I love it when a plan comes together

Well, here we are, it's starting to come together.

I'm a long long way from finished, but it was pleasing to fit the neck to the tin for the first time.

The tin was tougher to cut than I thought it would be. I was thinking that a stanley knife would work, but apparently tin is a metal and thusly pervious to all but tin snips and semtex. So, putting aside the semtex for another day, I attacked the pesky tin with tin snips.

To call the edges jaggedy arse would be an understatement.

Check out the handiwork.

I bent in the flaps I cut and they'll be screwed to the neck to hold the tin in place. I'll file down the nasty edge and everything will be hunky dory.

A close shave

I reckon there's more wood on the floor than on the neck after I went at it with the spokeshave. It's starting to look like a guitar, and I'm a smidgeon of a teeny-weeny bit proud of my endeavours, considering I'm an utter arse at woodwork.

I was amazed how easy it was to shape the curvature of the neck with the spokeshave...almost too easy. I got carried away with my newly learnt skill and managed to shave the once straight edges curvy.

I finally cut the neck to the right length, glued and clamped it to a second piece. This was done to add strength and also to allow me to make a groove in the original neck piece where the electric pickup will need space.

If you look closely at the photo, in the background,  you can see a sketch Mike Kazybrid kindly drew for me when I met him at a Leeds comic mart. It's a sketch of Humph the Cat, a character from a comic strip he drew for the UK Transformers comic in the 80's, a strip I have fond memories of. Mike's other past work includes, The Bash Street Kids, Bananaman, Dangermouse and Masters of the Universe among many others. He is currently working on Wallace and Grommit for The Sun.

Here's a link to his blog:
http://twomenandaghost.blogspot.com/

Can you tell what it is yet?

Today was good and bad. It started with me making a lovely saw cut through the face of the head to make it thin enough to locate the machine heads. Of course, when everything's going well, misfortune can't be far away.

Head, cut, sanded and looking very good. Then! A foolish use of the spokeshave and I split the wood.

Arse!

I ended up having to shape the top of the head to fix my mistake. It's a little lopsided, but I'm going to do some more work on it.

I was really pleased to see the machine heads fitted okay. At least now I have the holes drilled, I can go back to work a bit more on the head.

I showed my day's handiwork to my girlfriend, and she exclaimed "Aren't you clever!". It reminded me of the way a parent might praise a toddler for using their potty on their own for the first time.

There will be blood

Blood! My blood!

Who knew a bastard file could be so sharp? I suppose the name gives it away.

...And yes, that is a fine collection of hardcover comic collections in the background.

You can when you oil can

Township Guitars in Cape Town, South Africa make lovely oilcan guitars.
Check out the website:
http://www.townshipguitars.com/main.htm

It's great to hear those African sounds!

They called him Sand

I got myself a sander today, as there will be much sanding ahead. This is a really cheepo model, but it had good reviews and you save money by using any sandpaper. (I'm writing this incase my beloved reads this.)

I must say, I feel far more manly as a result of my sander purchase. Someone should do a study into the correlation between buying power tools and testosterone levels.

Reading the sander's instructions, they advise the wearing of safety eyewear. Brilliant! It gives me an excuse to break out my welding goggles.

Head case

Okay, so today I finally got off my arse and entered the wonderful world of woodwork. At school I showed absolutely no aptitude during Mr (Jimmy "check your jobs") Wild's woodwork classes, and it seems the intervening 20 years have changed nothing.

My task for the day was to cut the neck to make an angled head. This is done by sawing diagonally through the wood and gluing the reversed piece making a scarf joint.

Like the fool I am,I thought this part was going to be a doddle. I couldn't have been more wrong.

A combination of the wrong type of saw, the lack of some sort of sawing jig and my woeful skills, led to an awful cut.
Huzzar! My first problem.

Putting the cut piece on top of the larger piece, the angles should match, creating one smooth slope. As you can see from the photo, I bolloxed it right up.

After some frenzied chiseling, rasping, filing and sanding, I managed to get the angles smoother. A little more work and I'll be ready to glue the pieces together.

Today I learnt that this project is not going to be as easy as I thought.

First blood!

Stiff neck?

Well, here's the piece of wood I picked out for the instrument's neck.

(I hope it's strong enough!)

I've decided at this point that I'm going to have the neck about as wide as a classical guitar neck. I'm used to playing on a wider neck and like the space it gives my chubby fingers to move. This decision is bound to cause me problems, but we live to learn.

I picked this piece of North American Tulipwood up at John Boddy Timber in Borough Bridge. I'd had a lovely day out with Chin, Emma and my goddaughter Martha at the RHS garden at Harlow Carr, and happened to mention I was looking to make a biscuit tin banjitar. The next thing I know, we're strapping toddlers into car seats and zooming north on the A1 on the hunt of wood.

Between shepherding two toddlers around an assault course of splintery doom, and Chin waving lumps of wood under my nose saying "smell that", I picked out a nice piece of wood.

http://www.john-boddy-timber.ltd.uk/

http://www.rhs.org.uk/harlowcarr

My mate Marmite

I've found the perfect tin to add that extra retro feel. How proud I'll be, picking away on my homemade banjitar whilst proclaiming my love of the black salty gold. I wonder if there's a sponsorship deal in the offing?

http://www.marmite.com/

What's a banjitar?

I can't remember when or why I decided to make a biscuit tin banjo guitar. Considering I have no experience of banjo or guitar construction, or any substantial woodworking prowess, I must have been out of my mind!

Being a bit of an amateur guitar picker, and fan of old time sting band music, I've always fancied a bit of banjo action. Looking for a project over my break from college, I decided to make myself a rough and ready instrument!

It started out as a simple little project, and has snowballed into something of a behemoth. I'm going to attempt to blog my progress through the ups, downs and (even further) downs.