The body I am sanding in this one came within a few days of being run through a wood chipper. It is local pine, and the only reason it exists as a guitar is that somebody in town owns a sawmill.
The boneyard
Here in Lindsborg there is a place we call the boneyard. If you take a tree down or have branches to get rid of, you haul them there and drop them on the brush pile. The town chips it into mulch, or burns it if there is too much.
Which means every decent log in this county has a default destiny of becoming mulch.
Unless you know somebody with a sawmill. My wife’s uncle has one, and so does Uncle Bob, who you have seen on the channel milling black walnut. If you are paying attention you can pull a log off that pile before it gets chipped and turn it into something.
This one was a pine that came out of Lindsborg, and it happened to be a good thickness for a guitar body. That is the entire origin story. Right tree, right week, right neighbor.
If you live somewhere with a brush drop or a green waste site, go look at it once. You will be surprised what people throw away.
Sanding pine
Pine sands beautifully, which is the upside. The downside is it is soft enough that you can undo good work quickly, so it pays to go slow and check yourself.
I ran 80, then 120, then 180, then 220. The trick that makes the whole thing work is a pencil. Scribble across the surface before each grit, then sand until the pencil is gone. Without it, every stage looks the same and you have no idea how much material you have actually moved. It is the same principle as marking frets with a Sharpie before leveling them.
One thing did not sand out. There are horizontal lines across the face that look like machine marks from the CNC, on what is a three piece body. They survived every grit I threw at them. This one is getting painted so it does not matter, but it is worth knowing that some tool marks are deeper than they look and you should deal with them before you commit to a clear finish.
The radius is whatever is on the bench
I wanted to round the edge over on the back to give my hand some relief where it sits. The question of what radius to use has an official answer somewhere, and my answer was to grab a spray paint can and trace around it.
That is not laziness, it is how you find out whether the shape is right before you cut anything. If it feels good in the hand, that is the correct radius. Once I have the modeling down that curve becomes a CNC operation, which is why the machine is sitting behind me in this video looking patient.
The relief cuts on the back are so the bolts seat the way they need to. I have used threaded inserts on a body before and that is the right call for this one too.
Paint
Paint and primer in one, so no separate primer coat. It goes on pink and it is getting splatter over the top, matching the painting in my house that this guitar is named after.
Also, I watched most of Dino Riders while doing this. I make no apologies. The toy commercials in the eighties were better than the show and my brother and I used to try to recreate them on the living room floor.
Tools from this session
Links below are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which costs you nothing extra and helps keep the shop running.
- Random orbit sander
- Sanding discs, 80 through 220
- Rasps and files
- Threaded inserts
- Paint and primer in one
- Shop air filter
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One guy in a small shop on his father-in-law’s property in Lindsborg, Kansas. IT Director by day, maker by obsession. Equal parts problem solver, craftsman, and curious human. If you’re the kind of person who takes things apart to see how they work, or watches people who do, you’re in the right place.
Uncut shop sessions go up on YouTube and I stream on Twitch. Everything is @carverwoodworking. There is merch in the shop, or you can buy me a coffee.