[JonnyBoy]

You can research "Bleeding" oils from wood, Purple Heart can also be poisonous to some people, met a guy that had to be hospitalized from breathing in the dust. Wear dust masks. When laminating wood, I use a liberal amount of titeBond wood glue, and clamp it evenly on to a flat clean surface. Are you going to start with rough 6/4 stock and cut your own laminates? There are some exotic lumber yards that will mill what you want for a nominal charge. I usually have them run a true lazer straight edge on one side of every piece I buy so I can cut and machine the materials properly at my workshop with precision.

[jmfranc]

Which exotic wood places would you recommend that will cut this wood as you mention?

[Mandoborg]

People stop by the shop all the time and say they want to build a guitar. It's not hard, but it sure isn't easy either, and the Hippie sandwich is a very difficult guitar to do correctly. My humble advice would be to start with educating yourself on tools........ learn to sharpen a chisel and scraper... yes you will use hand tools.....lots of them......... learn about wood and how it reacts........ then how differant woods will react together............ theres more to lutherie than just gluing boards together....... When you get your basics down, build a single cutaway Les paul Jr. or something like that....... don't jump in the deep end......... trust me , it sucks to get 1/2 way through a project and find you've made a major mistake......... also, a good part of lutherie is knowing how to fix your mistakes....... and that comes with time and experiance........ i've been at this since 1982, and the Alembic style build takes ALL your focus.......think, re-think, wait a day, then think one more time before making that cut............ you can do it........ educate yourself with the basics...... and start by running around the block before you try the Boston marathon only to cramp up 5 miles into it........

[williamsaut]

IMHO there's no such thing as 'amateur Hippie Sandwich building'. Rukind's 'grateful jams' club on Yahoo years ago had a discussion and links from someone at alembic ( Mica? ) describing the 'mini' tribute prototype. There was a series of pictures of it's construction that pretty much spelled it all out:

1. Design
Body Shape pattern, Patterns for Pickup and control cavity routing as well as a jig to route the Neck pocket including a 2% neck angle. Overall desired thickness of the guitar body and wood selection. The scale length of the instrument and number of frets on the neck ( overall length of the neck from nut to butt must be known now. The width and taper of the neck at the highest fret area and thickness must be known now.

2. Prepare and Glue up the body.
Prepare all wood laminates to the proper thicknesses with a wood planer and 'timesaver' which is a wide belt sander. Book matching top and back wood need larger than a 14" bandsaw unless you get a riser for it. The pieces of wood represent HALVES of the guitar body which are all built up in ONE STACK and clamped. The two glued up blocks of wood would be each half of the body but stacked and clamped all at once.

3. Joint one long edge of each half of the body. This must be perfectly square as it is the center line of the instrument.

4. Cut out the rough body shape on a vertical band saw and use the remnants as clamping cauls to glue the body halves together. Alignment is critical so that the thin laminates of veneer line up perfectly at the glue line.

5. Finish the Body shape using a drum sander mounted in a drill press and route the edges with a large 'round-over' bit with a ball bearing on the bottom to follow the body. Must be done in multiple passes and care taken not to run the router off the end of the work. Stop short and 'back cut' the ends of the horns so they'll be no 'tear out' . The radius will also be deeper than the top of the instrument top and back leaving a step to allow for the carving of the archtop and back.

6. Use all those patterns from step 1 to route the neck pocket, pickup and control cavity along with the bridge and tail pc holes and control knob holes. Wiring channels were routed before gluing the body halves together

7. Now start carving. Bronze Violin makers convex palm planes available at Stew Mac. Don't need the whole set. Just one big one and one Small one. Get extra blades to 'tooth' the blades to use for rough planing. Preparing the control cavity cover out of a similar piece of wood as the back is a good idea now so you can carve it in place along with the back of the guitar. When you start getting close to the carve you want, start using scrapers, then sand paper.

The neck, inlays and wiring/setup are treated as separate projects and preparing it for many coats of clear Nitrocellulose lacquer; wet-sanding between each coat take's a lot of time because it takes days between each coat before it's hard enough to wet-sand. It's a big project and I suppose it could be done entirely by hand as I've heard Doug Erwin built his but the degree of patience required to do it that way would be real artisan-ship.

My opinion,
Either:

Start with a Warmoth body. Building a neck by hand is actually going to be cheaper and more instructive and satisfying if you get one that plays. There's plenty of info out there on Lutherie ( String instrument making ).

Don't go the 'Full Hippie'. Just try carving a big-Leaf Maple body blank after gluing a book-matched top on it.

My first 3 projects were junk wall hangings and putting a lot of money and time into them really would have been a bummer.

[Rusty the Scoob]

IMHO there's no such thing as 'amateur Hippie Sandwich building'.

I can't agree with that based on personal experience, although the rest of your post is good advice.

I've played Attempt #1 at every Fennario gig since Nov 2008, 50-60 gigs in all. I know not much about fine woodworking and my dad knows absolutely nothing about basses and we live 1600 miles apart, but we got it done. And I retired a Sadowsky in favor of it, it's not like I have low standards.





Granted it was freaking scary wondering if it would come out playable... but a couple of good playable prototype bodies put my mind at ease, and I knew I had a decent neck since it's a Warmoth.

A chronological pictorial history of the process is here, from my initial Photoshopped idea to pics of the bass as it is now. It's been a good roadwarrior for me and I am NOT gentle with it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/danfcrea/s ... 940563012/

[Mandoborg]

Hey Rusty, that's a really cool bass ! A neck through that's not really a neck through !! Great pictures........a father / son thang............. gotta love that....... my 5 year old hangs with me in the shop all the time !

Good job

[JonnyBoy]

Which exotic wood places would you recommend that will cut this wood as you mention?

You will have to find one within your city, they're not on the internet.... Mine is Pickens Lumber in Clinton, Ms. he has almost every wood you can think of in stock (for a small project like a guitar), and two days out on quantity because of a place in Shreveport, LA called Hogans Hardwoods that is a huge importer/supplier for the southeast, or I could drive an Hour and 1/2 to Hogans but gas is murder these days...You're in Atlanta, there has to be a few hundred places there.... A professional, midsized to large millwork facility will carry or order most woods we talk about here.... plus they can do some of the board straightening before you leave.

[paulinnc]

Making the hippie sandwich is the easy part. I have had the same idea as you and have start my own "Wolf" guitar. I found youtube tto be very helpful when trying to get a visual reference of how to do something. The best advice I could give you would be to get some cheap wood such as Poplar to practice on, once you get the feel for it and get your skills up move on to the more expensive wood. I would be happy to pass on any info I have learned, just send me a pm.

[williamsaut]

I've played Attempt #1 at every Fennario gig since Nov 2008, 50-60 gigs in all. I know not much about fine woodworking and my dad knows absolutely nothing about basses and we live 1600 miles apart, but we got it done. And I retired a Sadowsky in favor of it, it's not like I have low standards.

WOW Dude! That was #1?! Nice job. I stand corrected! Between you and your dad, you had the skills and equipment to do it but 'amateur' wouldn't really describe the pics I'm looking at. Better watch out or you'll have everyone here lining up for there tiger copy!!

Seriously though, When you talk about how much you love you custom creation and how 'bullet proof' it is, I can't agree with you more, I've been beating on my home built tiger for 10+ years and only now am I starting to get the itch to build another. That guitar seems 'made for me' and of course, it was!

I saw that Tiger bass in another thread and didn't realize you made it yourself.

Cool.

[softmachine72]

If you want to build neck through don't build a tiger, Go wolf. Even the builder of the real Tiger realized half way through the build that it wold not look right with the design.