Jan 12th, 2019: Guitar Body Build

He spent $500 to build a guitar body out of colored pencils, he already had the neck and hardware.
It would be a lot of work but you could make cool patterns, pictures, or words out of specific lead colors.

People make a lot of cool stuff from colored pencils. And when Burls Art saw them, he decided to take it up an octave.
“I saw a lot of people online making bowls out of colored pencils and I thought that was really cool but I wanted to make something that I can actually utilize and enjoy more so than a bowl when it’s finished,” Burls Art told Bored Panda. “Since I play guitar, I thought this would be a cool project that would accomplish that goal. I decided on making a (Fender) Stratocaster styled electric guitar… This was the first guitar I’ve ever built”

“That’s 1200 colored pencils. Bought the cheapest ones I could find on Amazon. They ended up being nearly identical to Crayola.”
“Cheap harbor freight mini miter saw cutting the pencils into 2″ pieces”
“Cutting the pencils was by far the most tedious portion of the build”

I think he cut them in thirds, and he took the pictures with Crayolas but definitely used knockoffs.

“In goes the epoxy resin”
“Tracing the template onto the slab”
“The epoxy resin / pencils combination was far too dense for me to cut with a jig saw alone, even using a diamond blade. Because of this, I had to drill out the pencil cores to make life a little bit easier on the jig saw”

“The entire block was sanded with 80 grit on the belt sander. Then the left side was progressively sanded up to 360 grit. So the higher grit I went, the more color smear would occur. Smearing was minimal until I went above about 220 grit. This left me with 2 choices.. either have a smooth surface and a grayish/smeared color tone… or… have good clean wood and led colors but at the cost of only being able to sand to 220. The choice was pretty obvious to me being that the colored pencils were the star of the build… I wanted to showcase their colors as much as possible”

Burls Art couldn’t put an accurate number on the time it took him to complete his project. “I worked on it for 4-5 weeks for a few hours a day, like 2-4 hours probably. It took a long time, but for the most part, it was enjoyable. I think I could make one faster now though since I know the processes and things that I would do differently. I’d say I spent in the neighborhood of $500 on it, but some of that includes router bits and other pieces of equipment that I didn’t already have. I already had the guitar neck and hardware though so that saved some money.”

I wonder how heavy that is? You know actually what is epoxied together is the paint on the pencils so I hope it stays on the wood. :D

This is the video of the build.

link

xoxoxoBruce;1022962 wrote:

snip--
I wonder how heavy that is? You know actually what is epoxied together is the paint on the pencils so I hope it stays on the wood. :D
--snip

Could have used a very light sheet of fiberglass, maybe just on the back and/or sides for some strength.

If he did that you wouldn't see the pencils which was the point. :eyebrow:

Still could see the front. The back's gonna have buckle rash, and who cares about the sides...

I'd think that much epoxy would be plenty strong.

Depends on where he wears his buckle and the sides(edges) are the best effect. Without them the face could be a picture glued on.

xoxoxoBruce;1023089 wrote:

If he did that you wouldn't see the pencils which was the point. :eyebrow:

clear fiberglass and clear epoxy makes a clear finish. you can see examples of that all over the place, boatbuilders use this technique all the time. It can be made invisible.

Clear fiberglass?

Light fiberglass is invisible when wetted down with resin, epoxy or polyester.

Translucent, but I've never seen transparent, but that's a moot point, he's working with a solid block and doesn't need any fiberglas.

our dude is thinking of plexiglass

In any case, though, you do want to avoid having this thing be like over 9-10 lbs. heavy, or it will be a PITA to play. And here your tonewood is basically epoxy... did we talk tonewoods in the guitar building thread?

A bit. Not as important as a solid construction with an electric, but the esoteric artisan will naturally prefer expensive sounding materials and espouse the superior quality of sound that they generate. In my opinion, light hard wood assembled precisely is the key.

Acoustics are a different story.

I saw a carbon fiber acoustic.

[youtube]cwifStOsZC8[/youtube]

Not as expensive as I was expecting. A little steep, but not too bad.

lumberjim;1023401 wrote:

A bit. Not as important as a solid construction with an electric, but the esoteric artisan will naturally prefer expensive sounding materials and espouse the superior quality of sound that they generate. In my opinion, light hard wood assembled precisely is the key.

Acoustics are a different story.

I saw a carbon fiber acoustic.

[youtube]cwifStOsZC8[/youtube]

I have really been looking for a comfortable acoustic. I like the bolt through the neck making life much easier. Things I hate about my acoustic is worries about drying. I like it.

Thanks Aradralami, that was interesting. A bonus is that the carbon fiber look is very popular in a lot of fields, probably because it's associated with light, strong, high-performance, expensive toys.

aradralami;1025885 wrote:

I have really been looking for a comfortable acoustic. I like the bolt through the neck making life much easier. Things I hate about my acoustic is worries about drying. I like it.

The one thing I hear repeatedly when I hang out at the luthiers shop is admonishions regarding keeping the guitar humidified. 40-50% humidity is what you want. I've looked a bit for guitar cases with built in humidity control, but haven't found an affordable option. There are a ton of little jars and inserts that do it, but they typically get inserted into the body between strings, which is a pain and you risk scratching or dinging the guitar each time you put it in.

A stand-up gun safe would be an alternative. You can get them with humidity controls.

Hard to pack to the gig, though.

You get a loaner backstage.

Saves having to buy another plane ticket too.

Not a bad idea of they are big enough for a row of guitars. I don't gig, and they just need to be maintained when you don't have it out by your chair.