One Year Later

Ok, so we admit that we haven't been doing a great job keeping up with this. But we've been working hard on this thing whenever we have time away from our genius supermodel girlfriends, our worldwide touring bands, and our sold-out comedy spectaculars. So let's get down to it.

Check this video for a general overview/update; read below for the sweet deets!

Stainin' and Such
So when we last left you, we had just finished heatgunnin' and sandin' and we showed you the tuning machines modded with skeleton keys on the headstock. The next thing to do was to stain the bastard, as we felt the pale wood did not lend itself to our vision of steampunk. So we sanded the crap out of the neck too, first removing the tuning machines and then using painter's tape to cover the fretboard to protect it from being stained. In retrospect, we probably should've used something a little more waterproof, but it worked out fine. Sanding allowed us to get rid of that pesky Squier waterslide logo, too.

We were originally thinking a cherry, but ultimately went with a browner color. Specifically, we used Minwax's PolyShade American Chestnut. The color was good, plus it's an all-in-one, so we didn't have to worry about staining than finishing. As you can see in the many of the photos/videos in this post, two coats made it look purty.

The only critique one might point out is the beauty of the stain is tainted (stainted?) by some of the gouges and burn marks from our amateur slash n' burn paint removal. But to that guy, I say, "Meh." We're not experts; we're buds havin' fun makin' stuff and we're learning in the process. You should sweat the details a little bit, but not too much. Adapt. Making an artifact of a fantasy steampunk era is all about it's "story," right? Who made it? Who used it? How does it work? What's happened to it from then 'til now? Ok, so now the "story of the guitar" is that it was made by a craftsman, but perhaps not a master craftsman. Maybe it got burned in fire? Who knows?

We also had to do some staining of a different nature.

The main electronics of the guitar were purchased from Guitar Fetish in the form of a pre-wired pickguard. The pickup covers were white, which didn't really go with the motif, so we bought some aftermarket gold ones. We roughed them up to age them, but when we went to put them on, they didn't fit the pickups, which can happen with aftermarket stuff. Rather than try again with gold pickup covers, we decided to work with the white ones.

First, we took some steel wool to them to get rid of the shininess. Then we soaked them overnight in a concoction of boiled tea, coffee, and cola. You can see the gold cover in this pic too.

This is a pretty common trick for aging white pickguards. So now they have a matte, off-white finish. So perhaps, "story of the guitar-wise," they're made of ivory or bone? Why not?

Time to Kick Some Brass
As the centerpiece of the guitar, we wanted to have an etched, brass pickguard. We did some research into brass electrolytic etching and found some great info on The Steampunk Workshop. Even so, It can be a little confusing trying to figure it out for yourself as the websites we found don't always express themselves as simply as they could. When we etch the brass for the pedal, we're going to make a video showing all the steps and do a blog post dedicated to it.

But the basic process involves printing a design, ironing it to brass, and using a copper sulphate solution and electricity to do the etching.

We got the brass from Amazon. It is a brass sheet at 0.0625" in thickness, cut to 12" x 12". It's the perfect thickness for a pickguard. You can get it here too, which I think is the same site that I got it from through Amazon. It's about $40. 


Here are the designs we used, which would've been impossible to do without the talents of our dear friend and graphic artist, Ellen Egger. So here they are alongside the final results:

Neckplate

This was the first thing we etched and it came out really well and we left the toner on there. It indicates the name of the guitar: The H.E.A.V.Y.

Backplate

This was the second. Some of the toner didn't transfer and during the etching, it etched unevenly. But it still looks cool, doesn't it? Just looks even more ancient in our opinion. We thought the idea of an inscription from a classic tome (existing only in the reality of the H.E.A.V.Y. ) added to the vibe. "Hestus" is a portmanteau of our last names and "The Strata" is, of course, a tribute to the guitar that we sacrificed to make this thing. 

Pickguard

We had some of the same issues with this one regarding the toner and uneven etching, but again, it looks cool. The idea of this design, or "the story of this guitar" is that Dr. Huebert built the H.E.A.V.Y. and intended to sell it. Thus, the pickguard acts essentially as a manual/advertisement highlighting the features, the dangers, and uses of the instrument. 

And how did we cut these awesome things? Same as with the skeleton key tuners; we know a machinist with access to excellent tools. Lucky us, really. 

Holey Sh*t
1. We wanted LEDs that turned on when you plugged a cable into the jack.
2. We wanted a fuzz circuit built into the guitar itself

So that meant puttin' some holes in the thing.

LED's

We bored a round hole roughly 3 inches in diameter into the area where the top-mounted jack was. To cover that, we're using a brass porthole pulled from a little diving helmet Huey found in a Goodwill. We cut a groove along the inside of the hole so that these two pins on either side of the porthole can slide into the groove and lock.

For the LEDs, we pulled a small string blue xmas lights from a tiny Christmas tree that had an attached battery pack. We bored out some of the inside cavity under where the the Volume/Tone controls to make room for the battery pack.

More on these lights and how we're going to get them to work in a future post.

Fuzz Circuit


Just below the bridge, we put anotha' hole, suckah! We took a small aluminum enclosure and tried to plate it with copper. Um, fail. I won't get into it, but it just ended up getting corroded and pitted. But it looked kind of cool, so we painted it and turned it over to our buddy Matt at NoiseKICK FX. He put a modified Bazz Fuss circuit and cut the enclosure to our specifications.

The toggle turns it on. The knob adjusts gain. And there's a big ol' 9 volt stickin' out of it. We asked for this so we wouldn't have to make more room in the body for a battery, and so we could swap out batteries on the fly. Check it out:

That battery plug is glued to the bottom so you can rip a battery out and pop a new one in quickly.

