Les paul special build(s)

[ADFinlayson]

A few coats of sealer on at lunchtime and I seem to have been lucky re the green. Will hopefully get a brown burst on it over the weekend. 

[Prostheta]

I'm surprised! Where did the idea of laying down purple for the basis of accentuation come from?

[ADFinlayson]

5 hours ago, Prostheta said:

I'm surprised! Where did the idea of laying down purple for the basis of accentuation come from?

Nowhere other than the knowledge that purple + yellow = brown. Using alcohol dye as the substrate and water-based as the main colour tends to give a bit more contrast between the hard and soft grain though and building a colour by layering two colours can give more interesting tones than if I just blended yellow to brown. I've tested going the other way, waterbased first then alcohol based on top but it doesn't seem to give the same result. Also, the grain needs to be raised to get the alcohol to really soak in so I go over the top with a damp rag just before applying the purple.

What I have since discovered is that the angelus purple, goes quite blue when diluted heavily, so that will be how I managed to introduce some green when I mixed in some yellow. I also hadn't tested mixing angelus yellow with angelus purple, I just did that bit off the cuff because I didn't like the diluted purple on it's own. That'll teach me not to do a tester. Doh. 

[ADFinlayson]

Got the neck glued on this one this arvo. I noticed a little hairline gap on the bass side so I introduced the extra clamp which gave me a bit of squeeze out along that line so I think I'm ok now.

Unlike most of my previous builds, I did all the fretwork including polishing prior to fitting the neck. I've decided that this is the way forward from now on - It's way easier to get the dressing file to the high frets on a singlecut with no body to worry about and there is less chance of damaging finish. 

Also, I'm using my buffing arbour to buff frets now too This is sooo much faster than using the dremel and I didn't even bother taping off the fretboard, Obviously it would be a no go with maple binding or a maple board, but for rosewood or ebony, it polishes up the fretboard really nicely. 

Really looking forward to getting some lacquer on this one tomorrow, with any luck I'll get a coat of clear down as a base coat, get a burst on it and then one final coat to lock it in. I am just a little bit dubious about bursting near the f-hole, I think it will be a bit to tape off and to clean up any overspray. 

[Prostheta]

I'm surprised that you managed to close up the gap that way, and I don't know whether it'll be permanently closed or is sat waiting to open itself up when you turn your back.

Neck joints can be a bit weird. Since you use fulĺ-width tenons (at least here, anyway) have you considered extending the mortise a little further back, allowing the neck to be fitted at the looser end, then pushed into place with a spreader? That is by far the strongest layup, however the remaining gap behind the mortise seems to send some builders into crazy lunatic fits of disgust and paranoia!

[ADFinlayson]

59 minutes ago, Prostheta said:

have you considered extending the mortise a little further back, allowing the neck to be fitted at the looser end, then pushed into place with a spreader? That is by far the strongest layup, however the remaining gap behind the mortise seems to send some builders into crazy lunatic fits of disgust and paranoia!

I'm not sure I understand what you mean mate. 

[ADFinlayson]

First coat of lacquer. 

 

[Prostheta]

19 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean mate. 

When building a neck joint using a tapered tenon, the mortise in the body is extended backwards to say, the back end of the neck pickup rout. Because of the taper, it's wider so the neck tenon can be inserted vertically without mechanically scraping adhesive from the sidewalls. A clamp reversed into a spreader pushes the neck forward into the narrower portion of the taper which provides a tighter fit without need of easing. Obviously this is nothing to do with the hairline space, but it made me think of this technique. For heelless neck joints, it's a neat trick.

[Bizman62]

@Prostheta do you mean like this? And potentially securing it with a wedge at the end?

[Prostheta]

No wedge needed. It would be superfluous to requirements.

I did a hunt in my photo archive and couldn't find a good example, never mind how I learnt about this. I'd like to say that I picked it up from Chris Verhoeven and/or David Myka. I might be wrong, however I am pretty certain.

[ADFinlayson]

Oh I see, yes that's the style of tenon I'm using - I always thought it was called a dovetail tenon as it's tapered. I could do with some more clamps so I might see if I can get some that I can flip into spreader clamps. Good shout.

Got the burst on and a coat of clear to protect it, bit unorthodox but I like it. Taping off the f-hole was a bastard.

[Prostheta]

Well, that brought it back home. A little clear changes a lot.

[Bizman62]

Somehow I'm thinking of a feline...

