An update about my electric guitar project. I've decided that I'll be building a Telecaster style. Telecaster were the first real production electric guitar put out by Fender. They developed out of the Esquire, which had just the bridge pick up, and were originally called the Broadcaster. The name had to be changed because Gretsch was already using it for one of their products.

I found a great forum dedicated to the Telecaster here: http://www.tdpri.com/forum/index.php

So, being undecided about exactly how I want the guitar to look, I decided that I'd just build a bunch of components so that I can try bunch of approaches. Its far easier to make some of these parts in batch runs than it is to do just one a time. Set up time is far more time consuming than actually doing the work. This way I'll have seasoned bodies and necks ready for when I need them

Here, you can see my master template sitting on a pile of Pine body blanks. Alder and Southern "Swamp" Ash are the traditional woods, but Pine was used on the early guitars and is seeing a renaissance with some builders these days.

Here are four body blanks of Elm

In addition to preparing some body blanks, I've been developing the drawings, templates, and some of the jigs. Oh, and doing lots of reading, research, and parts sourcing!