Wintertime Projects?

I’m sorry Will.

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This is what Insulation Depot had available at the time. They’re reclaimed or factory seconds, for less than 50% of retail.

The floor has 4” thick xps foam plus 1/2” foil faced to help press the radiant tubing up against the plywood floor, and hopefully provide a bit of a radiant barrier, as well.

@Infinity What are you using for the heat source on your radiant?

A 10 gallon electric water heater. It’s a bit of an experiment; we’ll see how it goes.

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I’m sure it’ll be fine. You could also tie in a passive solar heater on the roof, they’re getting really cheap these days. Might save you a few bucks in electricity and keep that recirc pump from always being on

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Quiet night on here. Thought I’d post some pics on the project so far:

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Definitely interested in seeing the finished product. Keep us updated. I love guitars and built one myself but not as nice as yours.

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Nice looking LP. I’ve still gotta finish the semi-hollow LP kit that I got over a year ago. Solidbodies are just too heavy for me. I’m almost finished with my super-shed mancave, so then I’ll have some space to work on projects like that :grin:

I haven’t actually played a 6-string guitar in about a decade; just my bass. Being a lefty means I can’t just pick up someone else’s axe when I feel like cranking out a few chords.

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Now all is clear. I knew something was quirky with you.

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That is a slick planing jig you made for your router out of unistrut. Got any more pics of that? Or a link to a tutorial somewhere on how to build one? (Edit, did a google search, and there is TONS of info on these. I think Imma build a big one out of 80/20 extrusions :upside_down_face:)

What was your method for carving the top? I see some witness marks on the left side in one pic, that looks like you were following a template of some sort.

And it looks like there’s a second body in progress in the background? Nice.

One thought: I think I’d route out the pickup openings before carving the top, so I could use the router for the bulk of that work. Use a template for nice crisp, straight edges. But this coming from the guy that had to buy a kit, and still hasn’t finished it :rofl:

Very nice work. :+1:t2:


My highly ambitious next build, after finishing my semi-hollowbody kit, would be a completely homemade hollowbody based around the SG body shape, but thicker like an LP, and with a fixed neck. That would be one of a kind :smirk:

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That’s merely a symptom of my quirkiness :upside_down_face:

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Thank you! It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to make a guitar. I’m not good at playing or anything, but I like making pretty stuff.

The unistrut is great because it’s almost perfectly flat, as opposed to angle-iron. I got fed up with all the DIY videos and just threw it together; I think the most important part was the sled itself, and creating bumper stops so your expensive planing bit doesn’t hit the metal.

All the router templates came from this PDF I found based on a '59 Les Paul. Happy to send it to anyone that wants it. I printed them all out and transferred them onto MDF, hand cut and sanded on a drill press with homemade sanding mandrels. 6 profile routes for the top carve, and then hand-sanding to smooth them out.

I really wanted to route the pickup holes and neck pocket but couldn’t find a great way to mount the template. Those holes all have a 4-degree tilt to match the neck angle, and figuring out the template mounting was giving me nightmares lol. So I just lined up the chisel with a protractor and went to town.

That IS a second guitar body, actually it was the first one I tried (out if a much prettier piece of wood), but after cutting the slab it started showing some stress cracks and I didn’t trust it. Darn shame, it was a pretty chunk of wood.


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You got any pics of that build out? Had a chance to try out the heating yet?

It’s all insulated, except for the one stud bay where I’ll be sticking my back door. I’ve got my 12v lighting installed, and about half of the electrical roughed in.

I don’t have the radiant heat setup yet. I’ve been using a tiny space heater at its lowest setting of 600w or so, to keep my chems up in the loft from freezing. The structure holds heat really well, so I have a feeling that it won’t take much at all to heat once the radiant gets going. My hope/guess is that the circulator pump will only need to run ~10 minutes or so every hour to keep it around 55-60°.

Trolley hoist is also installed. It’s a cheap 440lb winch off Amazon, mounted to a couple trolleys in a 10’ piece of Unistrut. I can load my 260lb snowblower up in the loft to get it out of the way in the non-winter months. It also makes it a lot easier to store our summer/winter wheels, and any other heavy or awkward items I have mind to stick up there.

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Makes perfect sense. I didn’t think of the neck angle.

I might’ve attempted to use the sled freehand (in super light passes), and prop up the underside of the body for the 4° angle. But I’d have been sweating bullets the whole time :rofl:

Your approach sounds less stress-inducing :smile:

(Ooh! you could probably set up temporary stops on the sled to route out a set rectangular shape, then move the stops to expand on the shape. The pickup holes are basically two overlapping rectangles)

That is a shame about the first attempt; beautiful piece of wood, but I see what you mean about the stress cracks. But it comes with the territory of working with a natural material.

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@Infinity. How do you like that Honda unit? Is it the 724 or the 928? Sold a bunch of both back in Colorado and the customers where always happy with them.

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It’s a 928. I really like it. They should’ve put the 13 (errmm, 11-something? :rofl:) horse on it, though. It can still bog down sometimes in heavy drifts or plow berms.

Track drives are slow moving by nature, so it got a little tedious at times getting it back to the truck when I was doing one driveway after another with it (though sometimes the walk back was downhill, and I could squeeze both steering levers and let it free-wheel. Wee!). Now that I’m just using it for myself and maybe one or two friends in our congregation, I’m sure that won’t matter nearly as much

18” and counting, here

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1132 was also popular for us with the commercial guys. The 1336 hybrid I’ve never seen in person but it would have been fun to try out! I preferred the snowblowers mounted to our demo/display Mahindra tractors. Less walking and further throwing. Instead of throwing the snow into your immediate neighbor’s driveway you could chuck it over into their neighbor’s drive.

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You need to move yesterday