Build #3: A Les Paul

[jonny]

It's that time of year Managed to use the Christmas spirit to con a few people into buying me guitar parts, and we're off! Build Number Three!

And, best of all, it's gonna be a Les Paul! Finally, I've gotten around to fitting into what this forum is for.

So, here's the idea. This going to be pretty much your standard, run of the mill LP, with the exception that it will be thinner. Not sure how much yet, it will probably end up being 2" in the centre.

Today I made the trip to A and M in Cambridge to pick out some wood. My girlfriend offered to buy me the wood for a Christmas present, if it was under $60. So got a nice big chunk of quartersawn Sapele, and a rosewood (east Indian) fretboard, for $55.

Here's the sapele:


The grain is quite straight on the far side in this pic, that side will become the neck. The other piece will be cut in half and glued side by side for a two piece body.


And here's the rosewood. I went through about 10 boards or so till I decided on this one. I really like grain. I've only done ebony boards before, so I'm looking forward to easier sanding on this


The maple from the top will come from a tree we got cut into lumber a few years ago. There's not likely going to be any figure, but I'll look for some interesting grain. Some pieces do look like they might have a bit of quilting, so I might get lucky.

While I was at A and M I checked out their selection of hardware, and came away with a bridge, tailpiece, and inlays. They had blocks pre-cut, and I really like blocks, so that'll be another little deviation.



Just went with the Gotoh, I have them on my first build and they do their job well.



After the wood store, we headed over to Lee Valley to drool over some tools. I bought a fret wire saw, figure it'll be good for cutting the tennon too.


I also bought a template router bit and some hide glue. Gotta try something new with this build And last weekend I picked up a set of Grover Rotomatics for $40 at Steve's Music in Toronto. My parents bought me the first Stew-Mac order for Christmas, so on the way is a truss rod and some binding and fretwire. The only major purchase left is the pickups, other than that it's little things.

Oh, and I still need to get some templates from Tom. That should happen in the next week or two. Then it'll be time to start building. I finish classes a week before my brother in high school, so I'm going to use the wood shop there for that week and get as much done as possible. After that I'll have to try to make it to my friend's father's place on weekends.

I'm getting excited!

[Claymore]

Looks like you got a good start!
Keep the pix coming!

[emoney]

That's what I'm talking about; a new build thread. Oh yeah, bring it on!

[jonny]

Just an update, I'll have some pics early next week. Started construction today. I have the body pieces gluing up, and the fretboard is ready for slotting and inlays. I built a jig that will help with both tasks. Te slots will get cut this wekend. I'm also going to experiment with my hide glue, so i know what to expect later on.

[fatdaddypreacher]

all i can say is he-e-e-r-r-e-e-e-s jonny! love your wood choice.

[Dustinp]

I'm planning on doing a build with wood i'm gonna cut down and have processed. I like the idea of having a guitar made from a tree I fell

[jonny]

I got the fretboard slotted today. Here's a mitre box I made out of some veneered particleboard from an old desk. I'm hoping to use it for routing the inlays too.



Here it is in action, with my brother's seal of approval


And here's the board abut half done. Kind of a dark picture, I waited till too late in the day and there's not much light there.


I absolutely love the grain on this fretboard! I think I've just been converted to a rosewood lover. The all-black of ebony is cool, but the beautiful grain just has something awesome

On a side note, that ebony board in the background is the first one I did for my first build. I cut it a bit too thin and then i broke the inlays, so it got tossed in a drawer. I use it from time to time to practice on. I had it out today to check that I was on track with my fret scale.

[Barnaby]

Great job - love the mitre box and the rosewood. This is going to be another awesome build!

[jonny]

Thanks Barn! I'll be following your build closely, always something to learn from you

Ok, I'm using hide glue for the first time, so I tried it out on some scrap. Just on a stove in the kitchen... bad idea. This stuff smells Not surprising, I guess, but it had never crossed my mind.



That seemed to work well, so the next night I glued up the pieces for my maple top. I didn't find any quilt or flame, but some really nice grain. I'll have to get a pic.. anyway, here's my glue set-up. I used our camping stove so I could move to the basement, and the hair dryer is there heating up the surfaces to be glued.


