Les Paul Hollow Body Scratch Build

[J_48_Johnson]

This is my third build, but the first where I made the neck. On the first two, I bought the neck and made the body. On the third, I am making a neck through Les Paul.

I bought everything and started the build. I used a big chunk of maple for the neck, got the plans, (for dimensions), and started the build. Since I was going to make a one piece neck, it had to be thick and wide enough for the headstock angle and width.

After messing around on the computer, I found a picture I knew I had but couldn't find when I started this thread. Here's a picture of the wood when I started the build. The three on the left are the pieces I used for this build. The one kind of out of the picture on the far left is the neck wood. The one to the far right is a free piece the guy sent me for whatever reason when I bought the wood for this project. The yardstick is in there to give you a reference on how big these boards are.

Edited June 22, 2008 by J_48_Johnson

[killemall8]

so, is that all you have to show for now?

[J_48_Johnson]

I layed out the neck

marked the tuners location

cut the headstock angle

cut the groove and installed a double action truss rod

glued down the ebony fretboard

did the inlays and side dots

sanded the fretboard to a 12" radius

installed the frets

trimmed the fret ends

on the 12th. fret, instead of using double dots, I am using a garnet trimmed in a gold ring, and did a little work at the body end of the fretboard

after that, I carved the neck with a spokeshave, rasps, and sandpaper

[J_48_Johnson]

[J_48_Johnson]

Once I had it pretty much roughed in, I started on the body wings. I cut them out, hollowed them out, drilled the holes for the three way switch, pots., and the internal channel for the wiring from the three way across to the pots. location. I also worked on roughing in the heel area.

[J_48_Johnson]

[J_48_Johnson]

Before I glued the body wings on, I started the carve on the front with this...

Once I started, the calipers said I was getting a bit thin, so I had to stop before I got it too thin. These next few pictures are with the wings just sitting where they will be glued on.

[J_48_Johnson]

I glued the wings on, sanded everything down, worked on the heel area until I was happy with it.

I worked on it again today, routed the pick up cavities, and started working on the control covers. I wanted to get a little further, but I ran out of time, and I didn't take the camera with me. I'll post more pictures when I get them.

[Xanthus]

The fretboard end and side dots are simply masterful. Neck heel transition comes up a bit too abruptly for me, but overall very nice. Great work thus far! Is the whole thing made out of maple, body back and top and all?

[jmrentis]

Once again, another good looking project. I had to laugh I have the same setup for carving, I started by hand and after 20 minutes of getting nowhere I went to home depot and spent very little money for a very helpful tool! Nice looking wood and it looks like its coming together nicely. The inlays look very nice and fit well for the project. I really like the project, I've been leaning towards some type of single cut for my next and this project pretty much sealed the deal I think. Nice work. Keep those progress photos coming! J

[PeteBuchan]

I'm in the process of making a similar guitar just now. Have been for over a year but keep getting side tracked. As Xanthus says, the heel looks a little 'sharp' to my eye. Here's what I did with mine....

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1208747628

I'm not sure if you've left enough wood to be able to convert. The size of the chamber seems as though it might be a little big to allow for a carved heel. If you reckon you can fit it in, I definately recommend doing it as it's far more comfortable than the standard les paul heel.

Another thing.... What colour are you planning for this thing? I've stripped my one down for about the 5th time and am currently confused as to how I want it finished?

Here's a picture of what it looks like just now...what do you reckon?

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o218/Pe...pg?t=1208747938

Pete

[Xanthus]

Dammit Pete, I want to see it done already! Those racing stripe laminates make me drool, and I love the F holes. I'd personally just clear or oil it, maybe a tiny bit of amber or red wine on it like you did for the back of the neck.

[PeteBuchan]

I'll get round to it in a couple of weeks after I'm finished my uni thesis and exams and get graduated. When the time comes, I'll probably spray a very fine amber coat just to add a little warmth, followed by a few clear coats.

Johnson, are you planning on putting f-holes on this? It would look pretty cool. I made a semi hollow telecaster once and didn't put f-holes in it. I regretted not doing that afterwards.

Pete

[Blackdog]

Hi Johnson !!

That is going to be a great looking Paula !! Not a big fan of the open-book thing at the end of the fretboard, but that's just me. As it was asked before: f-holes of any kind ??

I'll definitely follow this one, I will have to try a neck through one of these days...

Keep us posted !!

[J_48_Johnson]

The neck/heel area is pretty sharp, but when you slide your hand into that area of the neck, like you are fretting a note at the top end of the fretboard, your hand doesn't even touch the heel. It seems strange to slide up there and not hit anything with the side of your hand. You can hit the last fret with your pointer, (first), finger and not hit the heel.

Like Pete said, even if I wanted to, I couldn't do much more with rounding out the heel because I run the risk of getting into the chamber of the wings.

What do you guys think of the 12th. side dot idea? It may look a bit odd in the picture, but when it's in place, it looks really good IMHO.

