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Bits and Pieces of Hardware keith gregg's guitar building site |
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Making the guitar body and neck and gluing them together is the part that everyone thinks of when planning to build a guitar. But there are many bits and pieces that go onto the guitar after the main structure is finished.
After much thought about what parts I should buy, and which ones I should try to make, the degree of difficulty involved was the deciding factor. The idea of trying to make tuning controls or a tune-o-matic style bridge and tailpiece was just plain scary. But there were other things that I could make for myself.
So I planned to make the pickguard, the ring that normally surrounds the selector switch, the pickguard bracket, the metal plate that holds the output jack, the pickup rings, and the truss-rod cover, starting from the raw materials. |
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The jackplate was made very simply by drilling a brass strip (couple of dollars from model-building shops), then cutting out the rectangle.
The cuts were smoothed with 400 grit emery cloth, then the whole thing polished with 1000 grit, then 1200 grit, and finally with iron oxide, to give a smooth golden effect. This would be protected later with a coating material designed specifically to keep brass looking bright and shiny. |
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The pickguard bracket was also cut from a brass strip, and a string of holes drilled where the normal slot would be. The holes were joined into a slot by cutting with a coping saw, then filed to smooth off the slot. The metal was smoothed and polished the same as the jackplate, but still needs to be bent at an angle of 90 degrees, between the screw-hole and the slot. he metal was smoothed and polished the same as the jackplate |
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The bracket was bent at an angle of 90 degrees, by putting it into the vice with some padding on the jaws, and applying slow, careful pressure. |
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Pickguards are usually made of plastic, and it's easy enough to get the material, but I wanted to try something a little more individual. So I decided to make the pickguard, the truss-rod cover, and the ring surrounding the control switch, out of wood. With the guitar top stained a red, jarrah colour, unstained tasmanian oak would make a contrasting pickguard, with interesting grain patterns. But even a hardwood, cut that thin, would be quite delicate. So I decided to make my own Tasmanian oak plywood, by laminating two thin pieces. |
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The two pieces were cut from each side of a left-over piece of Tasmanian oak (from the guitar top) to make the thinnest pieces I could. My circular saw has a maximum cut depth of about 6 cm (2 1/4") so I had to cut one side, then turn the wood over and cut the other side, to get pieces about 12 cm wide and 20 cm long (about 5" x 8"). WARNING: Cutting thin pieces of wood on a saw-bench, can throw pieces of wood through the blade-space, OR INTO YOUR FACE. Full protection is essential for hands, face, neck, etc. One of the pieces was then cut in half and the two were glued together with the grain at right angles. (now waiting for the glue to set) |
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The rectangular pickup rings are the mechanism for setting the height of the pickups, relative to the strings. Again they are generally made of plastic. The two rings are often of different heights, because the neck pickup is set lower than the bridge pickup. I decided to make the two rings from the one piece of jarrah, by drilling and cutting the holes, then sawing the wood down the middle. This would give matching grain, and save me from measuring and drilling the holes twice. The rough-cut rings are shown below, alongside a regular plastic one.
continued on the next page. |
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Back to page 8 INDEX |
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