Early this year, I bought various guitar parts off ebay. after buying a body blank I decided to continue to buy parts for a guitar. as a project for me. $20 for the body blank, $20 for the neck (great neck for the price), $25 for the bridge, $15 pickup (pretty good sounding for the price), $20 tuners, and $15 strap lock. The rest of the parts I got from guitars laying around my room.

Since I lacked the proper power tools and skill to do the routing on the body, I contacted the luthier I use to fix my other guitars. He arranged for me to be his 'apprentice'. I worked on this guitar in his shop every wednesday for about 4 weeks. He basically guided me through most of the stuff. I did most of the work on it, just he made sure I was doing it right. I learned a ton of stuff.

This is what it looked like before

The first thing I did was make all the templates for the routing (not really as easy as it sounds). Then I did the beveling. I used a rasp to bevel and a file to smooth it out.
Good view of the bevels (this pic was taken after I did most of the routing)
after doing all the beveling, I started on the routing. I routed out the neck pocket, pickup cavity and the control cavity. Making the templates took longer than the routing did
I also drilled a hole from the pickup cavity to the control cavity, a hole from the pickup cavity to the bridge hole (for grounding) and a hole for the output jack.

So after that was all done, I sanded like crazy. 80 grit, 120 grit, 240 grit, 300 grit, 400 grit, then 600 grit. Was smooth as fuck when I was done. it was all ready for the finish. I chose a nice natural finish. Tung oil I believe it was.

After the finish

Now the that the finish was finished, all that was left was assembly and wiring. Bolt the neck back on, screw the pickup in, hammer the bridge posts in, drill the holes for the pots, wiring it all up, and string her up. the neck needed to be shimmed so i went ahead and did that. The action was perfect then. tune it up and rock out.
it plays and sounds great.

me playing it just after completing it.

Me, my guitar and Ted (the luthier)

On the wall

Headstock

laying down

The body

The back

enjoy!

__________________