It will be Vintage Cream from ReRanch on the headstock front, body front and body sides, and natural on the back of the body and of course the neck. The natural will be done in Tru-oil with no stain, just the Tru-oil. I have cream colored pick up rings, pick guard, and truss rod cover to go on along with a chrome roller TOM, chrome Gibson PAF Classic H.B.'ers and a polished aluminum Bigsy B-7 unit. I'm not putting any F-holes in this one as I did that with my last build.

With all of that cream on the front it may seem like it will be a lot, which it might, but I hope that the plastic guard and the pup rings will be a shade different and kind of offset the paint color just enough. Let me run this by you guys...

I am using the wood I sawed out for the control covers as the control covers with binding around the edges to fill the gap of the saw blade and any smoothing it will need. Since the back will be natural maple with a hint of cream color, (the binding), what do you think about me making my own pup rings, truss rod cover and pick guard out of a scrap piece of flamed maple for the front? This way the natural flame maple will add highlights to the front and blend with the back bringing the whole thing front and back together

The main reason this is hollow is for weight reduction. The uncarved maple neck blank and the boards for the body wings after they were cut to close length tipped in at just over FOURTEEN POUNDS so I had to get rid of a lot of it.

The entire thing is maple so it may sound very brite when It's all said and done, but we'll see. With the pups., pots., and the caps. I bought, all OE Gibson per the print in thier values I'm thinking it won't be bad at all.

[J_48_Johnson]

Thank you for a name of the cut I made Blackdog, "open book" fits it perfectly. You don't like it huh? Man, I think that's one of the coolest things on it dude! lol

[J_48_Johnson]

With the ebony being so dark, and the front being cream, it should stand out quite nicely to say the least.

[Blackdog]

Thank you for a name of the cut I made Blackdog, "open book" fits it perfectly. You don't like it huh? Man, I think that's one of the coolest things on it dude! lol

Hi again,

Let me elaborate: it's not that I don't like it per-se. I think they look killer in bigger jazz boxes where the neck pickup is farther away from the end of the neck.

It's just not my cup of tea in a LP. In my mind (quite narrow and limited) having the neck pickup separated from the neck end in a les paul looks kinda wrong.

But the only thing that matters is that YOU like it, right ??

In anycase, perfectly executed. Congrats !!

[J_48_Johnson]

..."having the neck pickup separated from the neck end in a les paul looks kinda wrong."

I have to disagree Blackdog. The pickup is the exact distance from the last fret as in the blueprints I bought. In fact, all of the dimentions used in the blueprints are found on my guitar.

What may be throwing you off is this... After the last fret, I cut the open book in the remaining wood past the last fret wire. See?

And please don't think I'm digging on your for your opinion or what you think dude, that's why we all make different guitars right?

[J_48_Johnson]

Things have been going a little slow on the build as of late, but I'm getting it done slowly.

I made a couple more pick up rings, a truss rod cover, and the pick guard, but I had a little problem with the pick guard. The band saw blade caught it and tried to drag it through the table. Needless to say; table won.

Once I bought a new blade I cut another pick guard, along with working on the cavity covers and I got the front/sides in primer.

This is where it stands as of now.

[Xanthus]

Wood accents/accessories > plastic, any day of the week

[J_48_Johnson]

After shooting primer and sanding down the mistakes I made, here's what I had at that point

[J_48_Johnson]

After finishing up with the primer, I started shooting the color coats. Here are a couple of the headstock.

The first one shows the flame in the neck wood, and the second shows the painted headstock face with the truss rod cover held in place with the rare earth magnets. I rushed the picture a little bit and didn't get it lined up so you can see under the cover a little bit in the picture, but it cover the truss rod hole all of the way normally.

Note; Just from these two pictures you can see that the color seems to shift depending if you are looking at it straight on or at an angle. It also varies greatly by the type of light you are looking at it by. In the next post you'll see what I mean when I show you the front of the body.

Edited June 22, 2008 by J_48_Johnson

[J_48_Johnson]

Here are two pictures of the body in paint only. I also layed the trim pieces in place to see what they look like... better than plastic I think. You can also see what I mean about the color difference in angle and lighting from my last post. The paint really has a nice color to it in direct sunlight, (no pictures).

[J_48_Johnson]

Here's the back of the body and the heel area of the neck in a couple coats of Tru-oil only. You can see the covers here as well, the are held in place with rare earth magnets same as the truss rod cover. I made it this way to make the back look cleaner than using screws.

Please don't laugh at my binding work as it's the first time I've worked with any. Hats off to people who can make binding look easy! I wanted to trim the inside of the cover hole, and the outside of the cover so there was no bare wood showing. I used the pieces of wood that came out of the holes so the grain would line up and be a perfect match.

The pot. cover didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but it's okay. I had problems making the cut and as a result I had to stack the binding on itself to fill the cap in the corners. It turned out okay, but not like the 3 way switch cover. It turned out how I wanted, one piece of binding in the hole, one on the cover. I learned a lot about binding doing both of these covers. I learned how hard it could be with the pot. cover; layering and glueing, then melting pieces in acetone to blend everything together, and how easy it could be with the switch cover; cutting it, glueing in and done.