Dragonburst LP build from scratch

[SasquatchPlatypus]

This has always been a dream project of mine - to build a guitar from scratch. After a few years of collecting some nice tools that I don't necessarily need, but sure as hell make the job easier, (nice table saw, band saw, good router bits, lots of pipe clamps, quick grips, and a 60 gal compressor and HVLP gun) I decided to start.

Here's a shot of me ripping laminations for the neck blank. The nice fence on the table saw - basically a copy of a T-square fence that I saw at Sears. I had some box tubing laying around, a welder and a sixer of Leini's and I figured what the hell, I'll just make one. It's pretty nice, paired with a decent blade it'll repeat to 1/32", probably even better if I ignore the beer.



Best place for glue-ups is the living room. The wife loves that... That's a Carvin Bolt Kit hanging to the right. These are also fantastic guitars!



This pretty lamination will get turned into a neck.





More to come...

[SasquatchPlatypus]

I should specify that the body will look more or less like the LP everyone is familiar with. The neck and headstock are my own though. Also, I like ebony fretboards and 24 fret necks, so here's the departure from Les Paul land.

Good layout is key to knowing when you've done irreparable damage with a bandsaw - stay within the lines... the lines are our friends.



A harbor freight brad nailer, bottle of glue and sheet of plywood can make some really nice jigs which make life wwaaaaayyyy easier. Take an extra hour now to bang together a nice jig for glue-ups and save a lot of time later:



I laminated a piece of nice flamed maple on top of my headstock and trimmed it up. I also cut the truss rod cavity (1/4" double acting from LMII.com). Drilling that hole in the face of the headstock for the adjustment screw is nerve wracking. Make a jig and take your time, it's not as bad as it seems at first.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Carving a neck is not as bad as a lot of people think. Get a good spokeshave and keep it razor sharp. I'd say as a woodworker either this or carving the top was the most enjoyable and rewarding part of the build.

I started with a round surform and cut the area around the nut and 12th fret to roughly the profile I wanted.



A contour gauge is a nice tool for judging what your profile looks like, especially if you've got full scale plans you're working with.



Normally a spokeshave is a two-handed tool, but I had one hand on a camera. I love this part!!



Here's a freshly shorn neck! It just needs some sanding.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Time to build a body... That is one gorgeous hunk of african mahogany edge jointed together. Look at the swirling grain, when I finish that it will pop like CRAZY. That mower, BTW, sucks. Save your money and get something with a polymer deck that grass won't stick to.



Those Wagner Safe-T-Planes from Stewmac or LMII are pretty nice if you don't have a thickness planer. Just be sure your drill press chuck doesn't fall off because the Chinese manufacturer can't cut or finish a jacob's taper to save their lives. Next on my list of expensive tools when I save up my pop can money is a nice drill press - probably a Delta 17".



Ooh, hey, that's starting to look like something!!

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Playing a Les Paul is a labor of love. Why? Because they're &$#*ing heavy. Wonder why? Because it's a giant piece of wood. I'm gluing on a really nice piece of flamed maple to cap the mahogany. That setup with all the clamps probably weighs 50 lbs.



Here's my other favorite part of guitar building - carving the body! I used a router and routed terraces into the wood in 1/16" increments. Next time I'm using a gouge. While this method works, I feel like using hand carving tools is slightly more satisfying.



Cabinet scrapers are wonderful tools. This puts a really nice finish on the wood as well:



I need a better workbench for planing. Someday I'll build one with holdfasts and clamping dogs and all that, but for now, there's scrap wood and a bottle of Icehouse. Here's that pesky 4 degree neck angle. It came out pretty nice just using the plane and a sanding block.



I routed a mortise for the neck. Were I to do this again, I'd use a template instead of freehanding it, but this actually turned out all right. For some reason I had a crappy router bit at the time. Jesus man, spend an extra $20 and buy a Freud! They make easy work of something like this.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Like it or loathe it, here's another little spin I put on the LP design. I personally hate any sort of neck heel if I'm doing a lot of lead work at the high frets, so I shaved it clean off and sanded a smooth transition from neck to body. I skipped a lot of the pain and suffering that went into installing the binding, but anyone who has tried to glue plastic around compound curves can sympathize. I hate doing binding!! But it does look nice once it's on and scraped.



