The Story of John Page’s 016: Part Three

By: John Page

Well, as usual, I’ve taken way too long to get this article to Guitar International. My apologies to all of you readers and the fine folks here at GI, and thanks so much for your patience. My shop is a hungry beast, and I can’t seem to get away. Anyway, here it goes.

Check out Part 1 of this series

Last time, I showed how I created the templates and the plates for the sculpture, so now I’m going to build it into the guitar. I was debating on whether to top mount it as I had originally conceived, or if I wanted to back mount it. I struggled with this for quite a while (months actually), and finally decided to stick with my original concept and top mount the piece.

With that decided, I was able to layout the interior rout for the guitar. I traced the perimeter with control routs, bridge location, etc., onto a piece of ¼” MDF. Using a scale, I laid out the wall thickness of 3/8” around the perimeter and blended it using my French curves.

I also had to decide how I wanted the center block area to support the neck to bridge. The aesthetics of this area was also critical. I changed this quite a bit from my original artwork, which was quite bland and simple. I decided to go with the perimeter of my trimguard for the area around the neck pickup.

Once this was figured out, I realized that I would keep the “tying” section between the neck and bridge understated. When I had completed the layout I was able to cut it out on the scroll saw and file it to final shape.

I laid out the routing detail onto the Honduran Mahogany body spread I had prepped for this piece, and hogged out the area to be routed with a Forstner bit on the drill press. This alleviates a lot of stress on the router bit when I pin rout it, as well as some of the impact stress the wood has to experience. Next came the pin routing.

I decided not to band saw or rout the perimeter of the body off at this point. Since the hollow chamber needed to stay open for an undetermined amount of time, I wanted the body to settle in and move if it needed to. I left the body in this stage for around a month or so.

While the body settled, I used the interior body routing template to layout my sculpture plates, and cut them to fit.

Restacking the cut pieces I could begin to see how the sculpture would look.

After allowing the body to settle for a month or so, I band sawed and routed the perimeter. Now I could dry stack the sculpture in the hollowed chamber and see the first signs of what I had only seen in my head for months prior. My “Woman is the Machine” sculpture built inside of a P-1 guitar!

As exciting as it was for me to get the guitar to this stage, I soon realized that the project was far from over. With each step, I found myself having to give more and more thought to it and the next steps, and make more and more fixtures to boot. I had to assure that each of these sculpture plates would be solid as could be, with minimal movement and zero creep.

I decided to use a Urea Formaldehyde glue to attach the plates to the body as well as each other. This glue requires a 24 hour cure time, and also meant that I would need to make glue cauls for each component.

The first plate to be glued in was the largest, and had the most complex interior cut outs. I laid it in the body and traced the openings so that I could apply glue only to the areas that the plate would cover, and leave the open areas free of glue. After glue application, I laid on an accurately cut piece of wax paper and then the cork-lined glue caul. Oh yeah, and then 10 clamps.

After 24 hours of cure time I was able to unclamp the assembly and see the result. There was very little glue bleed, so it worked out great. The Urea Formaldehyde glue cured like a rock, great stuff!

I knew that every plate I would attach would cover up an area underneath it that I would not be able to access easily to paint or leaf. This is one of the things I was talking about above when I said that every step I took I realized I would have to think about more and more of the future steps as well. So I ended up having to brush seal the Mahogany that was open in the bottom of the bottom sculpture plate, and then brush it with a satin black paint.

This also meant having to leaf some of the areas before gluing the next sculpture plate on, so I had to trace the next plate on and selectively paint the area to be leafed with sizing and then apply the leafing. The back plate was leafed with sterling silver leaf. All of the leafing I used was real metal, sterling silver, 23K gold, and pure copper. I used real metals so that I could chemically age it. More on that later.

Each additional sculpture plate required the same type of thought and detailing. Every plate (including the first plate already affixed) had to be detailed sanded to 320 grit. Each component had to be leafed in areas that could not be reached after gluing, and detail painted if necessary.

Then each one had to glued in place using the Urea Formaldehyde glue and a custom, cork-lined glue caul.

It was a ton of work, and there was still a ton more to go, but the result so far was well worth the effort. Although it wasn’t yet aged, and it was missing many of the components that would complete the sculpture, it was looking pretty cool. At least I thought so!

The next, and final, installment in this series is already in process, so I promise the wait won’t be as long. I hope you’re enjoying following process of this piece. Talk to you soon, cheers!