Pedal to the Metal
Ultimately, we want to steampunk a pedal and an amp to make a complete steampunk rig. We haven't worked on the amp at all, but we have started the pedal.

We took an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff pedal and ripped out the electronics. We decided to essentially recreate the enclosure with wood and brass.

The brass is just a kickplate that we got at Home Depot for $20. It's actually the same thickness as the metal from the Big Muff, but admittedly, it's not as durable,  so we'll probably have to reinforce the footswitch so that stomping on it doesn't cause it to bend.

We bent it using the heeeeeeeeeeeeeatguuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun! And some clamps (Clamp clamp ka-bamp!) and the edge of our workbench at Mind Kaboom HQ.

The wood was just a plank we bought at Home Depot. We used Gorilla Glue to hold it together before driving some screws through the side. If you do this, be sure to drill pilot holes first. Then we used the heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeatguuuuuuuuuuuuuuun some more to burn the wood a little for character and then stained it up.

Side Note! Goodwill For All! 
I mentioned earlier that we had found the porthole cover at the Goodwill store. We find a ton of good stuff there and from similar stores. We have boxes of parts, bits of brass, scrap metal, and tons of odds and ends. And you can find some awesome stuff there.

I bought this at a Goodwill for about $4.

The gauge seen in the top right corner of the guitar is a working barometer! We'll probably throw it on the guitar or the amp. And the one on the other end is just cool-looking, and is already on the guitar (see pic at the end of this post). My point it just...find junk. Junk is good.

Just a Squirrel Tryin' a Get a Nut, So What's Up?! 
Ok, so last thing to talk about on this update: The nut.

So since this was a cheap, made in Mexico, Squier Stratocaster, the nut was just white plastic. And while, sure, I suppose we could've aged it and pretended it was ivory, but nah, we went brass! We got some good advice from YouTube, but it didn't go as smoothly for us as it's shown there. The method in that video recommends that you put tape on either side of the nut, and then use a thin hacksaw blade to slowly cut into the nut lengthwise until the nut collapses in on itself. We used a little Sawsall to do it and ours cracked partially, but then we had to use a little adhesive remover and a paint scraper to get the rest of it out.

We did some sanding of the inside of the nut groove and put some scratches in the underside of the brass nut. We then put some super glue in the groove and popped the official Fender nut in there. Matched perfectly.

That's it for us for now! If you have any questions, PLEASE ASK! We might have missed something. If there's an angle or a picture of something that we didn't include, ask us, and we'll try to get a pic up here for ya.

Go build something!

Startin' on the Steampunkin'

So! The first step was stripping the paint off the body of the guitar. Here's how it was: 

It's a little scuffed from an attempt at sanding before. A poor decision. Because of the three ways there seem to be to strip paint off a guitar (Sanding, Heatgunning, and using a paint remover), heatgunning seemed to be the most appealing. 

I mean, c'mon, it's like shooting fire from a gun. 

Actually, it was recommended to me by a luthier who had refinished a bass he'd sold me. 

So here's the gun we used: 

It was like 20 bucks and it totally did the job, no problems whatsoever. 

Now in this picture, you'll see a few labels.

They're there to mark where to connect the electronics once we put them back in. 

So, we got to heatgunning!

And it took a bit to get going. We had a hard time telling when we actually got down to the wood, and it took a little time to learn about how long one should hold a heat gun in one area. (We're not actually using that stain, by the way.) Also, please use gas masks. We both had massive headaches/throataches after doing this work. A standard medical mask won't work, and fans, while they help, aren't as a good as a quality mask with filters.

But we got better! I'd recommend starting on the back first so if you happen to make a burn with the heatgun, it won't be quite as noticeable. The best method seemed to be roughly a 10 second hold on a small area, with the tip of the gun about an inch away from the wood, and then have a friend immediately scrape that area. It worked well for us, anyway. 

We weren't too worried about little burn marks though, because rather than paint that guitar, we're planning on using red oak stain to make it look more olden-y, so the burns will give it some character for our project. 

But either way, you'll probably be able to sand them out a little. 

So as you can see, the front ended up looking better than the back, which is fine. 

And the horns were really a pain. Our scraper couldn't really handle the angle, so you'll notice the little nicks. But we hit it with sandpaper later. 

So after that, we hit it with rough, medium, and fine grit sandpaper. We still have a bit more to do, but it smoothed out some of the more obvious deviations. 

Ok, so here's another cool idea we had. Now, admittedly, we didn't do this ourselves. Huey has connections to a few machinists, and they were able to take our idea and make it reality. 

Yeah, that's right. SKELETON KEY TUNERS.

Looking at other steampunked guitars online, we were surprised no one else had thought of this. But it is a little complicated, and some people might not have access to a machinist. This video explains a little. 

Like I said, we'll probably take them off and sand the neck a little, but it'll look roughly like that. 

Ok, so next, we cut holes for the different electronics and switches we plan to add. 

The project: Make a Steampunk Guitar. 

This was a used Squier Stratocaster that I had bought off Craigslist for about $120 bucks. The guy had dropped a Seymour Duncan Invader Humbucker in the bridge, so I figured it was worth it. While I had it, I had a Seymour Duncan JB Jr. Humbucker put in the neck, and I very sloppily tried to put a Lace Tres Hombres Single Coil in the middle. I also had the stock tuners swapped for Grovers. 

I don't have pics of mine, but in case you don't know, this is essentially what it looked like:

Also, keep in mind. Huey and I had already taken all electronics out of the guitar, and had deconstructed it to its various parts. So there's no pictures of that process. Sorry. 

We're amateurs, and we're kind of doing this through internet research, and trial and error. But we had talked about doing something hands-on like this for awhile, so we just jumped in. 

Plus, there seems to be a lack of really basic instructions for woodworking and the like, so we hope this can help some folks! If you have any questions at ALL, ask us!