mistermikev

well... the plastic ones work... and are like $1.5 each at allied express so... gonna give em a shot anyway!

i concur your cad skills are really great. also... that top... to get such fine flame - would be a great top!

I always am not happy with my options for 9v. I've used these little metal clips that work ok... but they scratch up the battery and are kind of a pain to get a bat in. I bought a bunch of these plastic door type jobbies and next time I think I'll actually mount those and have a magnetic door over them to hide their ugliness. they DO hold a battery well and are easy in/out. looks like this would be easy in/out. nice work.

rules: just post pics of strange cool unusual designs... I saw this thread the other day with some really inpsiring ai designed guitars... jens ritter always inspiring...

I've watched this vid about a thousand times. my bandsaw isn't much... but thanks to snodgrass it resaws w the best of them. the two things that did the most for me was 1) bearings as close as possible w/o turning and 2 ) the gullet of the blade should ride the apex of the wheel/tire. once I did that... was like a light going on. that said... your resaw is a lot cleaner than mine. germany - I am a big fan of the site guitarbassbau I use google translate to navigate and a lot of really great builds there and docs too (if you don't know now you know). I figure with words like ubersicht it and a ".de" it must be german! also... big fan of your beer (or at least when I drank I was) - hacker pschorr weiss - "it was the greatest beer in all the vorld". hehe

well technically we could open up the byrdland and throw in a whole range of actuals around the 23.5 mark lol! The most surprising thing I think I've learned over all this search into scale length... is that they only did actual 24.75 prior to 53/54... which means it is the LEAST accurate number they could have picked for their advertisement lolz... but like they say if you start in w the INTENTION of a 24.75 and apply the rule of 18 (ie the rule of compound errors) instead of rule of 17.8123234534523234523452345ELEVENTY then you end up near 24.5625 at the 12 so who can blame them!?

funny, I worried myself that you might think I was doing anything other than the sm. I tend to spit things out like I am contesting something but really just seeing if anyone else can see any flaws i missed. it's all good. I found the video pretty interesting. Certainly some elements of history I wasn't aware of. gibson luthiers... well they started using a flawed "rule of 18" vs the 17.82... so the errors compound and depending on how far you carry out the math... well it just goes all over the place. now-a-days... calculators and precision machining... well we're just spoiled. again... it's all good! very much appreciate your input to the thread!

don't take this the right way but... nice ash. excited for you taking the plunge. I know that luthiery has been so fulfilling for me... ("you complete me luthiery") I hope the sm for you and look fwd to seeing you succeed... remember... you can't spell success without succ!

right on I had looked around at pearl dust but hadn't settled on one so I'm glad to get that link. they def have some interesting dust over there.

some great info there. I've read much the sm. you see threads out there - guys arguing about 24 5/8 vs 24 9/16 vs 24.562... and ironically the kind of precision that was available back then would make it highly unlikely that you couldn't start from any of those three and end up at any other. Even today... with cnc... getting precision to 5/1000 is only possible if you happen to have calibrated your machine that day using a brand new bit! Further that actual difference any one of those scale lengths would make is pretty small. I can def hear the dif between 25.5 and 24.75... but 24.75 vs 24.5625? zero chances I could pick that out. that said... it is a fun exercise to try to do it as close as possible to the original.

like anything else burst... there is a lot of dif contention on the scale length. "Don MacRostie and Dan Erlewine did extensive studies of Gibson fret scales on a pile of guitars from the 1920's up to current models.From what they have found, Gibson has not actually used the 24-3/4" since the early 50's. The most common scale they found was 24-9/16" although 24-5/8" was also used." "The actual scale length is not 24-3/4". It is 24 5/8" on at least five instruments between 1953 to 1961 that I´ve mesured during the day.Gibson suposedly used 24-3/4" before 1953 then changed to either 24-5/8 or 24-9/16"" as I understand... 24 3/4 was based on the early advertisments... but the early lesters were actually not very precision in their scale length and apparently you can find horrifying discrepancies in the frets. With that in mind I used 24.562 (ie 24.5625 or 24 9/16) as one of the design docs I relied on early was based on an actual 'copy' that was measured to that scale. The "marlin era" version is 24 3/4 because it is a more standard measurement. Also I can use that fretboard work if I ever want to do an early gold top or black beauty as I understand several were measured at that.

I've wrestled quite a bit with the "go all in" and the point where we start to diverge is the headstock... just not going to copy a headstock for my own reasons. so at that point... it's not going to be a "proper 59"... perhaps 97% of one. The original bridge was zinc... so imo you can spend more on getting the exact zinc mixture but A) its zinc! and B ) if I was going to spend $200 on a bridge it would be aluminum or steel... not zinc. in fact for the "marlin era" I've bought an all aluminum locking bridge. I'll go with zinc from gotoh - they have been very good quality for me and also make a nice tailpiece - aluminum just like the orig. philadelphia luthier has butyrate pu rings for $17.99 and according to many those are as close as they get. Not planning on relic here so, no interest in that. they've (phila) also got very accurate pickguards, ctrl cavity covers, knobs, and some fairly close celluloid trapazoid inlays. I'm not above spending money on wood... that single piece genuine mahog was not cheap, and neither were the gen mahog neck blanks. the brazillian rosewood... it'd be one thing if I was paying $1-200 for some pale moon ebony... but the brazillian rw on the originals is just black. I reserve the right to change my mind and snag one... but I just don't think it'd look/feel/sound different from rosewood/granadillo/ebony w some dye. I think I'll get a guitar that looks, sounds and feels like a 59'... but more importantly it'll be another chapter in my study of the masters.

