A Lp junior and Les Paul type build

[shickma0]

Hi all, I'll be starting a few different les pauls plus another guitar of a different design. The plans for the Les Pauls are as follows, one will be a doublecut junior, 1958 specs made from some plans I found online. The other will be a burst "replica" (I use the term replica lightly, it will be quite inaccurate from a vintage material perspective) made from the bartlett plans. I've purchased the first of my materials and am waiting on them to arrive. Until then, I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for making templates from the bartlett plans without ruining the original copy? Any tips there would be appreciated. Thanks!
Also if anyone is interested, I have created a CAD file of the junior (also a WIP, but the body is pretty much done), with correct pickup and cavity routes, image below.

 

[DaveR]

Until then, I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for making templates from the bartlett plans without ruining the original copy? Any tips there would be appreciated. Thanks!

I’m a graphic designer by trade and tried several different ways to try to get the plans into a computer for customizing. Scanning a bunch of small pieces and reassembling. Photographing the whole thing from up on a ladder. Both of these approaches led to distortion.

Ultimately I went with something super simple. I taped the plans down to a glass patio table, taped a piece of poster board over it, back lit the table from underneath with an old par can light and traced with a pencil. That approach worked great. After that I was able to scan those drawings in two halves and reassemble in photoshop.

First Build (turned into two...)

Hi, everybody! After 9 months of lurking/planning and 3 months of slow building, I've finally decided to start my build thread. Allow me to apologize in advance for long windedness. Its going to happen, and I only hope that the end result is an informative read for those who have the patience...

www.mylespaul.com

 

[SlingBlader]

Hi all, I'll be starting a few different les pauls plus another guitar of a different design. The plans for the Les Pauls are as follows, one will be a doublecut junior, 1958 specs made from some plans I found online. The other will be a burst "replica" (I use the term replica lightly, it will be quite inaccurate from a vintage material perspective) made from the bartlett plans. I've purchased the first of my materials and am waiting on them to arrive. Until then, I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for making templates from the bartlett plans without ruining the original copy? Any tips there would be appreciated. Thanks!
Also if anyone is interested, I have created a CAD file of the junior (also a WIP, but the body is pretty much done), with correct pickup and cavity routes, image below.

I think that the best way is to go ahead and buy the templates from Bartlett. Make copies of those and put the originals away.

Having said that, I also made copies of the plans. I found a local printing service that makes blueprints and banners. They fed the plan through an enormous scanner and printed several copies for me at a very good price. I made a few additional templates (fretboard, etc) from those copies and used them for my "working" copy of the plans.

Also, contact @pshupe about his nifty headstock template. (and templates for inlays, etc.)

 

[shickma0]

I think that the best way is to go ahead and buy the templates from Bartlett. Make copies of those and put the originals away.

Having said that, I also made copies of the plans. I found a local printing service that makes blueprints and banners. They fed the plan through an enormous scanner and printed several copies for me at a very good price. I made a few additional templates (fretboard, etc) from those copies and used them for my "working" copy of the plans.

Also, contact @pshupe about his nifty headstock template. (and templates for inlays, etc.)

Thank you for the reply, I'll look around to see if there is a print shop near me that can do that. Also, I sent pshupe a message about the templates, so thank you for that recommendation as well.

 

[pshupe]

Hey shickma0 - Here are the templates that Tom sells on his site - just google Bartlett Guitar Parts.

With the exception of the head stock template. I sell those and have a few left. I also do some custom inlay / fret slotting templates. Like these -

Just pm me with your interest or get the ones on Tom's site. Thanks.

Cheers Peter.

 

[shickma0]

Small update: I purchased an African Mahogany board today and have cut it into a piece that is suitable for the body. The board was 8 feet long, 7 inches wide and 1 3/4 inches thick. I also made the double cut template from some plans I got online. I’ll make templates for the 59 whenever my plans arrive in the mail. I tried to upload photos however Im getting an error that they're too large. I'll try to compress them then try again.

