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Les Paul in progress...


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Setch. your lovely guitar making ^^

dont cry some mistake..

if it have some mistake.. i dont change world best guitar for you..

good luck..

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Setch,

I have a couple of questions going back to the top carving.

1) How thick was the maple top when you started carving?

2) How deep is the carve or what is the difference in depth from the bridge level

to the lowest point of the carve?

3) How tall is your binding? The tallest I saw at Stew-Mac was 3/8. Does your

binding channel overlap into the mahogony?

Thanks

Jeremy

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1&2 - My maple was supposed to be 3/4", with 1/2" difference in height between the highest and lowest points of the carve. However, the maple was badly warped, so machining it flat cost me a little thickness, I estimate it was 5/8" give or take a hair.

3. To preserve the height of the carve my binding was routed so that the maple/mahogany joint was in the centre of the binding. The binding is 1/4" all around the body, except in the cutaway, where it gets almost 7/16" tall.

91_cutawaydetail.jpg

I used Stew Mac ABS creme binding in .090 thickness, 9/16" height (part #4397).

Before gluing I ripped the binding along it's length, apart from a length long enough to cover the tall region in the cutaway.

Hope that covers everything.

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I've just got back from a LONG holiday and read this topic (I stopped at page 5 or 6). This Les Paul is GREAT!!!! As somebody else mentioned, it really looks like Slash's new signature guitar. Man, I Wish that I could try it out, full blown on a JCM 900!!! Excellent work!

mullmuzzler | OSSMT

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  • 2 weeks later...

sorry for the lack of updates lately, progress has been delayed by building work keeping me out of the garage. here's what *has* happened...

I took the guitar down to my old Uni' workshop, and drilled the holes for the stop tail using a sharp 10mm bradpoint to avoid damaging the finish, then following up with an 11mm twist drill to achieve final dimension. I got away without any chipping or finish damage, so it was time to test fit the hardware and string up for a check of the action and alignment.

92_hardwaretrial.jpg

The action was alarmingly high, even with the bridge bottomed out. I thought I'd set the neck wrong until I checked the relief (insert bad pun about being relief-ed). This neck is one piece, and bent under string tension much more than any I've built. Once I had cranked the trussrod 1/4 (in 2 steps of 1/8) the neck was much straighter, and the action was bang on. I spent a few days noodling on it, and checking out how it settled in, all is good. Neck has stayed straight as an arrow, and there is minimal buzzing and rattling - not bad since I haven't levelled the frets yet.

I wet sanded the guitar allover with 600 grit,levelling the finish in preparation for spraying my last few clear coats. More pic soon, but fullserve seems to be broken at the moment, I can only upload pics if I delete existing ones first. I tried setting up a second account, and I can't upload to that at all.

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  • 2 weeks later...

looks like fullserve is back up, so here's an update.

Front and back of the guitar are all wet sanded with 600 grit, until I have an even matt surface. Any low spots will show up as shiny patches, and will require extra sanding, or spot fills with clear to fill them in.

93_frontlevelled.jpg

94_backlevelled.jpg

The aim here is to get the finish as flat as possible, without sanding through to the colour coat. Once I'm content that everything is nicely levelled, I sprayed three more coats, trying to lay down super smooth coats, without orange peel, dust, or runs.

No pics of these coats, sorry. Once the last coats had cured well (a week is fine with Rustin's) I wet sanded with 1500, prior to final sanding with 2000 then buffing. However, my sanding has revealed a few tiny low spots, and one area which needs a spot fill, so I'll have to spray another coat or two before I'm done.

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The red is actually very red - but as Drak has pointed out in the past, red is a tough colour to get a with a digital camera. The matt finish also messes with how the colours look.

In answer to a couple of questions from Luke via PM:

I'll be doing the final buffing with Rustin's burnishing compound/paste. I used it on the last guitar and was very happy with the results:

tinytank.jpg

As for pickups, I'll be using Golden age humbuckers from Stew Mac - an overwound one in the bridge, and the standard model in the neck. I used thses on my last guitar, and was very impressed with the value for money.

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Stunning work dude, really

If I manage to create a guitar like that in 10 years time i'll be a happy man - so congratulations on some truly inspiring work :D

keep up updated! Seeing thing fully assembled with hardware will be awesome B)

Cheers,

- Dan

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