So I haven't actually played infinite yet, but I've seen the craig guitar that can be found ingame, and since I've been wanting to build an electric guitar for a bit anyways, I thought this would be a good opportunity.
I've never built a guitar before, or even really played an electric one (I did play an acoustic one a bit), so I'll probably make a bunch of mistakes that are obvious to someone who knows this stuff better than I do, but I'll just learn along the way.
So the first step was the design. I have to change it quite a bit anyways since the in-game design won't work at all (the strings are fixed again in the middle, which just doesn't work), and the fretboard isn't really usable either. So I decided to not make it too accurate, but instead make it in a way I think might be a bit more comfortable. In the game it's also a bass guitar, but I don't want to build a bass, so I decided to go with 8 strings because why not (probably not a great idea, but I'll see about that later).
So this is what I came up with. I kept the hole and its shape in the middle, but made it a bit wider due to having more strings. I also tried to keep the general shape of the body similar, but made it a bit longer in the top left to hopefully make it a bit more comfortable (I just tried some stuff out with a piece of wood, a clamp and some welding wire, and it came out at about that size). The neck has pretty much no resemblance to the original, but there wasn't really a way around that if I want to make it practical. The headstock I'd say is fairly close, but it had to be quite long to fit all of the tuners.
So that's about the general design, now onto how I plan on building this thing:
While I could just buy the brigde, pickups and tuners and "just" make the body and headstock, I decided to make pretty much everything I can on this, which means most of the parts will in one way or another be from the affordable ironmonger.
So after first trying if I could make worm gears which I need for the tuners a bit ago (more on that when I'm making the ones for this), I started off with the bridge, or more precisely, the saddles.
Starting off, I pretty much immediately decided to deviate from my plan, and instead of making them out a piece of 3mm sheet for the bottom part and welding on a piece of 4mm steel on the back for a screw to go through, I instead decided to mill them out of some 10x10mm steel. The only issue there is that I don't have a mill.
However, I have a lathe, and a lathe is pretty much just a mill without an X axis turned on it's side (I know there are more differences, but in this case, it doesn't really matter). This will probably hurt some machinists, but basically, I clamped the workpiece to the toolpost in the most sketchy way possible, and put an endmill into the lathe chuck.
Basically, I have a piece of 3mm steel clamped in the toolpost. Onto that piece of steel, I first clamped down the workpiece with a small clamp. The 3mm sheet puts it at the correct height to mill a 6mm slot 4mm away from the end of the part. The big clamp holding the part to the toolpost does most of the actual holding, the small clamp is mostly just for alignment. I later added a plate on the side of the toolpost facing away from the chuck to have something that's easier to clamp against with the big clamp. I'm also using a burr in this picture because my endmill broke off and I don't have another one (the the replacements haven't arrived yet). This is actually rigid enough that I could take at least 1mm deep cuts if I had a sharp endmill instead of a dull burr.
The next step is to drill a 3mm hole into the face of the part, but a bit off center, so I can't just center drill it on the lathe. I could do this on the drillpress, but it wouldn't be very accurate. So instead, it's back to abusing the lathe as a mill again. This is gonna happen pretty often with with this project.
This time, the part is clamped flat against a piece of 3mm steel (in this picture it's 4mm aluminium, but that was too high to reliably work). Then, after roughly squaring it up, I take one pass with an endmill to actually square it up relative to the spindle. This is necessary so that the drill bit wanders the least amount possible. After that, I just have to change the endmill for a center drill, and move it to the center of the part, which isn't very difficult. Then I can drill the hole that later an M3 screw will go through to adjust the position of the saddles. The slot I milled earlier is for two countered nuts so that I can actually adjust the saddles while having the threads in the bridge instead. After this, there actually isn't much left to do on the saddles. One thing is to mill another slot for the string to go through, and the last thing is shape the other end for the string to go over. I've milled the slot on two saddles so far, but I milled those slots 6mm wide which isn't ideal, and since I had to order some endmills now anyways, I'll mill the other slots to 4mm.
For these slots, the setup was actually a good bit easier. I just shimmed up the toolpost 5mm so that the center of a 10mm piece in the toolpost is at the same height as the center of the spindle. Then, it's just drilling two holes (actually, one should be enough, but I drilled two in this part because I milled the slots in a different order. This is actually what broke the endmill, and this slot is intersecting with the other slot about half way through, and that caught the endmill and broke it off) and milling out the slot. I can take pretty heavy cuts with this setup as long as I cut feeding inwards, as that's how the lathe is supposed to be loaded.
So after breaking one endmill and dulling one burr, this is where I'm currently at:
While I'm waiting for the endmills to arrive, I can start on the other parts of the bridge. The piece that the saddles will be screwed against for example needs the holes for that drilled at a fairly precise distance of 1.08cm, which should be pretty easy on the lathe again though, as I can just move it with the cross slide (assuming I have enough travel, but I think it should be enough. It's only an 8"x16" lathe though.)
