ELECTRIC GUITAR PROJECT part 14

Well, I went and did it. I made a tail piece like the one in the faked photo in the last episode of my electric guitar building project.

I owe a big thanks to my buddy Wayne at work for helping me out a bunch. After the perimeter and the string grooves were cut on the bandsaw it got bored for screws.

Then a chamfer was put onto the top edges. I traced a line around the edge with a Sharpie and shaped it to the line with a grinder wheel.

After the chamfer was cut I hand sanded it with gradually finer grits of sand paper ending with 600 grit. Then it got polished and now it shines like platinum or silver. I'm very surprised at how much aluminum will shine.

Aluminum was almost as easy to work with as wood. You can use all the standard woodworking tools on it. One bad thing about working with aluminum is it gets very hot, and becomes scalding with heat even by hand-sanding. I dunked it in cold water every once in a while to lessen the burn-blisters on my fingers. One good thing about working with aluminum as apposed to working with wood is the lack of grain direction. You can go at it any which way without worries.