Do I look psychotic in the middle of the night or what?!

[morats8up]

Nice job man!

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Always fly your own colors. This is my logo for Little Sahara Guitars. Yep, that's all mother of pearl. There's a trick to doing inlays: kung-fu patience.



Also, if you do inlay work, it's worth the $50 to buy the nice router base from Stewmac. I also tried to use the cheaper HSS tiny router bits, but when it comes down to it, their solid carbide downcut bits are noticeably superior for cut quality and ease of use. Pick your battles when trying to go low dollar.



For instance, this is a $12 B-grade ebony blank from LMII, but watch what a nice fretboard we can carve out of it. To hell with spending $40 on a nice AA blank!



Here's my fret slotting jig (homemade, of course, because I have access to a Bridgeport mill), you could probably lay these slots out by hand with a good ruler. I happened to have access to nicer equipment at the time. Anyway, each one of those milled slots registers in the indexing pin on the miter of my tablesaw. I'm using a .023" kerf blade from LMII to cut the frets. Handsaws work as well, but this is much less work.



I made a 12" radius jig out of some scrap plywood. This simply presents the fretboard blank to the router at different angles to machine a 12" radius. A word of caution if you do this, in the future, I'd put a strip of scrap maple on either side of the fretboard to prevent tearout when the router bit hits the edge. Other than that, this jig worked pretty slick.



And there it is tapered, radiused, and ready for inlays!

[SasquatchPlatypus]

I did the standard lay the inlay down and trace around it with a sharp scribe and fill in with white chalk layout trick. I saw a couple methods that might work a little better, let me know if you've tried them with success. First, you can lay the inlay down and spray paint it with primer, then pick it up and you have the inlay laid out on your F/B in sharp contrast, or cover the F/B with white masking tape and trace around it with a sharp pencil. Either way, that dremel base from Stewmac rocks!!



One down and an endless amount to go... *sigh*



I also made the side dot markers out of white MOP. I had to make a custom sized plug cutter out of a piece of drill rod. This worked out pretty well.



To answer your question: annoyingly small.



Now tell me this doesn't get your blood going a little bit. Gluing on a fretboard is somewhat difficult because it likes to walk around under clamping pressure and we simply can't have that. I messed around with mine till the alignment was perfect and it turned out. Next time, I'm devising a system which would use a couple of dowels as locating pins.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

A neat trick to really bring out a figured wood is called "popping the grain" First, I dyed this with a black water-based dye. Then I sanded most of it off, leaving it in the end grain of the wood.



Even the back will look unbelievably sexy with a nice gloss on it. Here it is stained brown:



How to make a dragon: start with green in the enter. Again, I'm just using water based dyes in an HVLP spray gun set really low. Light coats are the key to bursting!!



Next I'll burst the blue around the outside.



What do ya think of that??? The headstock has the same green / blue scheme. As of right now, I'm putting on the approximately 30 coats of clear water based sanding sealer and clear coats. IMO, water based lacquer is a great way to go in terms of finish quality and fairly low toxicity. It's great because it cleans up in tap water and doesn't make the shop poisonous while it's being sprayed or cured. I'll get back to you when I have more photos!!

[GuitarToneFreak]

Dude, it's looking incredible!

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Thanks! Looks like I forgot to put anything in about fretting it and I do have a couple pics...

Here's my fretting setup, I just bend the wires by hand. Someday if I keep building these things, I'll make or buy a fret wire bender. I use a stewmac fret caul that chucks up in the drill press and has radius inserts. It makes quick and easy work of fretting. I've tried hammering before, but I don't have the feel for it and the results were ugly at best.



Here's another special tool from stewmac that you could probably do without, but is probably much more effective and easy just to buy. It's a diamond crowning file. BTW, check out the grain on that B-grade ebony. Looks fine to me! I think with higher grades of ebony usually means that it's a more consistently black color (correct me if I'm wrong on that). If that's what you want, hey go for it. Personally, I like wood to have a little grain and imperfection.



And now back to the almost-present. I took these pics a couple days ago when I had maybe 3 or 4 coats of sanding sealer on it. On the first one, check out the swirl pattern on the mahogany. It looks pretty plain and almost boring when in its raw form, but it's beautiful with a finish on it.



