My Les Paul Build

[alk-3]

I'm a cabinet maker by trade and one of my biggest hobbies is playing the guitar. I bought my first les Paul in February for my birthday and was blown away by how great it sounded, but was left very unimpressed with the quality of the instrument. I figured I would have to spend the big bucks on a custom shop historic Les Paul to get the quality I was after, but then it occurred to me that maybe this would be a good project to build for myself.
Here is the build process. I hope everyone enjoys following along and puts in their two cents.

I did not decide to document this build until after I had carved the top, so I’ll have to explain the steps I took up until that point.
After selecting the wood I re sawed the top piece, and jointed the edges of the two book matched pieces. I decided to use hide glue to build this guitar for a variety of reasons and heated up a batch for the top glue up. After the book match was dried I planed it nice and smooth on one side then glued it to the mahogany body blank and let it dry over night.
The next morning I used a jig saw to cut out the body profile being very careful to center the shape on the book matched centerline. I then planed the whole body to thickness.
I routed the binding channel all the way around the body except for in the cutaway and set up the duplicator.
After carving the top I realized the guitar was not thick enough and decide that I could either make the guitar slightly thinner than a standard Les Paul, or start with a new top. Well, after carving the top I had revealed a few minor flaws in the wood and also deciding that I would not be happy with the finished product knowing that it was thinner than it was supposed to be, I planed down the top right back to the mahogany.

[alk-3]

I went back to my lumber supplier and chose another piece of maple that was far better looking than the first one and went back to shop to try to catch up.

I book matched the top and glued it onto the body and let that dry over night again.

The next day I set up the duplicator again and carved the top of the body.



The picture above shows the guitar body after going through the duplicator and having the initial profile carved into it. The binding channel was routed before going into the duplicator. The binding channel around the cutaway was not routed yet. After the body was carved I sanded it with 80 grit paper on my random orbital sander being very careful to not let any flat spots develop. The picture above was taken after only about 5 to 10 minutes of sanding.


I then made a jig to rout the neck pocket at the correct angle.



The neck pocket fresh from the jig.



You can see the steps in the pocket caused by the collar in my router. My bit was not deep enough to remove all the wood so I had to take it out of the jig for the final few passes. I will clean it up with a chisel when it comes time to fit the neck

[stryker59]

hell yeah...keep the pics or you progress comin!!

[loneguitar]

Great progress so far, keep 'em coming, I love watching a Paul come together.
Thanks, Bro

[eshuffle]

Nice Job....Everything looks great. Nice maple top should look great when finished.

[jkinnison90]

Nice. Keep posting pictures for us.

[mojofilter]

What a craftsman! very impressive,thanks for the pics.

[alk-3]

Thanks For the reply's guys, I’ll try to update each day so everyone can follow along on a regular basis.

Here are some photo's showing the binding channel..

[alk-3]

This is the set up I used to rout for the binding. Nothing fancy but does the job.





I've laid out the location of the knobs and pickups

[alk-3]

Here it a test fit of the humbuckers.





My shop quickly gets messy when I'm focused on getting some work done, so I frequently have to stop, clean up and get organized

[alk-3]

I made some jigs for the control cavities cover plates and routed them out.

At each step I have been making jigs as I go in an effort to be able to duplicate the work at a later date should I decide to one day to build another Les Paul. Doing things this way slow things down significantly but make the work more accurate and will speed up any subsequent guitar builds.



That's it for today, I'll post more tomorrow!!

[alk-3]

Once the control cavities were completed I drilled for the switch and knobs. This is where I made a really dumb mistake. after chucking a 1/2" bit into my drill I turned around and without thinking (obviously) drilled a hole in one of the knob locations instead of the switch location (the knob holes are supposed to be 3/8"). Anyway, I was pretty pissed off about it but life goes on. I plugged the 1/2" hole with a scrap of maple left over from the top wood and will re drill with a 3/8" bit once it’s dry. No one will be the wiser because it will not be seen unless the volume knob and pot are removed from the guitar.



I then freehand routed the remaining binding channel in the cutaway (I do not recommend doing it freehand but I've got a very good feel for routers and was not worried about it too much).

Installing the binding went smoothly until I got to the cutaway, where I stopped to decide how I was going to tackle it.

[alk-3]

I decided after some trial runs that the best way to do it was to make a caul to clamp the binding around the horn.







The rest of the cutaway was pretty easy and only required some tape to hold things in place.





more to come tomorrow...

[G Man]

Yeah, that's some nice work right there!!!!! Thanks for posting.

