As these are all Tele-ish I might as well lump them together. The Blackguard is mainly a demo for a vintage dealer but will be for sale. Beaten up somewhat based on pics from Blackguardlogs. There'll be a second version of the
stripey strawberry T And an Esquire but trying a hidden neck pickup. Wanted to try that for ages.
These have taken longer than I hoped but everythings changed, got an overhead/pin router. Had to rebuild it and been making new jigs, get used to using it etc. Also had various issues with templates I bought to quicken these, but turned out be the opposite. May have a moan in a separate thread. Had some duff supplies lately.
Starting on the blackguard then. First off I'm not really interested in being 'vintage correct' to the Nth degree. Good luck to those who like that, all good, just not for me. So anyway we start with 2-piece swamp ash. These literally looked like they were fished from a swamp. Covered in mud, very rough cut & odd sized, had to wire brush them before going anywhere near tools.
The planer is fairly OK at jointing but can't beat the plane, so a couple of mins with the No.7 and we have an invisible join.
My usual cutter struggled with the ash, tearing quite a lot. This below is an ace tool, Stanley (or Record) No.80. Great for surfacing or fixing tearout. It's a scraper in a body basically but you hone it differently. Anyway. I got a Radian surfacer which was almost tear-free.
The 2-inch cutter is much nicer to use on the overhead, and makes a quick and super nice finish.
The blanks match up fairly nicely at the blunt end, less so at the pocket but that's fine:
Comments
The hole is just freehand drilled so not sure the shape is quite right/as they were etc..
(formerly customkits)
Pete this is the only one I've got at the mo, it's an old Elu with a single-speed body. I think it was the first router made for freehanding in like 1950 or something. Dewalt were still making a copy of the motor up to a few years ago. This dalek itself is probably 80s or 90s.
(formerly customkits)
The accidental dophin's eye is an inset bolt, the little lever has a nut embedded so it's easy to tweak. The dolphin nose was in case I felt the need to run a bolt downwards through it, as a stopper against the fence getting forced to tilt. But it seems fine as it is.
Formica type stuff on the front face. Big fat ol' hinges only because I had them sat spare.
Holes drilled in the table so one end is a pivot to swivel around. Due to doing it on the fly and zero planning there's two holes at the slot end of the table, to cover different gaps vs different drum sizes and all that. If the base was wider it praps wouldn't need that.
With drums in good nick it's great at smoothing & thinning lams and accurate. Also makes the headstock transitions a breeze to do.