A Pair Of Gibby Tribute Builds.

[ScottR]

Well, that certainly was a beautiful guitar....

And that pick-up combo ought to be awesome...

I don't know if I could get off the fence easily either, but I could certainly see a lean developing towards the '54.

SR

[Blackdog]

More progress...

The vintage P90 cavities were done in two steps. For this I made a new template. Here you can see the template in position for the first route of the neck pickup cavity. Cavities were routed perpendicular to the neck angle in the old guitars.

While there's a lot of info available on the 58-60 Bursts, with figures obtained from direct measurements on the original guitars, not so much information is available on the earlier goldtops. So the depths of the routings have been estimated from pictures of the original guitars. I followed the figures used by one builder over at the MLP forum: 13/16" for the deeper route and 5/8" for the shallower one. These are the figures for the front edge of the neck pickup. The same settings on the router are used for the bridge pickup, since the template will be raised over the top by the steeper neck angle, the routes will be proportionally shallower for that position.

This is the first route of the neck pu cavity.

Turned the template around, aligned and did the second route for the neck pickup.

This is the final result.

[Blackdog]

And the same process for the bridge pickup.

Compared to what you would find in a modern guitar, these cavities look rather shallow. But the SD Antiquity P90s I plan to use here fit perfectly well.

[orgmorg]

I like the idea of doing it as a '54, but you will probably need to use a flux capacitor on the tone control.

[Jdogg]

I like the idea of doing it as a '54, but you will probably need to use a flux capacitor on the tone control.

Werent those outlawed when some hoolingan went back in time and framed Tonya Harding???

[Osorio]

Very Very nice job! super clean!

Acetone and bind craps .... interesing I´ll try next time

[Blackdog]

Very Very nice job! super clean!

Acetone and bind craps .... interesing I´ll try next time

Thanks !

I found this acetone thing to work great, but I do not have a lot of experience with plastic binding...

May I ask what do you use ?

[Blackdog]

Very little progress to report. It's been a hell of a week at the day job...

I could only remove some wood from the back of the 355 neck. This is how I wanted to leave it to see if it remains stable.

Additionally, at the MLP Forum, a member came up with actual measurements of a 57 goldtop's cavities. The estimations of the depths I used were reasonably accurate for the main route (within 1 mm), but the secondary route (the "T" shaped one) was a bit shallow. Not that it matters a lot, but repositioned the template and deepened the routings accordingly.

Now I will be on holiday for 3 weeks. When I come back I'll start with the fretboards and then with the body of the 355.

See you in late August.

[eddiewarlock]

Looks amazing Blackdog!!

I wanted to ask you, where did you get those templates to route/carve the top of the Les Paul??

[Blackdog]

Looks amazing Blackdog!!

I wanted to ask you, where did you get those templates to route/carve the top of the Les Paul??

Thanks Eddie,

The carve templates were made by user ExNihilo of the MLP Forum. He generously made them available to the general public here.

It renders a very credible 50s LP carve.

[Blackdog]

One last installment before I go on holidays.

This is the slotted template for my jig, based on a scale of 24 3/4" and following the Rule of 18. Look at the small differences against a normal 24 9/16" scale template.

See you !

[eddiewarlock]

Thanks!! :)Now to find a suitable material to make binding . Multiple binding to make a les paul custom...

[Osorio]

Very Very nice job! super clean!

Acetone and bind craps .... interesing I´ll try next time

Thanks !

I found this acetone thing to work great, but I do not have a lot of experience with plastic binding...

May I ask what do you use ?

I use cianoacrilate (super bonder), more especifictly loctite 401, that was made for porous materials like wood. I mold the binding using a hair dryer and tape. When get coold the tape was removed and gluing process begins.

[eddiewarlock]

I've used PVC glue, you know, the stuff used to hold PVC pipes together. It melts the binding very much like acetone, but i find it way easier than wait until the nail polish remover melts binding shavings...

In fretboards i use cianocrilate, and then glueing pieces together of binding, like at the end of the fretboard, i use a bit of pvc glue. It's quick and clean, makes an invisible join.

I like it a lot

And yes it works with Stew Mac binding

[Blackdog]

OK. I'm back from holidays.

There is such a contrast between my sunny stay in Tenerife and the cloudy, chilly, rainy weather that NL had waiting for me, that I had to hide in the workshop and do some work to keep my mind busy...

Worked a lot on the fretboards. I need these before I can carve the necks.

The BRW board was already thicknessed, so it was cut to the width that my slotting jig can handle and pre-slotted it. These slots are for guidance only, the final slots were done after radiusing, and follow the radius of the board.

The ebony board needed thicknessing first, then the same process was applied for the preliminary slots.

The centerlines of the boards were marked and the inlay pieces aligned and glued in place. I use a dense nail polish for the gluing and let it dry overnight.

