I haven’t had much time to work on this thing in the last few weeks, but I have made some progress… I found a really nice piece of kiln-dried maple for the neck and I cut out the pickguard and armrest out of .125’’ thick garolite. Since I don’t gig that often anymore, I wasn’t going to put my name on this guitar, but the giant pickguard was just begging for some kind of advertisement. Here are a few pics…
This was a project that I did a few years back, nine to be exact, that took more time than money. I saw a picture of Walt Rose’s ’27 T roadster in the book “The American Hot Rod” when it came out. I knew that I wanted something similar for my roadster pickup. The foundry patterns were made using 1’’ thick poplar, polyester body filler, and 3/8’’ aluminum plate.
I made the posts longer than needed and cut them down a ½’’ to ¼’’ at a time until I was happy with how it looked. Here’s some photos of the process.
For the last few years I’ve been pretty good about not taking on any new personal projects as I whittle away at the list I currently have. I’ve been making some progress, but last month while in San Diego a friend said I could have this old Kay if I wanted to do something with it. I took a quick look and said “sure, I’ll take it!” Its a late 50′s Kay model K-161 with a screwed up neck and no hardware. I’ve always wanted to build a neck from scratch but never really had a good reason to do so. Now I do! I want it to look like a guitar Paul Bigsby would have modified.
Last Sunday it didn’t take much to get the finger board off, and the dovetail joint apart. I also made a couple of pick guard patterns. This proved to be a little tricker, trying to hide the existing holes and still look Bigsbyish. I plan on using a pair of PA1946′s for pickups, the vibrato I had in my parts stash. I’ll post as I make progress so check back from time to time. Here’s some mock up photos. I’m leaning towards mock up #3.