And here's my improvised glue pot: a jam jar in a pot of water, with tin foil on top and a meat thermometer stuck through.


All glued up:


I also got started on making some templates. This is a new process for me too, as I've never actually made an existing guitar before. (I just guessed on the maple topped SG)

John Catto plan, printed on four 8.5x11's and glued to 1.2" MDF:


More tomorrow, or possibly tonight

[fatdaddypreacher]

looking good j. i too have just started trying my hand with hide glue. my test went okay, but i glued my fret board set up on me before i got it where iwanted it...had to dampen a towell and get out the old iron again. worked fine, just aggravating.

if you get tired of fighting the burner thing, run down to your big dept store and pic up the smallest crock pot they got. my wife paid $10 for a small one and it works just fine.

i can see this is going to be a nice build. keep them pics coming

[jonny]

As you wish

I also made some progress on the fretboard tonight. First I put tape where each inlay would go, and scribed around the inlays with a knife. This gave a an easy guidline to follow.



I don't gave a picture of the process, but here's what I did. I clamped the fretboard to the edge of a bench, and then used a router with a 1/4" bit to hog out most of the material. I went to a depth of about 2mm, so that the inlays were a little below the level of the fretboard. That way I'll only take off the bare minimum of pearl when I radius the board. After routing I cleaned up the corners and edges until I got a good fit. I finally remembered to take pics righ before I glued in the last inlay. This is what they looked like:



That picture is also a fairly good representation of the colour of the rosewood. It's chocolatey

Then I mix up some epoxy...



...put in on the board...



And push in the pearl!



Now, that green tape is one of two goofs. The first is that I broke one of the inlays (seen above). Luckily, there was double sided tape from holding it to the board while I traced it. This prevented the pieces from separateing. I taped it to a bit of wood to keep it stable until I was ready to glue it in.

Second, the inlay for fret three is off.



It was the first one I did, and I measured from the sides instead of the centre. However, it's almost square, and I must have got it turned around between marking how far in it went, and marking around it. Unfortunately I never noticed until I was posting the pictures here

Oh well, at least these went better than the last blocks I tried..




Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the top glued on and some templates finished. I only have two more days in the high school shop until the holidays, then it's just me and the router.

[FF_Pedals]

Go Jonny Go.

[jonny]

Ok, so I tried something, but I didn't want to post until I knew I could recover.

I tried making a radiusing jig for the router, cus I got tired or sanding the fretboard. Threw it together in an hour or two using mdf. Here's what I learned: Theres a reason people have fancy rail set up for this. Mdf doesnt slide well on mdf edge-to-edge. It was hard to slide and hard to keep square. And MOP doesnt take well to routers... Any, it cracked a couple inlays and left the board kind of rougher than I had hoped. Also, and I have no idea how, but the radius was off centre, meaning the board got thinner on one side.

It's all fine now though. I just went back to the radius block and started sanding.



The cracks in the MOP disappeared (except the one I cracked before) and I've got 99% of the router marks gone. All I have to deal with is the off-centre radius, and I'm pretty sure I can fix it. I still have to get a pic of that.

There was still the damaged inlay on Fret 9.



I filled that and a few other little chips with CA.



Got my templates somewhat coming along. Made a master one by sanding to the line on a belt sander and a drum sander. Hower a little router accident damaged the cutaway and horn. Here's the aftermath:




And another mishap:


After that I decided to stop and wait until I had a more solid way to set up the router. I was just clamping the templates and my body to my tablesaw table. I might buy a router table and a router, as I'm just borrowing the high school's router.

Here's what I have done. The top is hide glued on, using the patented camp-stove-in-the-basement method.




This was a pic of when I was doing the chambering. The control cavity holes don't go all the way through, so that I can screw templates to the wood there. I had started routing a big chamber like on my last guitar, but I changed my mind and swiss cheesed it. I can't remember if it was six or seven holes, but it wasn't enough, its a heavy f**ker.

A shot of the shop I was using.