[jkinnison90]

looking good so far man

[alk-3]

I spent the next day scraping the binding flush to the body. I used a razor blade and a block plane blade, and found it to be really easy and enjoyable to watch it all come together.

After scraping the binding I cut out the neck blank from a block of mahogany. The block was perfectly quarter sawn and very light weight.

This is what I had by the end of the weekend.



I spent some time fine tuning the tenon and got it fitting just right.



The first look after the first fitting.



I taped a piece of sandpaper to the flat surface of my cabinet saw and flattened the face of the headstock. Later I will glue on the holly face.

I marked the face with pencil marks so I could see the progress I was making





I then cut the truss rod slot and carved out the nut cavity in the headstock

[alk-3]

Then I turned my attention to the holly veneer. I carefully shaped the blank using templates. I've always felt that the Gibson headstock has perfect dimensions and feel it’s important to take your time at this stage or the whole guitar ends up looking like a cheap knock off.

I used a coping saw to rough it out, and then fine tuned it on a belt sander. The final tweaking was done by hand with sandpaper.



Then I needed to cut out the nut cavity access hole in the holly.

I drilled a hole and fed the coping saw blade through the hole...



And carefully cut out the waste material.



I touched it up with some sandpaper.



Thanks to everyone for the comments, I'm glad you're enjoying it!!

[decoy205]

Great work!! Thanks for sharing! It's looking awesome so far.

[???]

Originally Posted by alk-3

Then I turned my attention to the holly veneer!

Cool dude, where'd you get the holly veneer from?

[pinefd]

Great job, alk-3! Are you sure you've never done this before?

[alk-3]

Originally Posted by ???

Cool dude, where'd you get the holly veneer from?

Local lumber supply, it was actually about 3/16" thick when I started with it, but I sanded it down to about 1/16"

most of my lumber came from either A&M Woods or Exotic Woods Two suppliers I have used for my business for years.

[alk-3]

Originally Posted by pinefd

Great job, alk-3! Are you sure you've never done this before?

Positive! haha, but thanks!

[diceman]

Looks amazing - can't wait to see her all finished!

[alk-3]

Okay, back to the progress..

I then turned my attention to the neck. After laying out all the dimensions on the blank I started to remove material with a belt sander, and a spoke shave.



And when I got down close to the layout lines I hand sanded. I took a full sheet of sandpaper and covered the back with duct tape and held the sand paper in both hands. By drawing the paper over the curve of the back of the neck a lot of material is removed very evenly and the job goes quite quickly. After several minutes I was left with this.







I cut some strips of mahogany for the "wings" of the headstock and glued them on with more hide glue. I let them set up over night



The next morning I sanded them flush to the face of the headstock and prepared the holly face plate for glue up. I made a plywood clamping caul using tiny drill bits to keep the face plate lined up exactly where I want it

[alk-3]

I heated both mating surfaces with a clothes iron to give myself a bit more time to get everything lined up before the glue gelled, then I clamped the whole thing together with a bunch of spring clamps.



In retrospect I should have laid a layer of waxed paper between the faceplate and the clamping caul to keep them from being glued together by the squeeze out, but I got the whole thing apart without too much trouble.



I carefully sanded the mahogany down to the face plate using a belt sander and hand sanding.



I also dry fitted the truss rod and its maple filler strip.





Then glued it in. I used hide glue as usual.

[slash is god]

that is beautiful man! specially the headstock loving it!

[oldsawman]

being an old woodbutcher i can appreciate this mans talent patience, and obvious diligence , far out, primo craftsmanship.

[alk-3]

thanks for the comments guys! I'll be posting more progress tonight so stay tuned.

[alk-3]

...I then turned my attention to the fret board. I carefully measured and laid out the fret slots using a razor blade to mark their locations. I then traced around each of the fret marker inlays.



I used a small router bit to remove the bulk of the material then cleaned up with a sharp chisel. I used real shell for the inlays instead of plastic.



Once I had all the inlays ready to go I began cutting the fret slots.





It was finally time to glue in the fret markers. I mixed up some epoxy with some rosewood dust to fill any imperfections in the inlays.



I tapered the fretboard with a simple jig on the cabinet saw.



I glued the fretboard down with 2 tiny drops of crazy glue to begin to radius the fingerboard.

[alk-3]

Then it was sanding, and sanding, and sanding....



Finally I started to make some real progress.



Once I was finished sanding I had gone up to 800 grit and the board was very shiny and polished looking.



I re-cut the fret slots making them deep enough for the fret wire tang.