First Ever Build - Prs-y, Lespaulish

[Johnny Foreigner]

I'm having a freaking blast. my bank account less so...

yeah, I don't think I'm rushing anything. I made really good templates, which has made all of these bits much quicker. I'll be forced to slow down when I'm doing the carving, the fret markers, etc, etc.

[Hedley]

Enjoying the build! Can't wait to get started on mine

[Johnny Foreigner]

i\'ve been home alone all weekend while the missus is at SXSW, so managed to get a fair bit done.

cutting out the slots for the combined side and front fret markers:

and in they go - just bits of white abs binding chopped up.

and cut flush:

the top routed flush with the mahogany:

bit of tearout (operator stupidity) on the bottom which, thankfully, is shallow enough to disappear in the carve

[Johnny Foreigner]

more annoyingly, another stupid bit of tearout which the carve will not entirely deal with (kinda difficult to see with the flash, better photos to follow):

my transtint dye arrived so I did some test runs on scraps of the mahogany and the maple:

then the maple sanded back (did i sand back too much here?? Drak?):

and the end result. drooooooooool.

[Johnny Foreigner]

neck and pup routes in:

making that topography template finally pays off:

and the horrific looking rough topography. I started doing this with the router then switched to the safe-t-planer - much easier (props to Chris V's video).

YAY! It looks almost like a guitar!

[Moth]

Heyyyy, I have that router!

[solomon684]

Cool idea for the inlays, I like it

Heyyyy, I have that router!

Me too!!!

[Reinhold]

That's gonna be one sexy top there!

[trashman]

nice fret markers, and that top is gonna be sexy with that dye job. great work keep it up!

[Moth]

Cool idea for the inlays, I like it

Heyyyy, I have that router!

Me too!!!

Oh Snap!!

[Johnny Foreigner]

I think that just means we're all cheapskates.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Seems like I didn't get much done this weekend, but that's because I spent a lot of time working on the carve, which now looks like this:

still a couple of rough spots to even out, but it's 90% there, I think.

to give myself a break from working on that, I thinned down a leftover piece of maple with the safe-t-planer to use as a veneer for the headstock:

and an even thinner piece to use as a TR cover:

[Our Souls inc.]

Nice touch with the HS veneer. TR cover and all. Looking good , and for what its worth , I have that router too ! lol

[ScottR]

Carve looks good Tom. And that's a great chunk of maple! I's gonna be hot all dyed up.

SR

[Johnny Foreigner]

yeah, i'm hoping.

next up: avoiding screwing up the neck!

I'm sure it will improve the more builds I do, but I am going through this build paranoid about everything I could possibly screw up!

[Johnny Foreigner]

been a little preoccupied with other **** going on in my life, so been limiting working on this to a few hours at the weekends.

made some progress though, and starting to feel like I'm approaching the final furlong.

with the HS veneer glued on, I routed it flush with the mahogany:

I'm continuing to be impressed by the figure of the maple I got, as I didn't think I paid that much for it.

trying to figure out what to do about this:

it's a little bit of tearout on the upper horn, no more than 1/8" across. I'm going to be dyeing the back and neck black, then dyeing the top and HS veneer black, sanding back and dyeing blue.

So I think my options to conceal this boo-boo are:

- binding (last resort for me, because I think it will be a nightmare to cut the channel [and will look rubbish] the way the cutaways meet the neck

- wood filler

- titebond as filler

i'm doing some tests with wood filler and titebond on scrap to see how obvious the plugged sections are. I actually have a similar ding on the neck (silly mistake with the router) that I also need to conceal.

any thoughts appreciated.

I also finished carving the neck this weekend:

and i'm pretty happy with it. i ran through the grits up to about 1200 and the smooth wood feeling (that's what she said) was pretty awesome. the profile is pretty much a match for my crappy Tanglewood LP copy which was to hand (as I'm refinishing it) and always felt nice to play.

next up is leveling the fingerboard and installing the frets. Going to go read up a lot before I start on that. It's probably the part of the entire build that I feel least confident about, so I'm looking forward to getting past it, but not much relishing the scope for error....

