Post 12 – 2024 Final Report Part 2

To create my electric guitar body with a Viking aesthetic, I had to do a lot of wood working techniques I was not aware of. Here’s a detailed description of my actual fabrication process:

I spent the first week trying to figure out what type of wood I was going to buy because I needed something soft enough to carve into. Once I figured out I was going to use Ambrosia Maple wood I ordered it and waited a month for it to arrive.  I did not expect it to take that long so ended up having to rush the carving and make it a lot simpler since I didn’t have time to make something complex. Once I got the wood I went into the wood shop where I had to get a slab of ply wood to trace out my design. I didn’t have a pre existing stencil so I did this by hand. Figuring out the measurements for a guitar body is a lot more more difficult than I had expected as you still want it to be comfortable although with nothing to base it off of I had no direction to go to. Once the shape was to my liking I cut off all the excess material with a band saw and used a sander to finish off the exact shape and smoothness I needed. When this was all complete I glued the template onto the base wood.

We used a very strong double sided tape to stick the two together and used clamps and desk clamps to tighten them together. I then went back to the bandsaw and cut of all the extra wood out of the exterior. Once that was complete I used a rotor to finish of cutting the main body to the exact shape of the template. Once done I took it home and started sketching designs onto the guitar body and used a dremmel to carve into it.

Using a dremmel still take a lot more time than I had anticipated. This made it quite hard to get the depth and detail I wanted.

At my current area, I just need to finish the last pattern and stain the guitar body to darkness of my choosing. Initially I wanted to also design the neck although realized soon after that that would take to much time and an unnecessary fail point for this project. During the summer I plan on adding more carving designs and putting in the electronics with a neck to finish of the entire guitar.