Last time I left the project at the completed Photoshop mock-up of the WITM art guitar, and had thought that I would be working on the physical body in this one. But, alas, I was wrong. This is one of those projects that is incredibly dynamic; it’s taking on a life of its own and starting to lead me around a different path. I am now debating whether I will be back mounting this piece as opposed to mounting it from the top. It’s a major change and one that I need to spend a lot more time of working out. So in the mean time I felt the best thing to do was to start the actual sculpture portion of the guitar. This will be pretty much the same front or back loaded. So let me take you through the process.

I took my finalized Photoshop mock-up and broke it back down into the individual layers, and half-toned it (no sense in wasting printer ink). I don’t know if I mentioned this in the first article or not but I create all of these mock-ups full-size, that way I can print them out 1 to 1 scale… it’s handy! I printed out each layer onto card stock, not standard weight paper. The reason I use card stock is that it makes it much easier to trace the shapes onto the final stock that I will be using for the sculpture. Standard weight paper doesn’t support a pencil lead edge like the card stock does.

Since the stock is only 8.5 x 11 inches I had to tile print it, and then very accurately cut each tile to match up. Then I spend way too much time and money taping it all together with Scotch transparent tape.

The next part is incredibly tedious, so it’s important to kind of Zen out while doing it. This entire process is about the process, so you don’t rush it, you just experience it. Each detail needs to be cut out of the card stock templates, every curve, every hole, every line, meticulously cut with an X-Acto knife… and lots of blades! This part took me quite a while, especially the windows on the Chrysler building (yes that’s the Chrysler building in the original art too).

The final result looks like such little effort went into it, but so much actually does. Dialing everything in, trimming just so, cutting all the details took hours. Here are the final templates.

The body “shell” of this piece is going to be Honduran mahogany, but I decided to go with poplar for the sculpture, for several reasons: 1) – it has a really fine tight grain which works well for the gold (or other) leafing; 2) – it’s relatively light weight which I think it needs to counter balance the hefty piece of Honduran I’m using… yes, even though it will be hollowed out; 3) – it machines and sands nicely; 4) – it’s a good tone wood. I decided on a 3/16” thick plate series, so the first thing I need to do is re-saw the poplar.

After the re-sawing the plates are all thickness sanded to a consistent dimension.

Now all of the templates had to be traced onto the poplar plates with a pencil. Like the cutting step, accuracy at this step is critical if the final artwork is going to look like the original mock-up. Since it’s a piece of art there’s a lot of latitude with what that level of detail is, but I’m pretty psycho anal, so I like it incredibly detailed!

After all of the tracing was complete I need to sit down at the scroll saw for quite a while and cut out all of the parts. Again, a good time to Zen out and experience the moment. The most tedious part of this process was all of the windows and details in the Chrysler building… oh, and gears were kind of a pain too… who designed this thing anyway! To allow me to cut this level of detail on such a large piece I used a spiral cut/360 degree blade, extremely fine tooth. To improve the control of the saw I used a foot operated switch to power it on and off… kind of like a sewing machine. It made the process much less stressful and more controlled.

Here are all of the components (as per the original mock-up) cut-out and stacked. They haven’t been finally shaped, sanded or detailed, and I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be adding a ton more parts to it as I go along, but it’s a good base to the final sculpture.

I have always felt that my guitars are functional works of art. Adding a beautiful piece of detailed visual artwork to it… having it become an integral component of the instrument itself is one of my favorite things to do. This piece will be going some pretty cool places before it’s done… as least that’s what it’s telling me. I’m hanging on for the ride!

John Page