[ADFinlayson]

Forgot to post yesterday, also filmed the last clear coat going on after the burst so you can see it pop 

 

[Prostheta]

It looks a lot better in motion than in the still. Is that the case? I'm certain that I recommended 8Bomb Custom's videos on YouTube, however if I didn't then I would be at fault for not mentioning. His work is deeply trad-repro sort of stuff, but his approach shows that level of subtlety and detail which take things so many levels up. I'm sure you'll take a lot from it. Everything that he does seems to be toner rather than stain/dye. I've always wanted to try my hand and extend my skills out to there, but it's so much time and investment that I keep remembering how many hours there are in a day. And that I need to sleep during some of them.

 

....plus he uses aniline specifically because it fades, and he UV bombs it in pt. 4

[ADFinlayson]

1 hour ago, Prostheta said:

It looks a lot better in motion than in the still. Is that the case? I'm certain that I recommended 8Bomb Custom's videos on YouTube, however if I didn't then I would be at fault for not mentioning. His work is deeply trad-repro sort of stuff, but his approach shows that level of subtlety and detail which take things so many levels up. I'm sure you'll take a lot from it. Everything that he does seems to be toner rather than stain/dye. I've always wanted to try my hand and extend my skills out to there, but it's so much time and investment that I keep remembering how many hours there are in a day. And that I need to sleep during some of them.

....plus he uses aniline specifically because it fades, and he UV bombs it in pt. 4

I like 8 bomb, he has loads of really useful info that I've learnt a lot from and I used his grainfiller recipe on this one a couple of years ago. The only difference was that I stained the guitar red before applying the filler instead of tinting it red with lacquer - I wasn't comfortable spraying tints at the time.

When it comes to guitar finishing, I think 8bomb and Freddy Gabersek are my two favourites on youtube, I must have watched Freddy's les paul series 10 times.

Yeah I'm liking shaders the more I use them, but what I'm not keen on with all this vintage correct stuff is that shaders tend to hide the nice figure in the wood the more they're applied, like a traditional tobacco burst for example, it's pretty much solid black up by the toggle/horns where as I want to try to get a balance between a sprayed burst and popping as much of the figure as I can. So using a combo of stains, sand back and shader seems to work well. Going too high contrast on the stains though can have the affect of making it "still" so there is no chatoyance at all - my old fire red burst PRS for example had deep red colour with thick black lines in the flame, but there was no movement at all so it might as well have been veneered ply. I seem to have got lucky on this one, there is some fairly high contrast in places but there is also still loads of movement going on - that's what I'm striving for anyway. 

The other benefit to using a bit of dye with a sand back, I see all those scratches I missed and can get them before lacquer goes on. 

 

[Prostheta]

Agreed on pretty much everything there, but especially on the whole "vintage correct" thing. That said (the contrarian that I am) the term isn't as clear as it should be. On one hand it pays respect to the weight of experience and knowledge gained through the evolution of the craft, whilst on the other it implies a backwards-looking insistence on maintaining old methods for the sake of it.

In that respect, learning about "vintage correct" methods with the right eyes allows you to divine the whys on the choices behind methods, perhaps a degree of the constraining forces but generally a better grasp of how much you can take from old ideas to form your ongoing personal scheme of things.

Yes, definitely. Changing a wood's colour radically through dye/stain kills chatoyance and makes it look like a veneer. The exact reason that dyes accentuate the figure is that it is harder to remove from end grain of rising/falling fibre ends than it is from the side of fibres. The more work you need to put into a sandback because of heavy accent colours, the less natural it looks. It's far better to do multiple light sessions of highlighting with say, tobacco and amber in various mixtures than it is to use coarse heavy pigments like blacks. To really pop the figure, shellac makes Maple pretty killer but there's a lot of consideration on the exact ordering of what quickly becomes a very complicated schedule.

I've never been a fan of tobacco bursts either. My personal favourite "look" is the slightly sick looking honey-green of a faded burst. It's right in the same field as the wood underneath, so it has a wonderful warm organic glow and texture. One of those things that I'll spend another ten-twenty years hunting down just to get right for that-one. Which is weird.

[ScottR]

On 4/8/2022 at 7:59 PM, ADFinlayson said:

Nowhere other than the knowledge that purple + yellow = brown.

All opposites on the color wheel equal brown. As do the three primary colors, and if one looks closely enough all opposites on the color break down into the three primary colors. Leaning heavier on one or the other shades the brown. And finally, if you are not quite pleased with the shade of brown you got, just tweak it with a tint in the clear coat. That gives the color a bit more depth too.

I realize that his is old news by now.....I've been crazy busy lately and am just taking a minute to try and catch up.

SR

[ADFinlayson]

On 4/16/2022 at 4:01 PM, ScottR said:

All opposites on the color wheel equal brown. As do the three primary colors, and if one looks closely enough all opposites on the color break down into the three primary colors. Leaning heavier on one or the other shades the brown. And finally, if you are not quite pleased with the shade of brown you got, just tweak it with a tint in the clear coat. That gives the color a bit more depth too.