And the front side. Where it's hanging in the garage, this really doesn't show how cool the dragonburst finish looks. After I let this cure, wet sand, and buff everything out, I promise I'll get some good pics with more favorable lighting and a better camera! (You have to admit, though, the Droid does a damn fine job. )

[nickypcouk]

You guys and your guitar building....very impressive stuff. I look forward to seeing more pictures!

[TKOjams]

Nice job!!!!

[LP_NEWFAG]

This looks awesome! Nice job with it all.

[Kalamazuu]

Wow that looks great, can't wait to see the finished job! and it's nice how the thread is short sweet and too the point rather than having to wait a month and going through 10 pages.

[Mexicanbreed]

In just a few posts this turned out to be one of my favorite LP builds. Great headstock design, killer heel, ebony fingerboard, 24 frets...Just rocking! Why didn´t you do the tummy cut, though? It would have shaved of a little more weight, plus I think the LP´s original design benefits from everything that improves playing comfort.

[RobP]

Lookìn`good ...keep us posted!

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Originally Posted by Mexicanbreed

In just a few posts this turned out to be one of my favorite LP builds. Great headstock design, killer heel, ebony fingerboard, 24 frets...Just rocking! Why didn´t you do the tummy cut, though? It would have shaved of a little more weight, plus I think the LP´s original design benefits from everything that improves playing comfort.

Hehe... because it wouldn't fit my rock-hard abs. J/K, this was my first scratch build and basically I started off with something totally different in mind. I was going to do something more PRS-esque with a neck through body all contoured and crazy. However, I was finding the design process was consuming way more of my limited time than the building part and I had a full set of '59 plans from Stewmac. In the interest of keeping the project momentum going I decided to take a neck and headstock I already had, cut it short and do the rest as an LP, because I was watching YouTube vids of Slash and decided that I've always wanted one. So I made the body more or less to plan with some stuff that I wasn't willing to compromise on that required relatively small mods to the '59 drawings.

Next build around I'm going all out and doing everything I've ever wanted in a design. I went into that thinking that it was mainly the body and headstock shape that was complicated, but really those are probably only about 35% of what goes into a guitar design. The tricky things are things like getting the correct neck to body angle, arranging scale length, pickup placement, and making this all work within the constraints of tooling I have readily available in my garage. I figured this would be a great place to start. I've actually got enough "scrap" and screw-up pieces (an entire body blank I planed too thin and enough mahogany to build a neck) to do another one. I'm thinking I'll probably do another LP with a little millennium spin on it that's carved on all sides, maybe neck through....

Anyway, for fun, here's the original drawings I was going to build this to. It was also going to be transparent wine red w/ gold hardware to match my beautiful Takamine acoustic, but I fell in love with the dragonburst looking at the Carvin site, and well, you know how projects change direction. Enjoy!

Oh yeah, these are all hand drawn. For some reason, I do better work with french curves than I do with AutoCAD.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Originally Posted by Kalamazuu

Wow that looks great, can't wait to see the finished job! and it's nice how the thread is short sweet and too the point rather than having to wait a month and going through 10 pages.

Oh don't worry, I can still screw up the finishing process and somehow stretch this out over a month. All those pics posted are a year's worth of work done after my day-job hours.

Stay tuned for stupid mistakes that will set back progress and make me smack my head against something hard! My money is on a sand-through during the buff out. All the guitars I've painted, I haven't avoided that one yet.

[Barnaby]

Originally Posted by SasquatchPlatypus

Oh don't worry, I can still screw up the finishing process and somehow stretch this out over a month. All those pics posted are a year's worth of work done after my day-job hours.

Stay tuned for stupid mistakes that will set back progress and make me smack my head against something hard! My money is on a sand-through during the buff out. All the guitars I've painted, I haven't avoided that one yet.

Sweet build, dude!

The 'burst looks great and I love the modified neck. I also really appreciate the time you put into the inlay..."Kung-fu patience". I'll have to steal that one.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

Here's pics halfway through the clear coat. This is the freshly applied 14th coat of clear sanding sealer. My recipe is 15 coats sealer, 15 coats clear. After this next coat of sealer dries, I'll scuff sand it and take care of any little nubs sticking up. Mind you, that's not a Isn't fluorescent lighting flattering?

[emoney]

Looking great!!!!

