Blackdog

Using the binding laminator I prepared the 6 layers B/W purfling. I used full 6.35mm tall material. For the purpose of the purfling it had to be shaved down to around 3mm. I rigged a very clever contraption using the dremel with a cutting disk in the precision routing base. I wanted to cut the combined binding in half, lengthwise. Well, it didn't work. The cutting disk cuts by abrasion, generating heat. This melts the material, making the cut a royal mess. I tried replacing the cutting disk by a metal round saw. Still generated too much heat. Better, but still inadequate. Then my wife remembered the small band saw she uses to cut glass (she does stained glass and Tiffany work). It comes with an additional blade for plastics and non-ferrous metals. The great advantage of this band saw is that the cutting zone is water cooled. I used a straight edge as a fence and this worked like a charm ! Same trick with the purfling: first pre-shaped with the heat gun. Then glued in place. And finally the same with the white binding.

Thanks Fliski for the link to Axesrus. In the end I went with Mojotone, since I needed some awg42 plain enamel wire anyway. But Prostheta, you're right ! Shipping is horribly expensive ! OK, some more progress to report: Binding time !!! This baby gets some elaborate binding. Pretty much like a Les Paul Custom. According to vintage specs, the top is 7 layers: 2mm white, and B/W/B/W/B/W of 0.5mm each. The back is a much simpler 3 layers: 2mm white, and B/W of 0.5mm each. I found out that I never bought 2mm thick white binding material, only 1.6mm. I decided it was good enough and I went ahead with it. For the back, the complete binding is around 2.6mm wide. I decided to apply it as a normal binding, so I routed a single ledge on the back of the body, 2.6mm wide and 6mm tall. For the top, the only way to do it to treat the B/W/B/W/B/W layers as a purfling, and just the outer white layer as a full depth binding. So I routed on the body a stepped ledge 2mm deep for the purfling and 6mm deep for the outer binding layer. This is done in this way to preserve the stability of the top to rims joint. Using the StewMac binding laminator, I made the complete binding for the back and using a heat gun pre-shaped it to minimize the spring back effect. The applied it in the normal way, using white binding shavings dissolved in acetone as glue and StewMac's binding tape to hold it in place while the acetone evaporates.

I'm glad you're having fun, gentlemen. Yesterday I went through the Allparts UK website to order the Bigsby and other thingies and found out that they did not have the items in stock. The WDMusic UK site doesn't have them either. So I went to the Allparts US site and placed the order and received email confirmation. Now this was strange… I got an email this morning from allparts.com basically rejecting my order and directing me to their UK rep. Now this bloody gold B7 is an expensive piece of kit. I wanted to use it because it would be period correct and because it looks extremely cool, but with these setbacks I'm SO thinking about going hardtail with this one !!! Anyway, I have identified another "local" source for the thing… Thanks Prostheta for the link to the polepieces. I was including these on the Allparts.com order, now I will have to go to Mojo for them, question is: will they take an international order just for a handful of screws ?? And I finally got word from the headstock overlay supplier !! Way overdue. Seems like the "custom" style headplates will ship next week. Keeping fingers crossed !! Still have one more "difficult to find" item: the gold plated pickguard bracket.... Tough life that of the replica builder.... (Next time I'll stick to Telecasters ! )

As if we still have a choice in that matter. This is like a good book, you can't wait to see what happens next and there's no way you're going to put it down before the end. SR Thanks Scott, you're too kind. We were debating finishes with my wife before I left yesterday. She's done the staining and pore filling for all my builds so far. For the 355 is more or less easy, it's going to be cherry. The early originals were stained cherry directly on the wood, we will have to make a few tests on the plate offcuts to see if we can get the desired color just like that or if we will need a candy red on top of the stained maple. I think that just stain will potentially look more "vintage", and candy probably more modern... The Les Paul is a bit more open to experimentation. I want a dark burst similar to one famous 59 burst, the Brock/DaPra, The color has got to be known as brockburst in the burst circles... I am pretty confident that my wife can achieve that burst pattern by staining, this leaves the mahogany back and neck to be pore filled with dark cherry filler and clear coated. This should solve the issue in a reasonably vintage respectful way. I will be switching from rattlecans to proper nitro spraying for these two builds, and I would very much prefer to keep it simple this time around. The P90 LP is a bit of a pathfinder, I will quite possibly build me a proper 59 replica, and for that one I will attempt the more traditional bursting methods. In the meantime I'm already enjoying that guitar (unfinished), it really does play and sound great ! I should also start procuring a couple of critical pieces I still need: the B7 Bigsby and the ABR-1 bridge (for this I will likely use the German Faber with the metric posts). BTW, does anybody know of a source for gold plated pickup polepieces ? I plan to use the Gibson Classic 57 pickups that were originally in the rebuilt ES335. I have replacement gold covers, but no screws...

