Building a Guitar Body out of Blue Gum Eucalyptus

all right we got another killer piece of wood from kimble hardwoods blue gum blue eucalyptus got a couple different names this is grown out of hawaii they say it's an invasive species but mr kimball says it is some of the most beautiful wood there is and from what he posted on instagram i was impressed he said that these pieces tend to have some cracks sometimes so we're gonna have to [Music] glue this up a little bit and then re-saw so yeah you can see there is some end checking in this but i could kind of sand and fill and i don't think i'll have a problem i thought it would be like really loose checking or i'd have to glue this before i even saw it but this is more just sort of surface cracks and i don't think it's that bad ah this stuff is being used for boats they say it's very similar to teak it takes a good oil finish let's get some water and see what it looks like and this stuff beautiful look at that it's like a i don't know like a ribbon stair stub so let's take this upstairs and re-saw it i think we can get two sets of top quarter inch i got a real thin blade on my laguna saw and this looks like i'll be able to cut that out yeah i mean i've got enough in here for a pretty decent top all right let's take it upstairs and see what we can do right so to the drum sander to flatten this out make sure that if there's any wave in it we flatten it out on both sides important to squaring up the block running 120 and 80 grit sandpaper on this next we'll walk this over to my craftsman joiner six inch we'll make a pass or two come back and lay this out so we know how the lumber is oriented and then we'll double check the thickness divide by four minus the curve of the blade and then we'll saw so this is a laguna 16 hd top of the line bandsaw if you're doing any resawing of scale you need a good saw and this does it so we'll feed this through get a push block to push through and there's a little bit checking on the outside but once i open it up it looks really really nice a little bit of type on wood glue a custom clamp to keep the boards flat and pressed together after i resawed it i sanded so that each board was flat and then this gets a perfect join and i've got a whole bunch of clamps to get it to look perfect here i'm looking for cracks and some insta content everyone loves seeing this wood and then to the band saw where we cut this up here i still don't have the vacuum cleaner attachment so this is before that other video i just did trim this up got my toddler drawn template take this over to the wine press clamp clamp it up with some hide glue and then we're going to trim the birch back so i've got some flame birch that's pretty work through the corners looking good so then here's the shaper and the video i did with the shaper got a lot of comments and i wanted to clarify when i'm doing this i cut as much of the waste away from the top as i can that way i'm really shaping a minimal amount and it really reduces the grab of the bit on the material and also as i'm coming in off the side there's no end grain it's just straight chipping out and then if i was using handles here that's more of a side to side strength than a downward strength and so i really want to put the downward pressure and keep the piece uh the body on the table and that's why i have my hands flat and if it grabs my hands just go down so i i've done this before i've done it a couple of times this is what i feel really comfortable doing the whiskey barrel template is even better i'd say this is probably not as ideal so i'll show that moving forward with that template we then come back with the rigid oscillating sanders you see i got two of them lined up with that bit i only really need to sand with 220 it's really clean and we're gonna come back with a round over a bit we're gonna do a real light round over this is my new workstation that is for sanding and routing i've got the huge dust collector running picking up some of these chips really cleans up the garage nicely and then here is the awesome flap sander really helps just improve my processes by a bazillion so we'll sand the edges with 220 actually no this is 180 and we'll clean up at 180 we'll come back and hand sand it with 220 and 320 relatively quickly and we're good to go really like having this tool [Music] then we come back with 220 and 320 and we sand at the top and the sides ever so slightly you can see i've got a new dust collector running from the menards sander i'm running mastercraft sander and really reduces the dust my eyes been bothering me a little bit from the dust and this really pulls the dust down significantly so the downdraft table and the vacuumed sander is perfect we put my standard template on we're going to do a humbucker in the neck and a standard tele bridge pickup going to top route for the neck and pickups and then we're gonna flip this over and route backside for the control cavity i'm gonna do my control wiring hole and then i use a center finding punch for the output jack and we'll get a pilot hole drilled here and then we'll come back with this step bit 7 8 step it and it significantly reduces uh the amount of work that's going on here look at that boom right through real quick this is the rear routing for the control cavity [Music] and then we're going to use some velvet oil did a video on velvet oil this is actually going to be three coats first coat goes on a real thick let it sit for a half hour second coat i get a 600 grit piece of sandpaper and get that slurry to sort of fill in any pores and then the third coat just cleans it up i've done bodies where i just used one coat there's the 600 grit sandpaper for the second coat let this dry for a week each time and the back and the top look outstanding so we'll go back live in video here here is the blue gum eucalyptus guitar body it's on a piece of hollowed out birch and i put three coats of that velvet oil on and man does this guitar body feel smooth this last coat of velvet oil i sanded with 600 grit and it feels like velvet it's got just an awesome all-natural finish the birch is flame birch and there was one little pocket right there that ran through and that's how we get that little line there at first i thought that was a stain you can see the wood goes from light to dark and that was a wannabe tree branch or something along those lines nice figure a little bit of grain run out but cool looking guitar body nice and light did my standard configuration which is tele bridge and humbucker neck that way you get a little bit of everything but just my process to build a guitar body so thanks for watching guys we will see you in the next video

Channel: BIGDGUITARS

Views: 3,968

Keywords: Derek Lenard, luthier, inside the luthier's shop, BigdGuitars, stewmac, Dan Erlewine, crimson Guitars, DIY Guitar, Guitar builder, Guitar building, Building guitars, blue Gum, blue gum eucalyptus, eucalyptus guitar, blue wood, figured guitar wood, luthier figured wood, high grade guitar lumber, kimball hardwoods, building a guitar, luthier guitar build, luthier guitar making, guitar building asmr

Id: vW2rrNDml1Y

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021