 

[shickma0]

I have all of my wood for the body and neck of the second guitar. The guitar’s contours are a combination of tracings from my 72 custom tele Squier for the lower bout, my 2013 Gibson trad pro II LP for the lower cutaway and a Bartlett Retrospec for the upper bout and cutaway. it’s benign made from relatively cheap wood as I’ve never carved a top before. It’s some 1/2 inch thick African mahogany for the body and 9/16th inch plain Canadian maple for the top.
I modeled the guitar last night so I have something to reference for measurements when I build. I’m moving this month so outside of planing and thicknessing the boards I don’t expect to work on it too much until early December.

 

[dcomiskey]

A question for Gibson gurus: would that neck profile template work for SG and V necks?

 

[pshupe]

It should work for any guitars that had a neck join at the 16th fret, like an LP, Explorer, or Futura. Off the top of my head it may work for a V but not an SG unless it was a later version. I just made an SG and it joined much further up the neck.

I could make you one for the SG, if you like.

Cheers Peter.

 

[shickma0]

It’s been a while but I’ve made some significant ish progress on the double cut build. Since the last post I’ve planned and jointed the mahogany board and ended up with 2 two piece body blanks, one of which for the junior and the other for the Les Paulish build. I cut out and routed, sanded etc the body of the junior and also grain filled and sealed it. I’m currently debating between making and purchasing a neck for this as it seems like it would be a major time saver to purchase one however part of me wants to make it from scratch.

 

[DaveR]

Go for the neck build. You’ll need some specialty tools: leveling beam of some type (but this could just be a block of really straight hardwood), a crowning file, a radius block for sanding the FB, and I’d recommend a fret pressing caul at least to help hammer in the frets or to press them in with some kind of homemade rig or arbor press. Everything else can be done with basic woodworking equipment. LMII and Stewmac sell inexpensive pre-radiused, pre-slotted fretboards. Probably worth it for a first time build.

Building a neck significantly ups the difficulty, but is greatly rewarding. Also, a purchased neck may or may not work with the pocket you have already cut. And expect that any neck you buy may need fretwork as well.

 

[shickma0]

Felt confident enough with the tools after the first body to start the second body. Got the templates made, rough cut the body and shaped the body. Body and top weigh about 10.5 pounds as of now however there’s plenty of material left to remove. Body worked out pretty well with almost zero tear out except for a little bit of endgrain which should sand right out. I haven’t had too much time to work on these as I’m in school from 7am until 3pm and then I work from 3pm to 7pm but I’ve been trying to get in what I can.

 

[shickma0]

Got the cavities routed (toggle switch, control and wire channel) as well as the lips for the cover plates. They aren’t perfect, but the templates I used for them I made freehand so I’m quite satisfied with how they turned out. I also did the roundover using a 3/8th inch roundover bit and made a jig based on the one in exNihilo’s recent video on how to carve a les Paul top which was incredibly helpful by the way so thanks to him for that. Also glued the top on a routed it flush with the mahogany. I plan on starting the carve after work tomorrow and was wondering if there was any issue with just freehanding the routes instead of making carve templates? I planned on simply drawing each profile onto the body and then freehanding as close to the line as possible rather than making many MDF templates. This is because of the odd asymmetrical body shape not being one that I plan on reproducing ever and therefore it seems like a bit of a waste to make templates for it. Thanks!

 

[DaveR]

If you’re talking about step carving with a router I think you could freehand it if you really want to, but templates make it a little easier to not screw up. On the two tops that I’ve carved (and they’re both different) I made templates not so much for repeatability but just to help keep it symmetrical and consistent. It can get really hard to see what you’re doing with chips going everywhere. Plus I worked out all the math and wrote the bit depth for each step right on top of the template so it was easy to switch between each one. I secured the templates with a screw into the future pickup location so it was a quick swap. If I had it to do again, I’d still probably make templates, but it’s not mandatory.

With or without templates, take your time, work from the outside - in. On the deeper cuts (first few steps) I think I even made a couple passes to work up to the right depth. Be very careful to not let the router get tippy and wear a mask, this part is super messy.

