TrueAxe Custom Guitars

Bubinga Orchestra Model – Completed Guitar

trueaxe — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:10:37 +0000

Here is another one of our fantastic completions.

Again I will let the pictures do the talking! Please feel free to leave comments on what you think of the guitars.

Much appreciated and enjoy.

East Indian Rosewood Dreadnought – Completed

trueaxe — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:05:12 +0000

There is so much to be said about finally being finished the guitars that we have spent so long labouring over. Instead I will just show you the guitars and you can make a decision for yourself.

I would love your comments and feedback. Enjoy the pictures!

Getting closer! – Attaching necks

trueaxe — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 05:04:41 +0000

Attaching necks to bodies is a complicated process one better fully described when I am not up at 1 am watching NetFlix. But for now here are some pictures of necks that we have started to fit to the bodies of some of our guitars today:

Status Update of the 13 Guitars

trueaxe — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 04:42:17 +0000

So having 13 guitars being worked on at one time it is a little hard to keep track of what stage each guitar is at. I decided that it would be a good idea to complete to date list of where each guitar is at so that not only you can see how we are going but I can see what needs to be done still.

First I will describe each guitar and then I will list what needs to be accomplished.

“Bear Bottom”:

Description:

Constructed out of pear wood back and sides and a Sitka Spruce top, “Bear Bottom” is a Grand Studio sized guitar. Detailing is done in Paua with black, blue, white and green veneers. Detailing includes a 3 ring rosette and a backstripe. The Neck is mahogany with an ebony and veneer stripe the valute has been sanded but the peghead needs to be glued on.

Completion:

Body is assembled, has binding channels routed, needs purfling channels.

“Hidden Treasure & Chocolate Lava”:

Description:

These matching zircote ‘OO’ guitars have Sitka Spruce tops, ebony detailing and pearl inlays in the rosette. The necks currently do not have any aesthetic details and are made of mahogany.

Completion:

These guitars both need stripes put into the necks and currently do not have any work done on their bindings or channels.

Tiger Paw:

Description:

This exotically patterned maple Dreadnought guitar is detailed with cocobolo sectional rosette with pearl and red purflings. The bindings are also cocobolo with red and black purflings. The neck is also maple with the same centre stripe as the bindings.

Completion:

The body on this guitar is ready for Z-poxy after we route out the channel in the top for the truss rod. The neck does not have a fret board but is ready to have the truss channel routed out.

Pictures:

Volcano:

Description:

This gorgeously vibrant orange Padouk OM guitar is fashioned with Cocobolo bindings with red and black purflings. The rosette is made of rings of Ebony, Macasar Ebony and red and black veneer. The top is made of bearclaw sitka spruce. The neck is also Padouk with our custom head stock carved out and pearl inlayed logo. The peghead is Ebony on both the back and front with red and black veneers. The fret board is also Macasar ebony binded with the same wood.

Completion:

The body is ready for Z-Poxy once the channel for the truss rod is cut in the top. The neck has been carved close to its final shape and is ready for another session to cut down some of its last bit of extra wood and be sanded smooth to finish.

Pictures:

Fire and Ice:

Description:

This gorgeous Padouk OM guitar is made to be a sister guitar to volcano with the same binding, purfling and neck details as Volcano they match is almost all regards except for the rosette which comprises of blue and red veneer with Awabi shell inlay.

Completion:

The body is at the same stage as volcano and the neck is ready to be carved with its fretboard attached.

Pictures:

Mr. Wiggles:

Description:

This OO Sapele guitar is stunning. With ebony bindings to contrast the amazing figure in the wood this guitar is filled with layers of veneer and a can’t ignore backstripe with abalone shell and thick ebony. Its neck is mahogany with matching details.

Completion:

We still need to attach a fretboard and peghead and sand a valute in the neck for mr wiggles and the body needs one fine sand before its ready for Z-Poxy.

Pictures:

Lone Wolf:

Description:

A one of a kind Dreadnought made out of Exotic Black Limba wood. This dread has amazing figure with a truly natural looking wolf pattern in its back. With black and green detailing in the rosette bindings to complement the wood this guitar truly is one of a kind.

Completion:

Lone Wolf’s body is finished and ready to be Z-Poxy’d. The neck is ready to be fitted to the body with the fretboard attached and carved to a general shape.

