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Do any of you make your own, and if so how do you cut them?

you can use laminate bits too. they are less expensive and work just fine on plastics (never tried on metal). I usually use them cutting the pup cutouts and router bits for use on wood templates. They also work on aluminum.





someone should sticky/wiki something on making PG's because it is asked quite frequently.

What he said.

I use a Bosch Colt router. You could probably use a Dremel with a router bit. The main thing is to have the speed so it doesn't melt. Even if you could cut or saw it cleanly, nothing beats a router for the perfect edge. My router is really too small to make bodies with, but I have done it a few times now. It just takes a lot more sanding later on. Otherwise I like the Colt. You can use it with one hand, which frees up your other hand to SHUT IT THE HELL OFF.

The ideal router is built into a table like the one in those photos. You can use wider shaft bits, with greater depth and stability. But routers are serious shit. I hit the side of the table and the bit shot out like a bullet in the other direction. But it could have come right at me, spinning at 1400 RPMs with razor sharp blades.

It depends on whether or not you like to make shit, but I love being able to do this stuff though I buy them most of the time anyway.

stkyd

I always saw my pickgards with this one..cheap and precise ..

cheers

Can anyone recommend a router bit for cutting a 60' bevel on pickguards?

SherwoodJim wrote:Can anyone recommend a router bit for cutting a 60' bevel on pickguards?

the cheapest I could find was this one by trend link
other than that you are getting into big bucks. Why not go with a 45 Deg?

cur wrote:

SherwoodJim wrote:Can anyone recommend a router bit for cutting a 60' bevel on pickguards?

the cheapest I could find was this one by trend link
other than that you are getting into big bucks. Why not go with a 45 Deg?

Cool, thanks. 60' looks better to me

Here's a great Youtube video that takes you from making template to finished pickguard. It's Russian and there are no words, but self explanatory.

I haven't watched/read ANY OF THIS. It would have been enormously useful if I had. Oh well.

I've made exactly two pickguards in my life. One was ten years ago, for my Burns Nu-Sonic, where I bought a large piece of b/w/b pickguard material and cut it myself. It was dreadful, I never sanded it and the bevelling was pretty inconsistent. If I'd spent more time on it, it could have been better. But I was eager to get the pickups installed and be playing it, so it stayed the way it was until I reverted back to the original setup.

The second was literally last night (see my other Teardrop-related thread). I had a self-adhesive piece of pearloid material designed for making those thin scratchplates you mount next to acoustic soundholes. It wasn't really think enough to be a "proper" pickguard, so I layered it on top of a black, then a white piece of acrylic plastic. The two acrylic pieces were cut to shape using a foamed PVC template I drew by hand, then laminated together using brushed on polystyrene cement. Once the white and black layers were solid, I sanded them, then stuck the pearloid on top of the black layer using superglue applied to the underside (I imagine it was acrylic too, but I didn't want it react weird with the existing adhesive, which on its own wouldn't have had the strength to withstand sanding or hard use). Once this was set, I did some more sanding, then a light bevel by a combination of scraping with a blade, then some light sanding to give it a nice shine.

I used a grind stone to try and get the recesses in the screw holes but it's a little worn out and wouldn't make much headway, so I'm waiting for some new ones to get here.

Otherwise, it looks great! Quite happy with it. I have three more sections to cut out and make so I'll take some photos as and when I get around to it.

One thing is certain, with the relative cheapness and availability of thin acrylic sheet on ye olde internet, I'll likely never by actual scratchplate material again. I'll just laminate my own.

So I did the old laminated sheets of styrene plastic again for my current and long-suffering Jazzmaster Filtertron project.
I couldn't get shiny stuff so I'll need to do a fine sanding and polish once I'm done. It's not staying matte. What do you think I am, the Anix?

The pickup routs are a bit rough but that's only really because I was being lazy so I didn't mark the areas out and cut beforehand, I just cut the first layer and used that as a guide as I laminated subsequent sheets, which wasn't the best way, and the sanding didn't completely hide the bodge, but it won't be noticeable once the pickups are actually in the guitar.

