How hard to do a carved top?

axisus

I'm making a guitar at the moment, tele shaped, bolt on neck and strat type trem. I'm wondering how hard it would be to do it as a carved top? both in terms of physically shaping the wood and also the extra hassle of getting everything to sit and fit right - neck/trem etc? I have no experience of that sort of thing, my only guitar build thus far has just been a Tele slab body.

octatonic

Do you own a pillar drill?

TTony

Whenever I've done any sort of carved top, I've kept the middle section as flat as possible - ie from the neck around the p'ups and down the the bridge/tailpiece.  It keeps things easier ...

WezV

i show a gibson style one here

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/55672/build-thread-pancake-body-les-paul-deluxe/p2


following this method
http://mountainwhimsy.com/2012/03/les-paul-top-carve/nggallery/thumbnails

WezV

prior to that I had done them the way tony suggests with a flat plane..... put a serious bevel around the edge, and the scooped it out with various round planes, scrapers, chisels and any other tool

the template carve was much quicker even with making all the templates

octatonic

You can also drill it out with a pillar drill.

WezV

Particularly useful for arch top plates.  When you mentioned the pillar drill I wondered if it was going to be a Saf-T planer.  A tool I wouldn't be without, but it's definitely not safe

octatonic

I've resisted buying a SafeT-Planer out of my desire to have thumbs.

WezV

A few points as its a tele shape.

1) carved teles can look oddly fat if it's too rounded

2) you can just make it a normal flat top tele for ease, then carve the bejesus out of it.  

TTony

octatonic said:

I've resisted buying a SafeT-Planer out of my desire to have thumbs.

I bought one, but I've yet to get much use out of it.

Roland

If you are wanting to put some surface contours into a Tele slab, say forearm and belly contours, then you can do it with surform or wood rasp, finishing off with sandpaper. Draw pencil lines on the top and sides where you want the contouring to finish. I was surprised how easy it was. les Paul type contouring is a different game.

Binding the edges afterwards was a pain because there wasn't a level surface to balance the router on.

WezV

Yeah, but you can do pretty stylish bevels with the same method all round.... Then if you scoop out those bevels and round them into a plateau you are not far off many modern carve styles.


best bet at this stage is to find some pics of a carved top tele with a style of carve you like, and between us we can tell you how to get there

axisus

WezV said:

i show a gibson style one here

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/55672/build-thread-pancake-body-les-paul-deluxe/p2

Thanks for the input people, may be too tricky for me to want to attempt for this one, I'll have a think about it. @WezV that is an awesome thread of yours, lots of very useful stuff. I just whipped through the whole thing, and bookmarked it of course.

WezV

If you follow the other link it will give you the template source, along with a much better build thread than mine.


but seriously, trad Gibson style carve will be a lot of work to look shit on a tele... But a modern bevelled carve is easier and suits the tele shape much better. I think it would suit your style of build quite well and nicely offend the tele purists 

Roland

You can do see pretty severe contours on a Tele https://goo.gl/photos/viWPavDgFXXBAQhd6