Pictures:

Pond Fairy:

Description:

This is a gorgeous quilted maple Grand Stuido guitar sporting tulip wood bindings and blue and red purflings. The neck is also made out of maple with the same detailing. The rosette is tulipwood, awabi shell and red and blue veneer. The maple neck includes the same detailing with an ebony fretboard and a Paua engraving of the logo in the headstock.

Completion:

The body needs to be sanded to get the glue marks from the binding process out of it. The neck is carved out and is being fitted to the body.

Pictures: (Here’s my Dad holding Pond Fairy up)

First Light:

Description:

The finest french walnut is the only way to describe to wood used in this OM guitar. Amazingly smooth texture with very prominent sap wood makes it look as if the day of day is breaking out through this guitar. Complemented with sapele bindings and black and white purflings this guitar certainly is stunning. Then we see the rosette; a centre walnut ring surrounded by Mother of Pearl and Ebony rings takes the cake for this one of a kind guitar. The neck is also made of walnut with an ebony stripe in the middle. The headstock inlay is also done in Mother of Pearl. in ebony peg head.

Completion:

The guitar body is ready for Z-Poxy and the neck has been carved out to its rough shape getting ready to be taken down to with finer tools to the final shape.

Pictures:

Day and Night:

Description:

An East Indian Rosewood Dreadnought guitar. Ebony and paua rosette with a full binding on the front and back of paua inlay and ebony bindings. This guitar is stunning with all the shell inlay and features a rosewood neck.

Completion:

The guitar body is ready for Z-Poxy and the necks fretboard is on however will need to be removed and reglued because of movement in the gluing process. After this is done it is ready for carving.

Pictures:

The first 2 guitars that we started a year and a half ago are both very close to completion. So close to completion in fact that I am going to save the description and pictures for a future article. I hope you enjoyed the post about the guitars. The two guitars are “First Love” a Bubinga OM and “Genesis” a East Indian Rosewood Dreadnought.

Putting on the finish – Laquering

trueaxe — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:55:05 +0000

Once the guitar is ready to be assembled together you must start “finishing”. This process turned out to be a much longer process than I initially thought it would be… Painfully so actually.

It all starts with a Z-Poxy coat to fill the pores of the wood. This is a 2 part mixture that you spread over the guitar’s back and sides NOT the top! This will help fill the deep pores of the wood. Laquer has a tendency to sink over time into the pores of the wood so filling them early with as many one or two coats of this Z-Poxy will ensure that you job later on is easier.

Some people use brush on finishes or water based finishes. I am just getting down and dirty with some good ol’ laquer, air compresser, and spray gun. If you are going to be laquering as well make sure you also have laquer thinner to clean out your spray gun after. Here are photos of all the equipment I am using for this process:

The first major lesson of laquering that I learned what to not spray while stuff is falling from the sky! I am not talking cats and dogs or Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. I am talking snowflakes! Here in the crazy Canadian winters snow flakes tend to fall often in the middle of the months of January. While I was spraying one day snow started to pour out of the sky and land onto my guitars leaving little imprints of snowflakes all over the guitar body. Now while this didn’t end up ruining the finish it just made sanding the laquer a lot more difficult and more time consuming than I wanted it to be.

Here are some pictures of a freshly laquered guitar! You can see my reflection in the finish:

Some things I noticed about the effects of laquer on the wood so far:

- The wood tightens up dampening the sound (expected and accounted for)

- The colour of the wood gets a LOT darker

Sanding laquer is an important stage. You will notice as you laquer your guitar that there will still be pores that will cause the laquer to sink. These will become obvious right away. After doing about 14 coats of laquer I left my guitar to sit for 2 weeks to let the finish sink as much as it can. I am now just at the end of the 2 weeks period and will have to start sanding the finish down so that it is perfectly flat. None of the pores should be showing at the end of the sanding process otherwise they will show on the finished product and this is NOT acceptable.

Bridge Pins – New Delivery

trueaxe — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:01:31 +0000

I don’t have much time to write a full on post so I figured I would just show you what we got from Mr. Fed Ex today.

Awesomely cool bridge pins! Bone with paua dots, black bone with Parisian eyes, rosewood with mother of pearl inlays.