[ScottR]

Routing a binding channel would be very tricky since you have alread carved the top. If it were me, I'd just sand the tip of that horn back until the chip is gone and then blend the curves till its smooth. When you are done I doubt anyone will know that horn is 1/8th inch shorter. It will be a little work to get the entire thickness mahagany and all reshaped, but probably less than you'd think.

SR

[Johnny Foreigner]

If it were me, I'd just sand the tip of that horn back until the chip is gone and then blend the curves till its smooth. When you are done I doubt anyone will know that horn is 1/8th inch shorter. It will be a little work to get the entire thickness mahagany and all reshaped, but probably less than you'd think.

that's not a bad idea... i'll see how the filler tests come out and if they're not good enough, I'll revert to reshaping the entire horn. thanks scott.

[mattharris75]

Cut a small sliver of maple that fits the tearout perfectly and has relatively close matching grain, then glue it in with titebond. Problem solved.

[Johnny Foreigner]

had 30 mins to spare this evening, so did this. and it was one of the things i was most nervous about, so glad it seems to have gone well...

first cut out my "logo" with the dremel and tidied up with a razor blade:

then mixed up some rosewood dust with epoxy to fill it in again.

hoping it will look good, but reasonably subtle when sanded back. less obvious than mop and not requiring any skill with a jeweler's saw!

[Johnny Foreigner]

ok, so as I posted on another thread, my neck join is NOT tight enough so I can lift the body up by the neck pre-gluing.

but the gap is teeeeeensy, so I wanted to get some advice.

this is with the neck in place and me pushing it as hard as I can away - to make the gap you're seeing as big as possible:

and here is the other side, me pulling the neck towards me, again to make the gap as big as possible:

and if I put the neck in, then slide it away from the body by less than half an inch, I can now pick up the body:

my feeling is that it will glue up just fine, but I really need some advice on this.

[Muzz]

ok, so as I posted on another thread, my neck join is NOT tight enough so I can lift the body up by the neck pre-gluing.

my feeling is that it will glue up just fine, but I really need some advice on this.

It might be OK just with PVA but if the joint does give way because there is not enough side support it probably won't shear along the glue line, it will pull out chunks along the neck and/or body. If it was me I would glue the bottom of the neck with PVA (nice and thin so it doesn't squeeze out) and the sides where there is space with clear araldite 2 pack epoxy. Give it a trial on some scrap. Alternatively glue up just with PVA and put some screws in, you won't have a worry in the world.

For your tear out, you cant find the chunks that came out? If not the insert technique mattharris suggested works well, or you can sandpaper smooth out the tearout, after staining and one coat of finish, make a mould with greasproof paper and tape and inject in a 2 part clear like glass coat, I have done this on repairs, it works great. You can even just blob on the glass coat and cover with grease proof paper.

[WezV]

that join is better than a lot of factory guitars.

now its nice to have it at the stage where you can pick it up without the body falling off... but all those photos on this forum started with perry showing off how good his joins were rather than being a required step. having it snug, but not tight is just as acceptable. also try and remember that being too tight is not good either, especially if using a water based glue that will swell the wood and could stop the neck going in

so yours is a little loose, but not massively so. If it was wider i would suggest a piece of veneer either side but as it is i would go with epoxy rather than titebond for the join

[Johnny Foreigner]

that join is better than a lot of factory guitars.

now its nice to have it at the stage where you can pick it up without the body falling off... but all those photos on this forum started with perry showing off how good his joins were rather than being a required step. having it snug, but not tight is just as acceptable. also try and remember that being too tight is not good either, especially if using a water based glue that will swell the wood and could stop the neck going in

so yours is a little loose, but not massively so. If it was wider i would suggest a piece of veneer either side but as it is i would go with epoxy rather than titebond for the join

awesome, that's kinda what I figured. So if I maybe use titebond on the bottom of the tenon and then epoxy on the sides (where the gap is) that would work well??

[WezV]

it will work, but i dont see the point. if you are mixing up some epoxy why not just glue it with that?