Prairie Custom Guitars

This build is starting as a build for myself

We will see if it ends up that way

This is one of the most unbelievable pieces of wood

I have ever seen

I have this great piece Honduras Mahogany

It will make a great one piece back

Because this piece is just a hair wide to fit through

my thickness planer,I will rough cut the body with the

band saw before I plane it 

First we draw a line around the template to give

a guide for the band saw

We have a rough body

 Now it will fit through the planer so I will take it

down close to the thickness I need

You can see here on the back there is a small knot

I give it a drink of thin CA glue to make sure it is stable

 Now that it is close to thickness I can do the shaping

Mount the template and do the first pass on the router

Remove the template and do the second pass

Nice end grain in this one piece blank

Starting to look like a tele 

Then I did pretty much the same to the top

I will use the router and sander to get it to the 

correct size after it is glued on

 Lets see just where we are sitting weight wise

Ouch,thats a tough heavy

Time to go on a weight reduction plan

 I will remove most of the wood with the drill press

Not near as messy as the router

Now we can clean it up with the router

Now lets have a look

Thats better,under 5 lbs.I can live with that

It will get a bit lighter after the rest of the routing

Time for the f-hole

I like to do it before I glue on the top just in case there

are any problems.I put on the template,remove as much as I 

can with a small bit and the drill press and then off to the router

OH NO!!!!

One of the bad things about working with burl wood is

that it is very unstable,as I found out again.

Just one second of not paying attention on which

way I was going with the router and you get things like

THIS

I was lucky in that I found the piece that broke out

It seemed to still be one piece,so we will try

to glue it back in and see how it looks

I will let that cure for a day before I touch it

It seems to be ok.I can bee the joint but not sure others

could find it without knowing it was there.We will carry on

Time to glue on the top.No pics here.Nobody wants to see 

pictures of a bunch of clamps.

The clamps get pulled and then it is a matter of trimming

the top to match the back.Mmmm,looks pretty nice

This is the neck I am going to be using with it

Time to get some routing done on this

 I did the neck pocket,control plate and bridge pickup routes

Then I rounded over the back edge

Now I will sand it all down and give it a coat of sealer/filler

Then I will route the channel for the top binding

Because of the nature of this wood,even though it is a burl

Redwood is pretty soft.It will need something to protect the top edge

I was thinking on red tort binding but I don't think it would show up.

I have also decided to use this neck

It has clay dots that look almost cream

I have cream binding here,there you go

Kinda forgot to take pics of the binding process

Decided to go with a thin black inside the cream

Now it is just a matter of getting it sealed and doing the lacquer

Oh,and deciding what I want for a neck pickup 

Should make a nice pair