With this simple setup and a really shallow pattern router bit (1/8") I routed the tenon flat with the top plate. And this is where I had to stop for now. Next weekend, when I return from business trip part two, I will start with the binding of the body. After that it will be neck detailed fitting, pickups cavity routing, and bridge posts installation (like with the Les Paul, for adequate intonation). Thanks for reading.

Fitting the neck is quite an issue with these guitars. Due to the shape and curves of the laminated top the fretboard needs to be elevated. This is not unusual in archtop designs, where the top behaves in a very similar fashion. But this is not quite an archtop. It has a shorter bridge, elevating only about 15mm from the top. In that respect, it is like a solidbody. So the elevation of the fretboard is not nearly as much as on an archtop. That is why Gibson chose to use a neck joint not unlike the one used in the Les Pauls, and to fill the space between the base of the fretboard and the top plate with mahogany wedges. Along the early production years, the elevation of the fretboard evolved from almost nothing, with thin wedges just to make up for the neck angle (the top is pretty much flat up to where the fretboard ends), to around 3mm in the early 60s. With the very shallow ones it was a problem to achieve a reasonably low action, and in some examples the ABR-1 bridges got shaved down by the users. As you can see, lots of manual work went into building these guitars in the Kalamazoo days. This accounts for the wide inconsistencies from one guitar to the next. I went for a healthy 2mm overall elevation, plus of course an equally healthy 5.5 degrees neck angle. This gives me a clearance of 15.5mm for the bridge, between the top plate and the plane of the fret tops. I could live with a mm or so less, so I may adjust this a bit at the final neck fitting. I shaped a pair of mahogany wedges in the belt sander for a good fit under the fretboard. And glued to the fretboard's underside. Sanded them flush with the fretboard sides and end. And right now, the preliminary fitting is good enough to proceed with the following operations.

Back from part one of my business trip I managed to work a little bit on the guitar this saturday… A quick run through the router table with the flush bit took care of the excess top material. Now I have he body assembled and in its final shape. I carved the neck. It's pretty much finished. Maybe a few small corrections are still needed and definitely a lot of sanding, but it's pretty much there. I shortened the heel and left it just a tad proud of the back plate. I will sand this flush after the neck is set. The heel ended up being quite adequate, almost perfect. My fears of a heel too small were unfounded after all.

Wait, are you saying the Bigsby is a tremolo ?!?!? All this time I thought it was a pasta machine....

I think I got the solution for you. I use a stapler similar to this one: I use three staples along the length of the back of the fretboard. The stapler is rather weak and the staples will only go a little bit in. Then I nip the "bridge" of the staples off. The rest is simple: apply the glue on the neck, carefully align the fretboard where you want it, and press for the small pins to dig into the neck. It goes very easy, and it doesn't move at all when you clamp. For clamping I use two StewMac sanding blocks. Just added a neoprene padding between the blocks and the fretboard this last time, because the frets will mark the blocks otherwise. Hope this helps.

Yes, I was afraid of that. I have a Gibson Historic 54 Les Paul Custom with the B7 Bigsby, and the tremolo is pretty much useless. Anything other than a gentle wobble and it goes out of tune, but this is with the standard ABR-1 Gibson bridge, a roller bridge should be at least a bit better... I plan to put a B7 in the ES355 I'm building, mostly for the looks. But between the tuning problems and the price of a gold plated Bigsby, I'm REALLY having second thoughts...

Hello Mattia, Long time... Thanks for chiming in. I'm afraid that you got your vote in just a few hours late... I pretty much came to the conclusion that all the systems will eventually get the job done properly, and decided to go for what seems to be the most proven solution: I will go the HVLP conversion route. Just bought a DeVilbiss SRi Pro Spotrepair gun and I will be buying a small-ish compressor in a week or two. I have a friend hot-rodding cars, using this same setup and he will likely help me with the setup and training curve. Regarding shop space, I have a garage now. Not enormous, but so much bigger than the old attic !! Hope things are well with you. I still need to contact you again for resawing that mahogany billet I told you about months ago... Cheers.

