Flickr Set
CAM00343 by Patrick A Johnson
Basically, I'm doing a set neck, german carved top and back, oak telecaster. The neck is going to be maple (or a maple/oak laminate, not sure yet) with a rosewood fretboard.
I'm a senior in high school, and part of graduation requirements calls for me to complete Graduation Project, which is a collection of various components that document a student learning a new skill with a mentor. The topic I chose is lutherie, so this is my product. Normally I would sound a lot more excited about this, but the project as a whole is very tedious and frustrating due to deadlines. I'm just complaining about something that I will probably be thankful for later (the initiative to actually build a guitar).
Anyway, the plan started as a quartersawn oak bodied telecaster. I went to the local lumber supply and bought a rough-sawn piece of the oak, 8/4 thick, 12' long and 6" wide. The body is a three piece with a rift-matched top. I think the oak looks pretty cool, it's definitely something that you don't see on guitars very often. Perhaps because it looks like flooring, but flamed maple gets old sometimes. With a lot of borrowing of tools, I planed, jointed, and bandsawed the oak into the body blank. I really like the german carve look, so I think I'll do the same to the back, paint the inside of the carves black and do the side, top, and back natural. A bolt-on neck is definitely still an option, but the piece of maple I bought from my mentor is large enough to do a tenon that extends 2.5" past the end of the neck into the body. If I can draw it up in CAD, I'm looking forward to doing it as a set neck. Really the only reason I'm doing a set neck on this is to see if I can lol. Thus far, I haven't worked with my mentor yet, and he seems to have dropped communications, but that is a whole other set of issues.
In the flickr gallery there are a few pictures of the oak with some danish oil on it, which is what I plan to use for the natural finish. This is turning out to be a hell of a learning experience!
