The Crimson Guitars Workshop Diary - the 5th of November 2011 | Crimson Guitars | redefining custom | Crimson Guitars

The Crimson Guitars Workshop Diary – the 5th of November 2011

Ben Crowe, luthier-in-charge at Crimson Guitars, builds one-off custom guitars by hand and documents each build from start to finish, follow his work in exquisite detail through each process of every hand made guitar, bass and extended range instrument.

The new rosewood top has cured, the clamps are removed but there is still a long way to go..

The pickup and control cavities are next and before routing I pre-drill each cavity.

Pre-drilling saves router bits and time.. this custom guitar has the standard les paul twin humbucker setup.

The tremolo and control cavities are in place

And carving begins, we take fretboard access very seriously and this guitar has it in spades, the bonus is of course that the carving is damn pretty!

The belly carve makes this a very comfortable guitar in that department too..

Winter is here, cold and dreary.. all the more reason to spend extra time in the workshop!

The inside of the control cavity is routed away to match the carving of the top, 5mm thick should do it.

The headstock needs extensions, more rosewood is planed flat.

And, along with veneers, the extensions are glued in place.

Time for the binding, I’ve been experimenting with wood bindings for a while now and the time has come to try padouk.. A thin plank is put through the belt sander until it is less than 1mm thick.

Cut into strips with a sharp scalpel, though before cutting each piece off I use the shooting board to square off one side to make for straight forward installation.

Each guitar we create is entirely hand made and bespoke, so even our ‘standard’ three aside headstock is only a guide, nut widths change and therefore the tuner positions have to be adjusted to achieve the perfect straight string pull that we require.

The resulting headstock shape is finalised using a Carrol sander mounted in a bobbin sanding machine.. very useful!

The rosewood headstock veneer is cut to size.

And glued up.

The beginnings of the binding process, a bending iron is used to create the correct shape in the padouk binding strips.

Padouk/ebony/padouk I love this.. not quite there yet.

Strips of thin flame maple are held to a sheet of perspex with double sided tape (luthiers boon!) and this goes through drum sander as well.

More of the same, just prettier this time..

Finally the outer line of binding is installed and planed flush with the body.

The headstock is next..

Padouk/ebony/maple to match the fretboard..

And we have a guitar.

The tuner holes are drilled next, a center point drill bit drills half way through from the front and then the back to stop any grain ripping out as you go through, it would be just as effective to clamp the headstock to a bit of wood and go one way but this suits me fine.

The logo inlay design is printed off and the positioning worked out.

The logo is cut from a sheet of laminated abalone.

People following us on facebook were asking just how I was planning to fit the Floyd Rose tremolo system to this paf hollow so here it is, a custom threaded plate..

Underneath the tremolo there will also be two metal rods joining the front and back for strength and optimal tone transfer.

The inlay cavity is recessed.

And the inlay fits perfectly, no lasers in here but we get the same results!

Carving with the angle grinder etc does leave rough edges that have to be sorted out with various rasps, chisels or gouges. Our guitars require the use of both modern and traditional tools, the best of both worlds.

Though there is no way I could do my job without the use of random orbital sanders!

Finally we have a guitar that is in its final shape and sanded down to 120 grit..

The control layout is worked out, as with everything this is not quite the standard Robert Fripp layout we’re using a 5 way switch with the sustainer and Ghost MIDI systems.

The layout is drilled out.

And it is back to the final sanding, we aim to sand each guitar down to at least 320 or 400 grit for the perfect finish.

This entire guitar is built from open pored tone wood and these require filler.

Once the excess is rubbed clear it all looks pretty damn great.

while the filler cures it’s on to some stock, a padouk neck blank is marked out.

Roughly cut to size,

and then the pin router is setup and this test piece is routed..

Perfection!.. just 25 or so more to be done!

This stock 45rpm is nearly ready for lacquer, the binding is scraped clean, the best way to get a scratch free finish on plastic binding (so far) is to use fine wire wool after the scraping.. though we live and learn and I don’t stop learning!