Handcrafting a set of carbon-fiber body frames and grills is pretty nasty work and takes a week or more, if you are lucky and work fast. Suppose you wanted something simpler and cheaper and more fun to make.  How low-tech could you go in making a Ridgewing-compatible body? Now this is the kind of experiment I really like.

Zen master says - screw precision molds. This body is a couple of pieces of cheap knotty pine cut out on a bandsaw, with some low-precision magnets to hold things together. And it really works.

The procedure for creating two fully-interchangeable Ridgewing body halves is pretty simple and requires few tools - just a hand-drill, router, chisel, hammer and some clamps (Or you can be really old school, like before there were clamps, and just get clever with some hemp rope). 

After the two body halves are sawn out of a plank, the upper body half gets its magnet holes drilled and magnets glued in flush using some quick-set epoxy, along with a couple of round-head nuts for later alignment. Once the epoxy has set and been cleaned up on the first half, the second half’s magnets are put into oversize holes filled with a slower-setting epoxy. The holes opposite the round-head nuts are also filled with epoxy. With a very important double layer of kitchen cling-wrap separating them, the two halves are clamped tightly together in the body’s final assembled shape, with the top, bottom, front and rear edges lining up. What happens is that as the second side’s epoxy sets, its magnets in their oversize holes swim up flush against their opposing side magnet partners, and the epoxy in the holes opposite the round-head nuts flow and harden around them. The cling-wrap (DON’T forget the cling-wrap) keeps the two sides from REALLY sticking together. 

After the second side’s epoxy has set, the two halves are unclamped and separated, the cling wrap is removed, and the excess epoxy is cleaned up (It is always best to clean up excess epoxy before it is fully cured and still a little bit leathery before it fully hardens). Now, when the two body halves are brought close, the opposed magnets snap them together pretty forcefully, with the round-head nuts fitting perfectly into their opposed holes to precisely align everything, and it really feels like a solid body. To disassemble this new body, you have to break it across your knee, which is incredibly satisfying and never gets old.

Once the body halves are properly mated, the neck pocket can be routed out and drilled using a handy Ridgewing drill guide. The neck pocket set screws are press-fit by hand, and bridge mounting clips are screwed on top with one-inch sheetrock screws in shallow cavities chopped out with the chisel. Because the bridge contains all of the electronics, no cavities have to be cut out of the body to hold them. Voila! – a brand new fully-interchangeable Ridgewing guitar body. Disassemble another Ridgewing guitar, reassemble with this new body in place of the other one, and in about 20 seconds you are playing a totally new guitar unlike anything the world has ever seen.