Tele “plus” build

NewTimer

Hey everyone. After the lessons I learned from my first guitar kit, and two complete read-throughs of Hiscock’s book, I’ve decided to just dive in to a mostly scratch build. I often learn by messing things up and getting my hands dirty. We’ll see how it goes.

The plan is to make a Tele Plus styled guitar. It won’t have the classic tobacco burst or split coiling. The plan is a light green for the top, using milk paint and TruOil, with a cream upper binding, and the sides and back oiled adler.

I have a red lace sensor dually with stainless mount, and a blue lace sensor pickup for the neck. One of my favorite guitarists is known for his telecaster plus, and he’s also British like the folks here 

Gotoh Locking tuners as well.

I haven’t decided between my Gotoh or Schaller bridge, I guess it will depend on how classic I plan I going.

Onto the wood. I ordered a “red adler” 2 piece body blank from ebay for $45. Obviously the picture on ebay looked great, what I got, of course was quite a bit different:

Very mismatched wood with basically zero grain matching. I tried it because a 2 piece from StewMac would have been $130 plus for some ash. Luckily I’m painting the top, but it will still erk me. Oh well, first build, maybe I’ll botch it anyways and end up with a nicer piece of wood.

Another concern, that looks like it was poorly attempted to be filled:

I suppose this should end up being the back, thoughts on filling it in an attractive way? I thought super glue but I believe it will stand out more shiny sanded down after the TruOil. Might try a mix of superglue and sawdust after bandsawing.

I “cheated” and went with a pre slotted fretboard this time around. I have a maple blank for the neck as well.

I haven’t decided on the maple or Indian rosewood yet, but the rosewood is particularly beautiful, almost purple in the sunlight, although I think the maple will end up matching the guitar better. 

I have everything except my pickups ready, they’ll be here in a few days. Over the next few weeks I’ll make my templates and slowly start trying to make progress. I’ll start with the body then work my way to the neck. The binding scares me, I have the stew Mac router binding bit and the correct size bearing, but still scary  

Right now I have a small bandsaw, 1/2 router, 12” swing drill press, hand planes, chisels, and files. I intend on finding some good rasps for the neck shape. I have limited space, the “workshop” is half the spare bedroom in our apartment, so I make due as best I can!



Thanks for letting me share. If anyone has any common pitfalls or advice they’d like to offer up, I’d be thankful. Wish me luck.

Roland

NewTimer said:

I haven’t decided between my Gotoh or Schaller bridge, I guess it will depend on how classic I plan I going.

If you use palm muting in your playing then you’ll find conventional saddles are easier than rollers.

NewTimer

Roland said:

NewTimer said:

I haven’t decided between my Gotoh or Schaller bridge, I guess it will depend on how classic I plan I going.

If you use palm muting in your playing then you’ll find conventional saddles are easier than rollers.

Gotoh it is then! Cheers Roland

Funkfingers

Schaller 3D6 is top-loader only.

NewTimer

Funkfingers said:

Schaller 3D6 is top-loader only.

That was actually the appeal, I’m nervous about lining up the ferrule holes, but I’m going to practice on scrap and make templates until I’m comfortable

djspecialist

As a big fan of the guitarist you alluded to (I think I can *Just* about work out who you're talking about ...) I'm excited to see how this turns out!

NewTimer

djspecialist said:

As a big fan of the guitarist you alluded to (I think I can *Just* about work out who you're talking about ...) I'm excited to see how this turns out!

  

Roland

NewTimer said:

Funkfingers said:

Schaller 3D6 is top-loader only.

… I’m nervous about lining up the ferrule holes,

How about using a block rather than individual ferrules? Grainger supply them, on you can make your own from a brass bar

NewTimer

Roland said:

NewTimer said:

Funkfingers said:

Schaller 3D6 is top-loader only.

… I’m nervous about lining up the ferrule holes,

How about using a block rather than individual ferrules? Grainger supply them, on you can make your own from a brass bar

That’s not a bad idea.. I feels like a cop out though. Perhaps if I’m not satisfied with my string through holes, I can route out and go with the block, assuming that’s how it’s done. 

I didn’t know those even existed, thanks for another good bit of info Roland

andy_k

Ferrules are best done from both sides, line up bridge, drill 2 outer holes to get a reference on the back, then drill remaining holes from both sides - if you are lucky they will meet in the middle, and if you aren't, you will still have straight ferrules.
Measure twice, drill once is still the best advice here,

Jonathangus

NewTimer said:

The plan is a light green for the top, using milk paint and TruOil, with a cream upper binding, and the sides and back oiled adler.

So, once you've painted the wood green, it'll be green wood? 

WezV

andy_k said:

Ferrules are best done from both sides, line up bridge, drill 2 outer holes to get a reference on the back, then drill remaining holes from both sides - if you are lucky they will meet in the middle, and if you aren't, you will still have straight ferrules.

Measure twice, drill once is still the best advice here,

Add in an extra step with a separate template drilled for the ferrules. Then even if the outer string holes are slightly out, you can still align the final template for best fit

RocknRollDave

Looking forward to seeing how this thread develops.
I am not a builder myself, so I can't share any tips or tricks, but I do love a Tele, so will watch this with interest.

Good luck with it. 

NewTimer

Update but not much of one. Work’s been tying me down.

The pickups finally made it to my little town in the mountains.