right on. I've said it before... crazy how arbitrary it is... one could almost make ANY 2-5deg angle work. have heard a lot about that book. if you read any good tidbits def pass them on. I've been spending a lot of time over at mylespaul.com and reading through old threads and looking at various design docs. The guys over there really have a lot of knowledge about anything from historically correct binding to literally where the wire channel should be. On the one hand... I love their enthusiam about that one guitar... on the other - historically accurate binding seems a stretch too far... for pete's sake it's PLASTIC! There is a guy who visits a lot over there... bartlet... he has some crazy build threads where he takes it to the n'th degree. I don't want to go quite THAT far. I like the idea of copying the body carve as close as possible, the scale length, the neck profile, headstock angle... but I can't pay $200 for a brazillian rosewood fretboard blank! One has to draw a line somewhere. all that said... the truss rod... that is a real learning experience. having one of the gibson modern one's on hand... it is SO delicate! .167" of stainless rod. IDK that I want to only build with single rods from here on out... but it is a beautiful thing that it is that simple, that slight... and yet plenty effective.

whatever works for you is all that matters. i do an initial crown pass with a stew mac 150 grit, bring everything up to 400 w erasers and crown again with 300 grit, then shine everything up to 2000, then come back with an 800 grit leveling beam and markers... for me this leaves a razor thin line on all frets. after doing that I've never bothered using a rocker... and ultimately the strings will tell you if you've got a problem after everything is under tension but haven't had that issue myself. lotta dif ways to get to the church.

on the one hand... I'm with ya... if you use a marker to level your board it should be level... on the other hand if you have wet noodle wood that doesn't hold a nice arc once tension is on it... i guess they could be useful in identifying where the problem is... for me: never use the one I have.

so looking over my 'les flaus' build thread it occurred to me that my neck angle on that one was 4 deg... figured I had better do a mock up for these builds and confirm. 4 degrees seems like the magic number for me. on this neck it is setup to join the body at the outside of the 16th fret (at fret width) and the neck plane should end at the top of the neck pickup route. given those variables... I mocked it up using the pinnacle locking bridge I have and jescar fw58118 frets to find I'll have .14" of upward play w/o cutting slots into the saddles... which is really more than I need. I want to keep my bridge tight to the body bridges tend to be most stable when the studs are screwed in as much as possible. further you want to have your tailpiece bottomed out on the body and a lower angle gives less of a chance of the strings hitting the back side of the bridge as they approach the tailpiece. well... 4deg works for this, it worked on my 27.5 scale barritone... I suspect it'd work for almost anything and it's a nice round number.

already bought mine a week ago and they are welding sticks, so right on. Would like to do stainless but I'm told threading them is a giant pain so we'll save that for another experience down the line. will just put some anti-seize on the nut side threads and hopefully that will ensure no rust for a long time.

looking fwd to seeing those cutouts!

not to take anything away from that stunning top... but this view right here is mezmerising to me.

right on... couple of those pieces aren't much bigger than my .0177 bit... so not really going to have a choice there since something that small will likely get spit out into the garage never to be found again! I was thinking what I will probably do is buy some recon stone for the blue parts of the inlay and then take some pieces over to my spindle sander and make some matching dust. what I'd really like to do is get into some thin agate pieces I have as the blue is spectacular... but that stuff is way too thick (3/16") and way too hard to mill. perhaps I can buy some crushed agate... gonna go look right now!

hehe, thanks for noticing! the inlay - for sure there are a number of very small pieces that are going to be hard there... and just the sheer number of pieces overall... s/b a challenge. there's a number of other things on these builds I specifically ran towards to challenge myself. haven't done a 7-layer binding so that will be a learning experience but doing triple binding on that headstock? instead of 45 deg angles... there are a number of curved meeting places... that is going to be hard. the neck profile on the valute version - leaves 3/16+ of wood at the back of the neck... going to have to be spot on on my measurements/stock-size there. This will be my first time doing both the angled straight truss rod, and the radius truss rod. Could have just gone for the std double action truss... but I hoped to learn some things. Also going to make my own truss rod for the one style. I'm also planning to do some experimental stuff with the finish on the lp custom verison. That said I'm letting myself off the hook on the ctrl cavities... could have gone for the magnetized covers but decided I'd just do plastic store-bought for this exercise. s/b enough real trials here!.

I'm sure there are better ways to do this... but as I sometimes do, I just did this with brute force. took a picture I liked and made it suitable for inlay. hours and hours. converting an image to handful of colors, then doing a vector import of the the lines... then hours and hours of cleanup and adjusting individual lines to make it look "not jagged"... then hours and hours turning the vectors into little puzzle pieces. Worth it only for the learning process. This will be the headstock bling for my humorous name: "the marlin era" throwback to "the norlin era". I guess I need to find some blue recon stone or other blue inlay material for the blue and light blue parts... white mop for the most of it and gold mop for the yellow part. will also need something gray for the stripes. some of the details are so small I will probably just get some colored dust of some sort.

so... finished working on my radius truss rod version. I've thought a lot about the 'norlin era' les pauls and wondered "what if they hadn't gone with pancake bodies, multi-piece mediocre tops, and multi-lam maple necks?" Thought I might try to make this version reminiscent of that time... they had the 60's slim taper necks, a valute, and "boat paddle" headstocks. Figured my headstock is 'close enough' hehe. resawed some lovely straight grained granidillo for the 59 version... stuff smells wonderful to cut!

right on. pretty spendy but ash like that is hard to find!

for the record i believe most two piece one way truss rods bottom out when loosened to the max if I'm not mistaken. Either way... as you said if it's a matter of being able to somehow release a bolt vs replacing a truss rod i'd def lean towards the bolt!