This morning I unclamped the beast and everything looks nominal. Now it will have to wait till the weekend, I'm leaving today on one of these silly day-job business trips... (sigh) The things one has to do to be able to afford honduras mahogany !! But there is still time for a little trivia. A small departure from vintage correctness that I forgot to mention. You have noticed that I built this thing with a completely solid centerblock. In the late 50s, this is how the ES-335s were built. a couple of holes inside the pickup cavities wiere drilled for the pickup wires to get into the controls area. In 1959 (probably late 58) the two upperscale sisters of the 335 were introduced: The ES-345 was THE Stereo guitar. Cosmetically, it had a slightly more elaborate binding, the pearloid double parallelogram inlays, gold hardware and an optional tremolo. But the electrics were the big novelty. Wired in stereo, with each pickup going to separate channels, and the all-new vari-tone circuit. The ES-355 was the luxury one. It had the appointments of the Les Paul Custom, with the multi-ply binding, gold hardware, bound headstock with the split diamond and the pearl inlaid ebony fretboard. Tremolo was standard, but upon it's introduction, the stereo/varitone (SV) was optional on the ES-355. From 1960 on, the SV version became the standard one. The vari-tone is a 6-way rotary switch passive notch filter with an array of capacitors and two big chokes (inductors). A big chunk of wood was removed from the centerblock to install these chokes. The opening in the block was under the bridge pickup and extended into the space between pickups, and it affected about 3/4ths of the width of the centerblock. This virtually cut the centerblock in two. In traditional Gibson style, even when the 355 was destined to be mono, the centerblock was sometimes cut anyway. Other times, probably to ease production flow, all the centerblocks were cut, even those used for the ES-335s ! Stuffing the electronics into the guitar through the f-holes is a real pain, and the idea of the cut in the block eventually became standard ES-335 spec sometime in the early 60s. That said, I think that the solid, continuous, block contributes to the signature sound of a classic 335s, and that is why I decided to go with that type of construction on this build. The historic reissues made by Gibson today sport the solid centerblock for the 335s, but all the normal production ES-335s have the cut under the bridge pickup for easier wiring installation.

Thanks Osorio. But building guitars IS easy, don't you find ? (You've built some great ones yourself)

Very nice !! I love the blueburst !! Congratulations !! Like FireFly said, that guitar is sexy ! The only thing I would change are the knobs, black would look better IMO. Bigsbys really look cool !! How's the tuning stability when using the trem ?

And to the centerblock and kerfed linings on the body assembly. And put the dowels in place. The top plate was installed, I kept the tail index tab to center it to the jig, and the dowels do the rest. And now the caul goes on top. First aligned by the long screws on the index hole positions. Finally, the complete assembly is bolted down with the 18 screws around the perimeter. The top is now clamped to the rims and centerblock. Tomorrow morning I will unclamp everything, and it will remain like that until next weekend, when I will do the trimming of the top.

OK, I lied. I am not THAT patient.... I decided to go on a bit more.... Masked all the openings of the top plate. Now these will remain closed until after polishing the finish. Applied my version of the orange label, with the corresponding serial number. Again, I will not see this one again until polishing is over. Getting ready for the top gluing operation. Everything at easy reach, and the dry run was done already (the complete process of closing and clamping without the glue, just to see if I will find any trouble). Notice that I also masked the mortise, I don't want to fight with glue squeezed out in here. Degreased all the surfaces with naphta and starting to apply the glue with the roller, to the top mostly on the contoured bracing.

With the template centered and angled I routed the mortise. I went for a depth that would leave the fretboard 2mm proud of the top at the body/neck joint. With this offset and the 5.5 deg angle I have a clearance (from the top of the frets) of 15mm at the bridge position. With the top in place and with a flush-cut bit I cut the opening of the mortise on the top. And now the neck can go in place. Still, the heel to body joint needs fine adjustment, but the top can be glued on to the body assembly. This will have to wait, though. First I need to clean the f-holes of any routing burns, fully mask all these openings from the inside of the top and glue the orange label in place. But I will not be home for the whole week and don't want to rush things. I will resume the work next weekend.

Time for a bit of a progress report... Like I said, I decided to route the neck pocket with the top removed. First drilled 4 holes on the top, kept aligned to the back assembly by the external index holes, and then put 4 nice dowels to align the two things together. "Like this." Now I could get rid of the tabs, so I cut the front of the body/heel surface. This plane, at 90 degrees of the centerblock plane, will be just in front of the 19th fret position. And needs to be at a proper distance from the bottom of the cutaways to allow proper access to the upper frets. I did this with a straight edge guiding a template router bit, for a straight, square and clean cut. The reworked fretboard ended up very well, so it got glued on the neck. I built a mortise template using the same method I explained earlier in this thread. Once the neck's tenon could be inserted in the template, I drew the lines following the sides of the fretboard on the template to find the true centerline of the template. Aligned the template on top of the body assembly and used a block of wood to angle the template. I just bought this cute angle gauge yesterday, and found that the exact angle that I needed was 5.5 degrees.

I don't know of any specific source. I bought mine from a local woodworking tools shop. Kerf specs are not necessarily specified, but I guess you can always ask before buying. Drilling the two holes on the blade was not trivial, very hard steel ! I used some kind of precision drill bit for metal that I bought from the local hardware store chain. It is a similar idea to the brad-point bits used for wood.

