in the headstock and adapter piece to the T-Beam. Unfortunately the adapter piece glue joint to the headstock was not strong enough, and I was able snap off the headstock in my stress-test. Since then, a whole new headstock has been made.
Update 4
And now to what I thought would be the most challenging part of this project: Drilling out the bridge pickup cavity. Mastercraft Maximum drill bits for metal, saved me big time here. I did the entire thing with a drill by drilling on angles, and cross drilling holes from multiple places to free up the middle piece of metal you see on the table, left of the work. This took quite a while, and a crazy amount of drilling.
The slot was filed down by hand to fit the bridge pickup. I marked here the area that requires routing for the pickup to go in. The 8 holes for the anchor screws have been drilled. No pilot holes required, as this wood is very very soft - but I might regret this later, once it cracks along the grain.
A whole was driller right between the two aluminum L brackets. This hole has been threaded using a Tap and die set. A large screw is keeping the bridge screwed in right into the aluminum T-Beam, along with 2 long anchor screws which will go into the wood.
Tap and Die set
Update 5
Fitted the bridge pickup and bridge.
Voila! New headstock. Instead of being once piece, it is now comprised of a thick center section, which is cut down to be 8 degree tilt back. The "wings" are glued in from the sides, and will have 3 tuner holes per side. A piece of the wood came out and had to be glued back in using wood glue, before the hole could be drilled in this photo.
Surprise Surprise! The body cracks again, along the grain, when trying to put in the T-Beam. This time, i said I will completely remove the joining section, and replace it with a thicker piece that has Cross-grain to the rest of the body. Now it cannot possibly crack in that spot again. Also as you can see, I got me some polished aluminum diamond plate that is held together with small screws to the body. Pretty mean looking thing. Those edges are still quite sharp.
I have removed the offending section of the wood, as you can see here. I am going to replace it with a cross-grain piece of wood, which is several times stronger than one that is along the grain.
New joining piece in - one side at a time.
New headstock - cut out the adapter slot. Those thin little sticks sure look fragile, but are actually not too bad, and will not have any pressure applied to them by the string pull. They are there more-or-less for stability.
Gluing the headstock to the T-Beam. Large amount of epoxy gel. 5 minutes and it's set.
Update 6
Today, I finished with the body - made sure the t-beam is not too tight by chiseling areas of the wood that were too tight.
What is remaining to be done: Fingerboard (buying multiple different ones tomorrow), electronics and nut - that's it.
Update 7
Making a new addon upper horn (for the strap button):
Routing a "channel" to glue in the upper horn.
The old headstock was removed. The holes were drilled through larger, so now the fingerboard is very snug against the neck (no space in between).
Headstock tuner placement was made for straightest string pull possible.
The neck has been "thinned out" by 3 MM, by cutting off the back of the neck. And also fingerboard now lays right on top of the neck, as you can see here.
New headstock made out of poplar and hard maple. New adapter piece made.
New headstock (side view).
New headstock in, with epoxy.
wow
That's a crazy project! I'd love to hear the sound after finishing. Anyway it has already been flavored with a lot of dedication, which is one of the main components in any task.