I realize that his is old news by now.....I've been crazy busy lately and am just taking a minute to try and catch up.

SR

Agree with all of the above, and that's the rationale for using purple. However, it has turned slightly green. accentuated by the blue hue in my workshop lighting but it's definitely there. Annoyingly this wasn't visible after the sealer coat which is where a colour change normally occurs or even after the burst. Only once I'd built up 5 or 6 coats of clear did I start to notice it.  

I don't hate it so I'm not going to do anything rash like sand it all off and start again, but I have learnt a lesson about diluting angelus purple as a base colour. This is just off the buffer so it's ready to be put together, 

[ADFinlayson]

The last few weeks seem to have been fairly unproductive in the workshop due to work/life. The green tobacco one above is waiting for pickups which might be another week or two out, The ebony one finally has it's replacement p90 which sounds fab - I'll do some pics and demo of that one. But nothing else has gone on really so I thought I'd make some progress on the Korina one. 

First job was neck carving - I don't think I've talked much about carving lately but my method has changed a bit over the last 4 or 5 builds. I've gone back to using a shinto rasp and shaping a profile around the 1st fret and 15th, then I use a carving knife to shape the heel and volute transitions. I really like this method of carving, the knife can take loads or a little material depending on whether I use the wider or thin end of the blade and there is no sawdust 

Then I went back to the shinto to remove the bulk of the waste from the middle before using a no4 hand plane to even it out - not something I've done before but it works really nicely to get a perfectly level neck shaft with no dips, where I used to spend quite some time marking out the high spots with a pencil and doing spot carving and sanding. I will make a point of getting some pics/footage of that technique on the next build.

Almost forgot to mention, I've just got myself a pattern makers vice. Wow it's like an extra pair of hands. I've been after one for a while but struggled to justify the cost as they're over the VAT threshold if I ordered from stewmac and would be close to £200 by the time I've got it home. Another builder friend of mine mentioned they had them on offer at Axminster £99 incl delivery down from £150 so very happy with that purchase.

After carving, I got the neck glued up last night and it remained clamp for close to 24 hours, no reason for that other than I didn't manage to get out to the shop until this evening.

Glue up went well, really happy with the neck joint on this one. 

I hadn't decided whether I was going to go for 2 P90s or another PH build so I had left the bridge pickup route. So made up my mind and got that done this evening, then got the studs in and did a test fit of the bridge. Not sure if I've mentioned before but I recently got the stewmac p90 template and their 3/8" bearing bit, my p90s fit much more nicely now - the American covers do anyway (this one will be getting black covers, knobs and switch).

I need to spend a good hour on sanding and then it's on to finish. I'm thinking that a trans yellow might look cool on this one and was mulling over whether to stain it yellow then seal, grainfill and clear or to spray a yellow tint and I remembered @komodo's metal tele which looks really cool. So I think I might just steel Jeff's idea.

 

I'm thinking I will spray a flash coat or two to seal, then use a black grainfiller before shooting some yellow to taste, then clear. But I want to do my usual lacquer to oil transition at the neck heel so I might see if I can blend yellow to natural there too with the distinct possibility of sanding through if I'm unlucky.

[ADFinlayson]

My mate Danny popped over at the weekend for a go on the latest one so I got a bit of a demo so I can advertise it. 

Cracking on with the Korina one. Getting all the sanding scratches out of the binding was a bit of a PITA. I ended up getting the sides sanded to 320 then lightly scraping with a fresh razor blade. I don't know if it's down to the colour making scratches more visible but the tortoise shell celluloid was a lot more difficult to clean up than the cream ABS binding. 

Then I got a sealer coat of 50/50 lacquer/thinner over it so I could grain filler without staining the korina, really popped with a bit of lacquer. 

Then I used some burlap to apply some black jecofil filler. It's actually walnut but I darkened it up with carbon powder because my black pot dried up.

[mistermikev]

that back side.... oooh la la.  nice work.

[Bizman62]

41 minutes ago, mistermikev said:

that back side...

Indeed! Fancy tops are sooo last season! A sultry back, now that's something!

[Alucard0811]

22 hours ago, mistermikev said:

that back side.... oooh la la.

Things you can say about your guitar and your wife

 

Jokes aside. Really nice work lovley woods and looks great.

[ADFinlayson]

Thanks chaps. I added some angelus yellow to my lacquer to spray some yellow toner over it and it looks absolutely f%^king awful (much more green in real life than in this photo) so I'm going to be sanding it all off and doing it again. I'm regretting using the dark grainfiller now too. so I'm going to see how much of that I can get out then I think I'll fill again with some clear aquacoat.