Thirteen sets for our 13 guitars:

New Gear!

trueaxe — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:54:16 +0000

We got an exciting delivery today from Canada Post here at the shop. My mother was driving down the street and knew that we were waiting for this and chased the delivery man all the way back to the house so he didn’t leave a notice and “not” deliver the package because no one was home.

The delivery includes: business cards, fridge magnets, T-shirts and embroidered polo’s.

Check them out:

Necks – Continued

trueaxe — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:26:00 +0000

So much has happened in the TrueAxe Guitar Workshop in the basement of 104 Melrose Ave in Toronto the past 3 months. Not only are 80% of our guitar bodies finished but we also have made major progress on the necks for all of the guitars.

The process is fairly involved as there are many considerations to pay attention to when you are assembling a neck for a guitar. Some examples are, scale length, fret board placement, where the neck attaches to the body, aesthetic additions, headstock, nut placement and many others that I am sure I am missing.

The first decision we had to make was what woods did we want to go along with each guitar in the neck. Now our mentor Doug Ilton said that we should just make all our necks out of mahogany. I said “NO WAY DOUGIE!”. It is my belief that the guitar is one entity that matches as a whole. Now we do have a few mahogany necks as they fit the aesthetic theme of a few of the guitars however if we had a rosewood guitar the neck would also be made out of rosewood. If we had a maple guitar it only seemed fitting tonally and as an aesthetic package that the neck would also be maple. We also ensured that all of the centre stripes of wood and veneer would match the bindings and purflings of the bodies that they are to go with.

About 3 weeks ago all I did was carve and inlay out “TA” Logo’s into all of our guitar head stocks and they are looking awesome! I will let you judge for yourself here:

We have two necks fully finished and one is officially glued onto the body which is very exciting. We even put our first set of tuners on to that very same guitar and they are looking sweet! Check them out here:

Guitar Bodies Gallery

trueaxe — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 03:49:43 +0000

So we have been working hard on getting all 13 of the bodies done for the guitars that we are going to finish in the next 4 months.

Here are all of the bodies that have their bindings and tail wedges and are waiting for necks!

Plenty more where that came from! I will post the rest when I have the bindings done! Some of them just need to be scraped down and I will take some pictures of them!

Catch you on the next post!

Oh and you can now follow me on Twitter and Facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TrueAxe-Guitars/172518809443917

Necks – The starting

trueaxe — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:38:00 +0000

The neck is by far the most daunting task so far that I have had to undertake. The part I was worried about the most was the fretboard. If any fret is off by the smallest amount the guitar will be totally out of intonation. That is BAD! So a few beads of sweat were coming down my brow when it finally came time to start on these projects. We have start work on a few different necks for many of the projects. It is a very exciting stage as when we finally start getting these necks finished we can lacquer and pop on a bridge and some strings and we are golden! I plan on having 2-4 guitars finished by the new year. Exciting stuff.

So the first few stages involved in completing a neck are relatively simple. You start by putting the angle on the wood for the headstock by cutting the wood at the angle you want and basically just gluing it around the other side. I know that is a bad description but have a look at the pictures and you will see. Also involved at the same time is stacking wood blocks up at the other end to make the butt of the guitar neck. Clamp is up into a giant clamp monstrosity with glue seeping out of all the pieces and you are good to go!

Here is Volcano’s neck getting glued at this stage:

The next stage is to cut the neck length ways down the centre and insert whatever decorative pieces of wood you like into the middle. For my first guitar “Genesis” I chose an ebony stripe down the centre surrounded by blue and black veneer to stick to the theme.

I will have a seperate post for the fret board construction so I won’t get into much detail here but you have to make that and glue it on the neck and then start carving! This is a tough process that is very much an art rather than a science that involves easy cuts and jigs. You have to have patience, skill, and lots of love for your guitar to carve out the neck.

Using basically any means necessary here is the progress i have so far on my neck for Genesis:

Once you get it all carved out exactly how you want it and you have shaped your volute perfectly along with the butt of the neck then you are ready to inlay your logo in the headstock.

Here is what my dad has done for his guitar “First Love”:

TrueAxe Guitars!

Thanks for reading. I will have another update soon on our new workshop! All exciting stuff happening the the land of TrueAxe Guitars. Stay tuned.

-Adam