[Blackdog]

Once dried, the boards are scribed around the pearl pieces with a very sharp hobby knife. The pieces are then removed (with acetone) and the board cleaned.

For the inlay work I use a Dremel with the StewMac routing base.

These are pretty large pearl pieces, there's a lot of wood removal involved, I use a Dremel 1/8" routing bit for this coarse removal.

The fine routing was done with the StewMac inlay routing bits, two different sizes, for the closest possible fit.

[Blackdog]

The pearl pieces were then glued in place, using epoxy and the appropriate saw dust for filling.

And after sand-leveling it is already looking good.

[Blackdog]

And now it was time for some old-fashioned radiusing...

Prepared two 12"sanding blocks. First with 80 and 100 grits and then, for the final touches, with 120 and 180 grits.

After a bit of polishing:

By the way, you may have noticed that I incurred in another vintage correctness violation for the LP board...

After debating for a while if I was going to use the normal acrylic inlays or if I was going to spend 100+ euros for the "correct" cellulose nitrate inlays...

I decided to go with real MOP. Looks a lot classier.

[Blackdog]

Once radiused, the boards were re-slotted, so that the slots fit the fret tang without much slack and follow the radius of the board.

Next step was to taper the sides of the boards, considering the width of the binding still to be applied: 1.5mm for the 355 and 1mm for the LP. This was done using the table router, with a straight edge serving as guide for the template bit.

Here both boards have been tapered:

And next time I will start with the fretting.

[Blackdog]

A bit more progress on the fretboards...

Frets went in.

I use the StewMac fretting caul on the drill press. This is the first time I fret a board that is not attached to the neck. It is obviously a lot easier on just the board sitting flat !!

Now it was the time to fret the 355 neck.

The fret ends need to be filed flush with the unbound fretboard sides (Gibson style, remember ?). The fret ends were first cut tight against the board with the StewMac flush-cut fret cutter. For the final filing I built this tool, it worked like a charm. It uses the back of the fretboard for guidance and files at 90 degrees to that.

[Blackdog]

The two boards were now ready to get the binding.

The application of the binding was fairly simple, I glued them with CA. 1mm thick, cream binding for the LP and 1.5mm thick, white binding for the 355.

I left it a hair proud of the back of the boards, so that it will need some scraping to leave it flush before gluing to the neck.

Of course, on the topside, the binding is taller than the fretboard. Even a bit taller than the fret ends.

[Blackdog]

The first approach to leveling the binding to the boards, and covering the fret ends was done with my (pseudo) table router and a flush-cut bit. Those plastic chips are so much fun !!! The will stick to everything by static, only way to get rid of them was with the vacuum cleaner !!!

This leaves the final leveling to be done by hand-scraping. This is what it looks like at the moment:

Almost there now.......

[IPA or death]

Very nice, I admire your work. I know what you mean about the binding shards. I did something similar once while wearing a water resistant pullover . Looked like a snowman in no time.

[Blackdog]

Thanks IPA, very kind of you.

I am pretty much discovering the pleasures of working with plastic binding. Before these Gibson inspired builds I used exposed maple as faux-binding on the bodies, and different wood laminations for fretboard bindings. It should have been the other way around, but this is all new to me.

Last night I scraped the LP board binding. It's pretty much finished for what I want at this stage. The final touches will come with the polishing of the fretboard after the final fret work has been done.

I also installed the side dots.

The vintage correct tortoise side dots came courtesy of Bareknucles Pickups, they send a free pick with every pickup purchase. That's very nice of them considering some people are charging up to 15 euros for a set of these !!

Anyway, I could get 3 sets of dots out of one pick, not bad.

I had used the StewMac plastic rods and 2mm bronze wire for side dots before, never individual dots. So at first I thought it was going to be a pain to install these things in place, but it was surprisingly easy.

I drilled the holes just past the binding, slightly into the wood. One at a time, first put a drop of acetone in the hole. Then using tweezers I put the dot in place and lightly pressed it into the hole. Held it there for ten seconds until the acetone evaporated a bit. And that was it, after 10 mins they could be sanded flat and voilá: tortoise side dots that would make Ted McCarty smile !!

The fretboard was now ready enough to be glued to the neck.

Left it clamped overnight and this morning I had a neck ready for carving.

When I tapered it, I purposedly left the sides of the neck about 1-2 tenths of mm wider than the fretboard along the sides. So the first step will be to fine adjust the taper of the neck to the fretboard's width. Next, the side of the body at the cutaway has to be adjusted flush with the neck side at the heel. Then the proper carving will start.

This is already looking like a serious Les Paul…

(Question to Mods: I just violated the 4 pics per post max rule, but in a previous post I only used 3 pics. Does it compensate ? )

[idmicheal]

I love what yo did to that pick I bet you could market one of those as a high-speed, low wind resistance pick!