 

[shickma0]

Did the step routing and rough carve today. Made a couple of pretty critical errors however I have some ideas to fix these and also thought that some of you may have ideas as well. The step carving overall went quite well except for in 2 areas where my routers depth stop screw came loose from the vibrations causing the router to drop and make a really nasty gouge. I figure that the proper fix is to route out the affected section, make a patch from the cutoff of the body so that the grain matches and then re-route and carve the area. However, as the guitar is just for me and also will be painted a solid color I was wondering if I could just wood fill these areas and then re carve? And if so what would be the best filler? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks! Also, just a side note, I’ve only done a rough carve so far to remove the steps and as such the transitions aren’t great yet and there is no recurve however I plan on going in with a single light source and lighter grit sandpaper tomorrow as I have the day off.

 

[DaveR]

View attachment 434070

Dang. That’s rough but could have been way worse. I had something similar happen when cutting my binding channel.

Skip the wood putty. If you wanted to piece in a chunk of maple, I’d build some kind of contraption to hold your router and zip a straight line parallel to the body. Glue in a maple rectangle and sand to fit.

HOWEVER, I don’t think you need too. Based on this picture, the deepest cut on the left will be removed by the binding channel. On the right it looks like you’re not quite half way through the maple? If that’s the case, I would be inclined to just sand that goof up out. Take it easy on the recurve (like maybe NO recurve) and you’ll be good to go.

Have you cut in the neck angle and pickup plane into the top yet? I didn’t bother with any hand carving until those planes were cut AND all my pickup and neck mortise routes were cut because I relied on the flat middle portion of the guitar to adhere my templates to. But there’s many different ways to do it.

 

[shickma0]

Dang. That’s rough but could have been way worse. I had something similar happen when cutting my binding channel.

Skip the wood putty. If you wanted to piece in a chunk of maple, I’d build some kind of contraption to hold your router and zip a straight line parallel to the body. Glue in a maple rectangle and sand to fit.

HOWEVER, I don’t think you need too. Based on this picture, the deepest cut on the left will be removed by the binding channel. On the right it looks like you’re not quite half way through the maple? If that’s the case, I would be inclined to just sand that goof up out. Take it easy on the recurve (like maybe NO recurve) and you’ll be good to go.

Have you cut in the neck angle and pickup plane into the top yet? I didn’t bother with any hand carving until those planes were cut AND all my pickup and neck mortise routes were cut because I relied on the flat middle portion of the guitar to adhere my templates to. But there’s many different ways to do it.

I just cut the neck plane today. I’m using a box jig over the body to hold the templates so having the planes there doesn’t matter for me as of now. I’m cutting the neck mortise at an angle so I’m adhering the template directly to the neck plane. Thanks for the advice on fixing the carve, it was helpful today while trying to fix it! I appreciate your input

 

[shickma0]

Today I refined the carve a bit more and cut the neck plane to about 4.3°. Tomorrow I plan on cutting the p/u plane and routing the neck mortise. For the carve gouges, I tried to sand as much of them out as possible without loosing too much top thickness and then used wood filler but only on the deepest parts (about 1/16 of an inch deep) and it seems to have done fine but I guess I’ll know once it’s all painted. Thanks for reading!

 

[shickma0]

Also, does anyone have recommendations for a router bit/bearing combo to get a 0.09 inch wide binding channel for the Bartlett binding?thanks

 

[DaveR]

If you already have Bartlett binding I might hang on to that for a future build if you’re ever trying to go vintage accurate. For a non vintage build I’d probably use something cheap off of eBay or from stewmac. As long as it will dissolve in acetone it’ll work as far as I know.
I believe the Stewmac binding but set will do just about anything you want. I don’t own it as it’s pretty expensive for my limited needs. I used a 1/2” bit with a 3/8” bearing (white side brand purchased on Amazon) to cut a 1/16” binding channel. Glued in my slightly thicker binding and scraped it down flush to the body. It’s my understanding that you probably want the binding to be a little proud when glued in to allow for scraping/sanding flush.