Also have the neck roughed out. Not much to say, glued on the angled cut off to get the headstock deep enough.




The little screw was to stop itfrom slipping when I glued it. This was just with wood glue.



Thats all for now, more once I figure out my templates and router setup.

[Jay Jillard]

looking good! i need to shop at A+M more often.. looks like they have better prices than exotic woods Burlington.

[GnRjunkie]

I looked at some of your other stuff and it looks pretty good. Cant wait to see this one finished.

[emoney]

Making progress....and those aren't "mistakes", they're "design elements"....don't forget it.

[jonny]

Realized that I linked the wrong picture earlier. THIS is a shot of while I was chambering:


This build is pretty well stalled until at least February. The top is carved, but no pics for a week or two.(I'm at school and don't have the pics or guitar)

I have a question about truss rods. I've previously used the Stewmac Hot-Rod, and was planning on using one again, but while I was at A+M last week looking at binding I picked up a two-way U-channel rod. Like this:


That's Stewmac's one-way, but that was the best pic I could find. What I'm wondering is how exactly does it work in two ways? And does it matter which way faces up?

[jonny]

Ok, been a while but I've got a lot of pics to make up for it.

So I filled the gaps around the inlays with sawdust and CA. First I packed in the dust like a "Flower pot" (coined by emoney)



Then "watered" it with the glue



Then I started sanding the baord, but I think I moved through the grits too fast, because its still kinda rough. Here it is now:



Onto the body. It's pretty well done, except for some minor sanding to smooth out the sides. I'm working on a jig for routing the binding, and I still need to route the outline for the control plate.

I ended up making a new template just for the upper bout, to finish off the outline of the guitar. First I had to get fid of extra wood:



After that I started removing wood inside the cutaway with a chisel, Barnaby style. The worked fine, until I tried the same thing with the chisel parallel to the grain on the outside of the horn. I guess I was a little too enthusiastic



Don't worry, it's all better now. I glued the piece back in and it's pretty well invisible now.

Then I routed the mortise. I only went halfway down, just to get it started while the top was flat. After that was done I roughed in the carve using ExNihilo's carve templates (which work great!). I just traced each one on and freehanded it.

I managed to cobble together an angle routing jig using what will eventually be a guitar case. For now it's a plywood base with sides about 3.5" tall. So I just made a sled for the router, and elevated the body to give me the angles for the neck and pickup planes. I finished the mortise while I was at it.

Unforunately, I took of too much material in the cutaway, so the mortise was about 2mm too close to the edge. Which isn't a problem, I'll just cut the tennon to be off centre, and shift the centre line of the neck over.

For the pickup cavities, I started with a 3/8 forstner bit to do the corners and to hog out most of the material. After that I did the rest with a 1/2" straight bit. I accidentaly routed the main route in line with where the neck would have been, but the legs are in the right place. The rings still cover the whole route, so it's all good

Neck pickup:



Bridge:



I forgot to do the control cavity before I ccarved the top, so that took some tricky clamping to hold the body steady. Luckily I had done most of the work prior to gluing the top. All I had to do was drill a few holes in the back and drop the router bit through. The bearing on the end followed the holes I had drilled, leaving only the in-between parts. I did that basically freehand, and with a straightedge fo the two straight sides of the cavitiy. I ended taking off a little more than I intended on the left side, but theres still enough wood to hold the screw.



The recess for the cavity will have to wait until I have a router again. I didn't want to do it without having the cover on hand to double check the fit.

Now, onto the carve. Once all the cuts were done on the top, I used a random orbital sander to smooth out all the steps from the carve templates. You've all seen it done, so I'll just shut up and show you.





.




It's not perfect yet, and I sanded a little too much around the switch and along the edges of the pickup plane.





The edge near the switch happened because I thought there wasnt supposed to be recurve there, so I tried to get rid it. Then I looked at more pics, and saw that there was. So I tried to put it back, but it was too sharp and deep. I finally got it to where I could ive with it, and left it at that. I'm not going for vintage accurate, so I think once it's bound it won;t be that noticable. And I'll probably have to sand the underside of the pickup rings a bit to match te curve near the edges. No big deal.

