Barada Guitars presents:

How to build your Telecaster

Index

How to build your Telecaster

This guitar was imagined and designed by Hussein of Barada Guitars, with the help of his friend Austin, who lent his expertise to the design of the CAD files.

a relatively complex one. We recommend you to tackle this one after you've gained some decent experience with CNC milling. You can follow the step-by-step making of in 3 videos on the Barada Guitars YouTube channel.

Downloads

Here are the files needed for this project.

 

Tools and Materials

This guitar was made with the Mekanika EVO-M with High Z and fitted with a Spindle AMB 1400 DI. The tools needed to build are:

The milling cutters used area Fraiser Bits, which we recommend for their robustness and precision. 

 

Machining Operations

In this first video, you can follow the step-by-step process for machining the body, the neck and the fretboard of your open source guitar using a CNC machine.

 

 

Tips:

  • Pickups & Neck Pocketing also the Body-Contour all can be made with a flat end mill bit.

  • If the body clank has a thickness, and doing that would be by using the 35mm Tornado Bit.
  • Before doing the contouring, it's better to mark the holes with the V bit, then it's easier to find x-where to drill later on.

BODY

Let's start with the body of your guitar, use a 6mm flat end bit (303.060.6D) to mill the Pickups & Neck Pocketing, to machine Bridge Marking Holes and to trace the Body Contouring.

 

NECK FRONT

Let's continue with the Neck Front. Truss Rod Channel with the 5mm flat end bit. Then, all in one file and with a 6mm flat bit to mill 1/3 of the contour, the head blank and the fine shaping.

 

NECK BACK

Make the full contouring with raw profiling the Neck. And with a 6mm Ball Nose Bit fine the neck profile. Finish the neck, by flattening the back of the headstock and the bottom.

 

FRETBOARD

Milling the full contouring, then radiusing the fretboard with a 6mm Flat end bit. At the end fret slotting with 0,56mm Tungsten Microbit.

 

Finishing Touches

In this second video, we continue our open source Tele build project with every step of your finishing guitar. Sanding, painting... Get your tools!

Final Assembly

 

Let's put body, neck and fretboard all together and listen to the sound of your future open-source guitar.

 

About Mekanika

Mekanika is a Belgian company based in Brussels whose ambition is to make local production more accessible thanks to a 100% open-source approach.

We design and produce high quality machines for CNC milling and screen printing, which have been recognized for their reliability and ease of use. Our tools are delivered as kits and fully documented, allowing to easily adapt them to specific needs.

Visit our shop to find out more, or check out our online resources and tutorials to continue learning.

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