Nice job! I've made my own custom pickguard for my strat, bought a 3 ply sheet for that and almost botched the whole sheet before came up with something remotely satisfactory. The alignment of the pickups was almost random but I lucked out more or less. Making a pickguard and beveling its edges with a regular router instead of a routing table is a dangerous and ungrateful job. My next pickguard I'll cut with a jigsaw and a couple of rasps. It'll look ugly but I don't care

Well I have a router and a decent setup, and I even have a bit of ready laminated scratchplate material that I could have used, but I'm wary about using power tools in my new flat at the moment since the flat directly below me has a teeny tiny baby that they appear to be having trouble with in terms of getting him to sleep (I see them pacing the car park in the dark at night trying to get him to fall asleep). So I started idly tracing a scratchplate pattern on a larger A3 piece of white styrene, then cut it out using a scalpel. Then I did the other two layers in black and that was kind of that.

Zero-noise scratchplate-making.

But yeah, this is actually my third attempt since I botched the previous two attempts. Far too easy to fuck it if just one or two factors aren't accounted for.

I'm super wary to make noise routing something as well despite not having any baby neighbors. It just doesn't feel right to be roaring away with a router to me. I'll try to work on the balcony come next spring, though my neighbor seems to have expanded his bedroom to include the balcony, because any time I'm on my balcony, summer or winter, I can hear them(our balconies connect) talking as if I'm inside their home. It'll probably be even worse for them, but hey, it was your idea to expand your bedroom, so enjoy the sounds of a woodshop.

I've been working my first cut pickguard so it's been a learning process. A buddy has a Vaccaro guitar from the early 2000s, when aluminum necks were all the rage. The stock pickguard on it was absolute garbage, and on top of that it warped really badly over the years. Since it's a weird one-off he had trouble finding a replacement, and some guy he asked to do it did a job that wasn't great. He need a guard, I needed a project to learn on, so I took it on.

This is the OG guard, from the factory. It wasn't this badly warped, mind, but the neck slot was not cut, the bevels weren't done, and the humbucker was always that fucked up looking. I honestly didn't believe him when he told me that was what came new on the guitar.
This is the guard he had made. It's better, not warped, but the humbucker route is clearly not right along with other minor "off-ness" about it. Since it was a straight trace of the OG it basically has the same issues. This is my first attempt, prior to doing the bevel pass and screw holes and realizing some of the screws were still fucked up. This was on some cheap GFS material I bought specifically to do my first draft on and fuck up, so it taught me a lot. Second is the same, but after the bevel pass. I also fixed the neck pocket so the guard properly fits the damn guitar now. I thought the shape was dumb until I saw this, now I become quite partial to it, has like an Art-Deco feel or something to it. It was a pain in the ass to get the pickups straight, because none of the other guards had a straight line to work from, including the damn pickups. However, once I got the bevel done I really came to like that swoop on the bottom and how it fit the weird shape of the body.
I started another second draft, and in that one I'm focusing on having the screw holes correctly done to template for the final. I also hit the same problem on that one as I did the first, difficulty holding the router level on the bevel pass on the ends of the horns. There's just nothing to hold it against. I know I need a router table, but all I have right now is a fixed base router so I am going to try using some scraps of MDF and guard material on it to act as a guide on the tips. Gonna be a lot of repositioning and shit. Honestly though, routers are so much fun.

I am definitely probably doing a lot of shit "wrong" with this, but it's important for me to try shit and fuck up, that's how I learn.

This is my post on doing my Gretsch Corvette pickguard.

Took many attempts to make it not perfect …

http://www.shortscale.org/viewtopic.php?t=69059

I finished the guard for that guitar now. I think the countersinking on the screw holes could be better, but I've already ruined several of these by going slightly too deep and so I just did this by hand with a drill bit. Final is with the Bigsby he wanted installed on there.

Looks great!

Looks smart!

Yeah, my buddy had sent some red tort he bought for this. There was enough for a single guard, so I went ahead and bought a full red tort blank just in case I fucked it up. Well, I actually bought two apparently, I thought I had cancelled the first order, but it arrived as well, so I ended up with two red tort blanks.

Well, when the first one arrived, it just looked so much better than his that I used the new one instead. It looks sooooo much better. I honestly just always hated red tort, most of what I'd seen on guitars is just garbage, but these pieces I got actually look damn nice.

I am pretty happy with how this turned out.