Baby Steps

I've started my first guitar build today. It's actually only a partial build. I bought a cheapie Kramer Baretta clone a couple years ago, and although the neck felt pretty good, the body was routed so poorly that it's essentially unusable. So, I'm going to build a replacement body, modify the headstock slightly , and re-use all the hardware that came with the guitar. It isn't the be-all end-all custom build, by any means, but it's meant only to be a learning experience. Eventually, I'm going to build a Les Paul Custom, but we'll start with a replacement body for now. So on with the show!! Here's the wood that's going to be my Kramer Klone: Yup, that's right, it's a 2x12, actual species unknown. This first attempt at a body is going to be for practice, and I don't have any illusions that it'll be professional quality, but it's my go at it. So, I don't really care if the wood is generally unsuitable for a guitar build. It's all about *my* technique at this point, not the wood itself. No pics of cutting a couple chunks off the end of the board, ripping the pieces with the table saw, or gluing the resultant pieces together. We'll start with bandsawing the body out: Here's the first rough draft. As you can tell I screwed up pretty badly inside the lower horn, but since I'm not worried about making an exact replica, I'll just scoop that out a little deeper when I clean up the outline tomorrow. Stay tuned -- more baby steps to follow in the next few days!    And that's life, from my guitar-building position.