[android13]

Your headstock reminds me of a PRS.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

This part for me is the hardest part of the finishing. Basically I have to wait for a couple weeks for all the paint to cure before I buff it out. Then I can install all the hardware and start rockin'!!

[Sixty Watt Shaman]

Geez, dude. Although I'm partial to the more natural looking bursts, that is a good looking chunk of wood. I'm looking forward to a video once it's finished to hear how it sounds.

[Lebo]

beautiful

[thiswastheonlyusernameleft]

Wow... AMAZING looking axe.

[SasquatchPlatypus]

So, real life steps in again and makes me hold off my build for a couple months. I had a long trip to England and then buying a house and moving my shop, but now I'm back and ready to rock.

So here's where we left off. I had painted with 30 or so coats of clear (stewmac colortone water based lacquer) and it was curing. It really only needs a week or so, but I was on a different continent... So I finally got hardware ordered up and lugged the beast downstairs. Like that workbench? That's a 3" thick top laminated from doug fir from Home Depot. Weighs about 300 lbs. I'm going to build a hard maple version of that when I get my new shop a little more organized...



I cobbed up a pedestal buffer, wet sanded to 1200 grit and then buffed it out. That finish looks niiicce!!! Here I've got the bridge and tailpiece installed. Both are TonePros. I have a major beef with all of the guitar hardware manufacturers for their crappy documentation. WHY DON'T THE DAMN MANUFACTURERS LIST SOME BASIC DIMENSIONS OF THEIR PRODUCTS?!?! All I want is a center to center distance on the studs and a required drill diameter. No one likes to list these for some reason. Anyway, I had to modify the bridge slightly to get it to fit. Good thing I used to pay the bills as a machinist.



Due to some oversized cutting when I mismeasured a drawing, I had to make my own pickup rings because standard sizes wouldn't cover the tabs on the pickup routes. Here was my first crack at them with walnut at 2 AM. They look like ass:



So I made some new ones when I was more awake that have a much sleeker appearance. I also ripped the 4 degree angle on top of them to line up the pickups properly with the strings and sprung for some chrome pickup covers. Now that looks nice!!



OK, so a few hours of tweaking the frets and neck, as well as a small mod to the wiring and it's playing just how I want! I wired it up per 50's vintage wiring, but found that it was killing too much of the high end when I rolled back on the volume, so I added a .001uF cap across the high side and wiper of the volume knobs. Now it kicks ass! It's got a great ballsy LP sound with lots of sustain. It's also pretty cool to have the humbucker in the neck with a dedicated tone knob because I love to roll the tone all the way back on that and get that Slash / November Rain sound. Never had that before.

So here's a summary of the hardware:

-Seymour Duncan 59 Bridge and Neck (BTW, these don't have coil taps, found this out the expensive way) I looove the sound of them though, they're fairly hot - not JB hot, but hot enough for a good hard rock sound, and have a wonderful smooth, warm breakup when you ease off on the volume.
-Gibson pickup covers, neck spacing on both - these fit the SD 59's, the bridge spacing does not. If you want covers, do it the easy way and get pickups with them already on.
-500K volume and tone pots, .022uF tone caps, .001uF volume bleeder wired up as 50's style. I'm not a fan of the modern style wiring in LPs, it muddies everything up too much when you roll back the volume. I should mention, I like single channel tube amps CRANKED up and I use volume knobs on the guitar to get a clean tone. This setup works great for that.
-TonePros bridge and tailpiece - even though it doesn't say it anywhere, the bridge does come with studs, unfortunately I'd already drilled the body for larger studs. Instead of dowelling them and redrilling, I got a set of larger studs to fit the holes and drilled the bridge out to match the larger studs. This works fine. If you're doing one of these, I'd recommend buying your hardware and measuring it before drilling the body so you know what you're getting.
-Sperzel locking tuners - Worth every penny. I'd never tried these before but it's a lot cleaner for string installation and you don't need to worry about strings slipping and changing your tuning.
-Schaller strap locks - necessary for onstage acrobatics.

So that's it!! Tell ya what it sounds great through a Genz Benz Black Pearl and a homemade AX84 High Octane (see AX84.com - The Cooperative Tube Guitar Amp Project).

[ll IrOn CiTy ll]

Great Job man..I enjoyed following your progress.