I've never built a guitar before, or even really played an electric one (I did play an acoustic one a bit), so I'll probably make a bunch of mistakes that are obvious to someone who knows this stuff better than I do, but I'll just learn along the way.
So the first step was the design. I have to change it quite a bit anyways since the in-game design won't work at all (the strings are fixed again in the middle, which just doesn't work), and the fretboard isn't really usable either. So I decided to not make it too accurate, but instead make it in a way I think might be a bit more comfortable. In the game it's also a bass guitar, but I don't want to build a bass, so I decided to go with 8 strings because why not (probably not a great idea, but I'll see about that later).
So this is what I came up with. I kept the hole and its shape in the middle, but made it a bit wider due to having more strings. I also tried to keep the general shape of the body similar, but made it a bit longer in the top left to hopefully make it a bit more comfortable (I just tried some stuff out with a piece of wood, a clamp and some welding wire, and it came out at about that size). The neck has pretty much no resemblance to the original, but there wasn't really a way around that if I want to make it practical. The headstock I'd say is fairly close, but it had to be quite long to fit all of the tuners.
So that's about the general design, now onto how I plan on building this thing:
While I could just buy the brigde, pickups and tuners and "just" make the body and headstock, I decided to make pretty much everything I can on this, which means most of the parts will in one way or another be from the affordable ironmonger.
So after first trying if I could make worm gears which I need for the tuners a bit ago (more on that when I'm making the ones for this), I started off with the bridge, or more precisely, the saddles.
Starting off, I pretty much immediately decided to deviate from my plan, and instead of making them out a piece of 3mm sheet for the bottom part and welding on a piece of 4mm steel on the back for a screw to go through, I instead decided to mill them out of some 10x10mm steel. The only issue there is that I don't have a mill.
However, I have a lathe, and a lathe is pretty much just a mill without an X axis turned on it's side (I know there are more differences, but in this case, it doesn't really matter). This will probably hurt some machinists, but basically, I clamped the workpiece to the toolpost in the most sketchy way possible, and put an endmill into the lathe chuck.
Basically, I have a piece of 3mm steel clamped in the toolpost. Onto that piece of steel, I first clamped down the workpiece with a small clamp. The 3mm sheet puts it at the correct height to mill a 6mm slot 4mm away from the end of the part. The big clamp holding the part to the toolpost does most of the actual holding, the small clamp is mostly just for alignment. I later added a plate on the side of the toolpost facing away from the chuck to have something that's easier to clamp against with the big clamp. I'm also using a burr in this picture because my endmill broke off and I don't have another one (the the replacements haven't arrived yet). This is actually rigid enough that I could take at least 1mm deep cuts if I had a sharp endmill instead of a dull burr.
The next step is to drill a 3mm hole into the face of the part, but a bit off center, so I can't just center drill it on the lathe. I could do this on the drillpress, but it wouldn't be very accurate. So instead, it's back to abusing the lathe as a mill again. This is gonna happen pretty often with with this project.
This time, the part is clamped flat against a piece of 3mm steel (in this picture it's 4mm aluminium, but that was too high to reliably work). Then, after roughly squaring it up, I take one pass with an endmill to actually square it up relative to the spindle. This is necessary so that the drill bit wanders the least amount possible. After that, I just have to change the endmill for a center drill, and move it to the center of the part, which isn't very difficult. Then I can drill the hole that later an M3 screw will go through to adjust the position of the saddles. The slot I milled earlier is for two countered nuts so that I can actually adjust the saddles while having the threads in the bridge instead. After this, there actually isn't much left to do on the saddles. One thing is to mill another slot for the string to go through, and the last thing is shape the other end for the string to go over. I've milled the slot on two saddles so far, but I milled those slots 6mm wide which isn't ideal, and since I had to order some endmills now anyways, I'll mill the other slots to 4mm.
For these slots, the setup was actually a good bit easier. I just shimmed up the toolpost 5mm so that the center of a 10mm piece in the toolpost is at the same height as the center of the spindle. Then, it's just drilling two holes (actually, one should be enough, but I drilled two in this part because I milled the slots in a different order. This is actually what broke the endmill, and this slot is intersecting with the other slot about half way through, and that caught the endmill and broke it off) and milling out the slot. I can take pretty heavy cuts with this setup as long as I cut feeding inwards, as that's how the lathe is supposed to be loaded.
So after breaking one endmill and dulling one burr, this is where I'm currently at:
While I'm waiting for the endmills to arrive, I can start on the other parts of the bridge. The piece that the saddles will be screwed against for example needs the holes for that drilled at a fairly precise distance of 1.08cm, which should be pretty easy on the lathe again though, as I can just move it with the cross slide (assuming I have enough travel, but I think it should be enough. It's only an 8"x16" lathe though.)