I’ll need to look for some little screws for mounting the humbucker, it didn’t come with any.

Had quite a time poster printing, trimming, aligning, cutting and taping the sheets together. I didn’t love how it turned out, but I’m not sure I could have done much better of a job. It’s a janky way of marking for a template, but I’d prefer to get used to it to save on buying template. 

I believe the paper warped somewhat from the printing, certain measure lines wouldn’t line up even when the outline and other lines would.

I struggled to get clean cuts on the edges as you can see. I used a small artist’s razor for straight lines but ended up using scissors to trim the outline. 

Transferred the center line, but I didn’t trust the paper template. I’ve gotten the outline though, I’ll have to measure and remark all the important measurements before I cut.



I adjusted the neck pocket width in pencil based off of measurements out from the centerline. My template says the neck pocket should be 2.2 inches wide. That’s about 27.9mm out from each side of the centerline and used my digital calipers to get a more accurate neck pocket width. 

I should be able to clean up the edges once I bandsaw it out. I feel like I’m fumbling through it a bit, having to adjust when things don’t go to plan. I suspect that’s part of it. 

Anyways, that’s where I’m at. Slow going, I only have a day or two a week to put time into it. Take care everyone.

Middaparka

Looks to be an interesting build.

Are you going to go the full hog and add a momentary kill switch to the control plate?

NewTimer

Middaparka said:

Looks to be an interesting build.

Are you going to go the full hog and add a momentary kill switch to the control plate?

No sir! As a stage musician using high gain I can see the value, but I’m certainly not one! I know I won’t use it, and this obviously isn’t going to be a direct copy, I mostly just care about the pickups and scale length being the same. 

NewTimer

Unfortunately I’ve had very minimal time to work on this project lately but have a little progress.

After being unsatisfied with the quality of my first body template, I decided to combine MDF, cheap carbon copy paper, and a $5 print out of my plan from a local print shop I found. The carbon copy paper idea came from another tFB member’s thread on creating templates, found here:
https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/180676/fano-rb6t-thinline-now-making-the-first-one/p1

This works really well, and went smoother than I thought it would.

Start by laying out the carbon copy paper on your MDF.

I then taped it down to keep everything from slipping around and attached the plans on top.

This method allows you to trace but also use a straight edge where needed. I found this much more accurate than cutting and tracing the plan onto MDF.

This was great. I struggled a lot however getting clean square edges hand sanding and had to get clever to cut some of the tighter curves on my tiny bandsaw. It still wasn’t good enough to me, and I decided that I probably wouldn’t be able to progress appropriately without a spindle sander. 

In my frustration I ordered one of the StewMac telecaster templates. This allowed my to get straight to cutting my body, although I will still have to work out a way to accurately create a template for the neck. It could be ignorance, but the straight lines apart from the headstock should be easier to rip on the bandsaw with a fence then clean up with a hand plane and flat sanding surface verses the curves on a body template.

NewTimer

Starting on the body cutout, then another pass to clean up the corners left from the first rough cut.

You can see here how I cannot cut the inside curve on the upper “horn” without the body hitting the side of the bandsaw body.

Here you can see that corner in detail.

A solution could be to have the template traced onto both sides, but I haven’t contrived a clever way of them lining up perfectly. Perhaps some sort of drill through markings in waste wood before the cut. I will probably attempt that next time, and it should alleviate some of the technicalities when using such a small bandsaw. 

The bandsaw (and operator) struggles to get good clean curves. This was much easier in the MDF, but my underpowered saw gets moany unless I take some of the curves in multiple passes. It left the body pretty knackered.

It’s a really ROUGH cut. As you can see I struggled to get the curves clean, and in this case overshot and just barely overcut the side of the neck pocket. I think it will be salvageable but we’ll see. 

Ironically I find myself in the position of wishing I had a spindle sander. I could clean up the edges and square everything up. I’m putting everything down for today.

I will either reattach my template and use my router to clean it up now, or look into a bench top sander. 

I installed my router into my work table. A few trails on scrap wood worked out seemingly fine.

All in all, I’m not too good at this. I’m going to keep trucking along until I’m more comfortable with my process. Lots of refinement needed. Take care everyone!

NewTimer

Working with my router. So far I’ve achieved some smooth sides and some pretty nasty tear out. 

I’m not surprised, it happened as I got toward the end grain. Was feeding just a hair at a time and being very careful, but short of reshaping the body I’m not sure if there’s much I can do about that. I suppose I will finish practicing on this body, and attempt another with what I learn. 

Alternatively I could reshape the top horn by a few mm. I’ll need to figure out how to control the router better.

victorludorum

If you're using a standard Tele body template with pickup routs, your bridge humbucker won't fit in the traditional bridge pickup rout. The neck pickup rout will probably need enlarging as well I would think.

GSPBASSES

NewTimer said:

Working with my router. So far I’ve achieved some smooth sides and some pretty nasty tear out. 

I’m not surprised, it happened as I got toward the end grain. Was feeding just a hair at a time and being very careful, but short of reshaping the body I’m not sure if there’s much I can do about that. I suppose I will finish practicing on this body, and attempt another with what I learn. 

Alternatively I could reshape the top horn by a few mm. I’ll need to figure out how to control the router better.

To help stop that break out, I change the 19 mm bearings on the router bit for 21 mm bearings, go round the body with them first, then change the bearings back to 19 mm for finishing cut.