[treddingjr]

It wasn't easy, and I hope the pictures show that. However, as a labor of love so to speak, it was very rewarding. Time consuming, too. I worked on it as time allowed until school was out for the summer. (I am an English teacher) I worked on it five days a week once summer started.
Growing up, we took wood shop in junior high. Most of my wood knowledge came from my dad, who made me hold the light for him. Eventually, I got to use the tools. In junior high I built a Heathkit TA-16 guitar amp, my own slot car track and cars, so I knew how to solder and use a router. I've built bookshelves and the like and a couple of years ago, a strat from Warmoth parts to learn how to transfer painting model cars with a spray can to a guitar. Heck of a lot of sanding goes into a finish, and nitro is very forgiving.
Once the idea hit me to build this guitar, I asked a lot of questions of a lot of people like the shop teacher where I teach, and my guitar techs. The wood shop teacher split my top so I could bookmatch it. My guitar tech answered a lot of questions and shared his repair knowledge. Measuring my Les Pauls helped too. Gibson never used any special tools, other than their steam powered top carver. All of the holes and routs are standard dimensions from normal bit sizes. Stew-Mac has fretboard templates, and humbucker templates, and on and on. If you watch the making historics video narrated by Duane Eddy then you know how I made this guitar. It just wasn't in a factory the size of Kalamazoo. My tools weren't as incredible as theirs but they did the job.
In that respect, most members of this forum could make a guitar. It was something I wanted to do, one of my Mt. Everests so to speak.