Thats all fo now folks.

PS, any answers on my truss rod question?

[Archer]

Keep chugging along man. I'm glad I'm not the only one that makes a mistake every now and then. Some builds on here go so smoothly it makes me feel inadequate . Or do they just appear to go smoothly? Hmmmmm.......

[jonny]

Originally Posted by Archer

Keep chugging along man. I'm glad I'm not the only one that makes a mistake every now and then. Some builds on here go so smoothly it makes me feel inadequate . Or do they just appear to go smoothly? Hmmmmm.......

I know the feeling man. Thats why it always surprises when the thing actually works when I'm done

[jonny]

Ok, so this build may get going again. It's been kinda stalled while I was in school, but I'm home for the summer and I've got a bunch of tools to work with.

First, to get you updated:







Just a few little things done here and there. I figure I'm done the body except for drilling and sanding. I MIGHT make the binding channel deeper. It barely goes through the maple in a few places. And that eyebrow is pretty big.

But where I got the most work done is the fretboard.



Instead of messing around with superglue or binding goop, I just dipped it in acetone for less than a minute and stuck it right on.

Only one problem. There was kind of acetone everywhere. And when it touched the rosewood, it formed this brown substance that looked like maybe the acetone was washing the oils out of the wood or something. It looked like this.



Unfortunately, that brown shit is also on the surface of my board.



It didn't come off with naphtha, which kind of surprised me. I'm not sure what to do now. Any ideas? Does anyone know what exactly formed it?

[kfowler8]

Take a razor blade and see if it scrapes off. Do it like you're scraping the binding.

[jonny]

Ok, as per tradition I forgot about my thread, as I haven't really got much done on the guitar. Between work and rugby season it kinda took the backseat

Somewhere along the line a few gouges appeared on the back, and they were too deep to sand out. Also, this thing is still fvcking heavy. So I decided to take some thickness off the back.

Not so simple when the top is carved. Can't just run it through the planer

So, I made these:



Each of the six was made specifically for the spot it was going to go, so I could do this:



Then I clamp on some rails:



Attach a board to my router, and we're good to go



Partway done:



Time to redo the roundover.



But what's this?



I can't route here because the bearing wants to follow the inside edge of the mortise. So, I make a block,



Fit it to the mortise, and we have a surface to follow!



Re-establishing my cover plate recesses with a router and a big-ass drill bit.




The fretboard is glued to the neck, and in the next few days I'll be crowning and polishing the frets, and then I can shape the neck

And, a little sneak peview...

[Riku]

Headstock inlay?

[jonny]

Originally Posted by Riku

Headstock inlay?

One part of one...

[Aleksander]

That's so cool. I really appreciate your determination.
Alex

[jaxcat]

How did you find doing the frets ? Reason I ask is that I have been holding off buying a Lee Valley fret saw because it has a .021 kerf and the stew mac saw and stewmac fret wire are .023? So I was just curious how well pressing/hammering in the frets went for you? I know .002 of an inch isn't much but I was not sure if it would make much of a difference.

[jonny]

Originally Posted by jaxcat

How did you find doing the frets ? Reason I ask is that I have been holding off buying a Lee Valley fret saw because it has a .021 kerf and the stew mac saw and stewmac fret wire are .023? So I was just curious how well pressing/hammering in the frets went for you? I know .002 of an inch isn't much but I was not sure if it would make much of a difference.

Hmm, it was a while ago I'm not really a big fan of fretwork at, but it went fairly ok as I recall. After I radiused the board I went back and deepened the slots freehand, so maybe that widened it up a bit. It WAS a tight fit, really had to squish it in with the drill press. But I don't think they're going anywhere. I'm satisfied and will probably use the same saw/technique on the next one.

Hope that helps

[jonny]

Only pics tonight. I need to get to bed, I'm on day shift which starts at 5am.

Body as of now- shellac



And here we are. Thanks Tulsah!





That's my actual signature, beautified and transformed in MOP by the Amazing Albertan!

[sectorix]

whos this Abertan and how do i get to him for some orders ?