When you say that the TR is maxed out do you mean that it is already too tight or that you are running out of thread at the nut end ? Adding washers will only help you with the latter. If you really need to tighten the rod a lot, the clamping method is actually better than just using the TR nut alone. You bend the wood with an external force instead of having the TR do all the work. Just loosen the TR, apply the clamping and add pressure to get a perfectly straight neck (or maybe just a slight backbow). Tighten the TR firmly and release the clamping. It should work well, I have used the method on a mahogany set neck and it didn't work because I was having wood grain compression, but I don't think that is likely to happen on a maple neck.

I bought the original StewMac gents saw with depth stop about 4 years ago. I'm pretty sure it cuts on the pull stroke. I must have cut about 5 fretboards with that one at most, and it already started to wear out and have problems. I can't say I'm happy with the quality of that product. Then I adapted the depth stop of the SM saw to a japanese saw I bought locally. Immensely better saw, but like I said, it cuts too narrow a slot. The new SM japanese version that WezV posted is the one I just got, and it cuts very well and the size of the slot seems to be just right. Let's just hope it has a longer service life...

Little update but no pictures, sorry. I have been busy solving a small issue with the fretboard. After fretting it ended up with a very significant back-bow. I saw it happening as I was fretting, I should have stopped, but I didn't . What worried me was not so much the bow, but the unusually high force that was required to press it flat on a table. The board was going to cause me troubles if glued like that on the neck. This problem obviously came from very tight fret slots and the hard ebony. I'm using a japanese saw for this and it cuts 0.5mm slots, a bit tight for the StewMac wire tangs. Now, I've been using that saw for fretting for quite some time, as I replaced the original StewMac fretting saw, which was a pretty poor product. But until these two builds I always fretted the boards already installed on the neck. I have been adding this back pressure all the time, but never noticed it (God bless the CF bars !!) Anyway, I decided to rework this board. After all how difficult could it be to pull the frets out, resaw/clean the slots, and fret it again ? Binding proved to be easy enough, and I have an almost unlimited source for tortoise side dots... Removed the binding, this went well, came off clean and easy. Started pulling the frets off, heating with the soldering iron as I used a bit of titebond in the slots. This was hell !! The chipping of the ebony at the slot edges was killing me !! I did it as carefully as I could, but I still had to fill some small areas with epoxy and ebony sawdust. Mostly all of the touchups end under the new frets anyway, but I decided to delay the decision to use this board or start over until the refretting was done. Yesterday, the epoxy fillings had hardened, so I re-sanded, re-polished, re-slotted, now with the new StewMac japanese fretting saw (pretty good for the job, and the proper cut width), and re-fretted the board. And I even managed to file the sides flat before the evening was over. Now is ready for binding again, and the back-bow is very minimal, almost non-existent. Cosmetically, it looks like nothing ever happened. I'm very relieved.

I agree with you. When we talk about a replica, we are talking about copying what essentially were factory products of their time. We venerate a 1959 LP, but I don't believe for a second that ALL of them were stellar. But some of them certainly were, and what one should try to approximate in a replica is the spirit of the good ones in a hand-made quality instrument. In contrast with the reissues, that are "official" replicas, but still a factory product. In construction, I would use whatever method works for me and produces the expected results. But if the original method is still reasonable in a garage-builder scenario, then why not ? That said, I can certainly appreciate Gil's approach. A no excuses, completely un-compromised replica, is certain to sell for a very different price in the proper market. He is very talented, and passionate. Certainly very good at delivering that. Superior, I don't know... But unique ? That's my specialty !!

I applied the same treatment to the top plate, seen here with the bracing already leveled. Now the two long indexing screws got installed on the craddle, I will not be needing the mold any more. I put the body back assembly in the craddle, aligned with the tabs, and bolted it down. The rough outline of the top plate was band-sawed (again, keeping the tabs), and now it can be aligned to the body back assembly using the index holes. At this stage two paths can be followed: I could go ahead and glue the top to the body assembly, trim the excess flush, get rid of the tabs and route the neck mortise on the completed body, or… I could move the indexing of the top inside the outline (by means of dowels where the pickup routes will go), get rid of the tabs, route the neck mortise with the top removed (easier on a flat surface), and glue the top afterwards. I don't know about the oldies, but on the modern ones the mortise is CNC'd on the centerblock beforehand, as a matter of fact the bottom of the mortise is parallel to the centerblock plane. In my previous 335 build I was reusing the original Gibson neck, so routing the mortise before attaching the top was the obvious thing to do. On this one I have to route the mortise at a rather precise 5 degree angle, and I think I will use the second method anyway. It's always easier to route the mortise with a flat surface to support the template (be it at an angle or flat).

Build update. More pictures. Opened the oyster and this is the back plate gluing result. This jig really works well, there are no glue lines, neither along the outline nor at the block/bracings joint. With a flush-cut bit at the table routing jig the plate got trimmed flush with the rims. The body was riding on top of the doughnut you see. This is the same height as the arching of the plate. The back plate is now flush, notice that I still kept the two indexing tabs.