Blackdog

ARRRRGGGGGHHHH !! I haven't had any time to get in the shop at all…. I'm already feeling the withdrawal ! Busy with the stupid day job (that fortunately pays for the stupid mortgage and a stupidly decent lifestyle) and band practice for a couple of performances in front of the usual deaf audiences…. I'm missing the smell of limba and mahogany dust in the mornings… It smells like…. wood-dust.

Hi Chris, Welcome to the madness !! It's not an easy one you've chosen as your first build. You're in for a few challenges with the Les Paul, but it's such a great design ! I wanted to chime in with respect to the infamous weak Les Paul headstock thing. Yes, it is weaker than other designs, but unless you are planning on banging the headstock against hard things in a consistent manner it will not break by itself. I'm not a fan of scarf joints, I dislike the way they look. So let me help you explore other options. One first consideration is the truss rod you plan to use. One thing that makes the Gibson design specially weak is the huge opening on the face of the headstock four the truss rod access. If you use a modern 2-way rod and make the opening on the headstock only as big as needed you'll be already a couple of steps ahead in terms of strength. How deep is your neck blank ? You will need something like 65mm deep for a classic LP headstock tilted at 17* if you intend to do a one-piece, but you could also tilt the headstock less than 17*. Classic PRS guitars used 11* and it works just fine. I have used 13* many times on one-piece necks and it is a great compromise. 14* was even by Gibson at some point. Another classic is the volute on the back of the headstock. Placed correctly, it does't need to be huge to provide some more strength. A laminated neck (length-wise) is also going to be more stable than a one piece. And if you add some harder wood in the laminations, like maple, it will be even stronger. So you can see, many possibilities are available, unless you're going the historic-correct route, in which case you would not be considering a scarf anyway... Wish you the best with your build. You've come to a great place. Lots of talented and experienced builders around here.

Wow ! You guys are going to make me blush ! You're exaggerating quite a bit, I'm also a beginner ! On the other hand, you seem to be quite the scholar in these matters ! Is there a way to put in simple words your concept of the "piston fit" for other beginners to adopt ? Is it quantifiable how tight and how loose is the reasonable range for this ? A measurable range would help beginners a lot ! Thanks for the kind words, everyone. The guitar has been disassembled now. I have re-shaped/shortened the heel a little bit and I'm getting it ready for the finishing stages. In the meantime I bought a hard case for it. A Gator Extreme, or something of the sort. Man, that thing is huge !!!!

I've thought for a long time that this is a very worthwhile conversation, even though is has definitely been done to death on various luthiery and woodworking forums for years. It hasn't been done in the context of a "beginner's guide-to" to highlight pitfalls, best practice, glue specifics, etc. Whilst I don't want to soapbox about it too much, I do think the "too-tight neck joint" crowd are doing people who are new to the craft a disservice. Perpetuating a bad habit as a gold standard or even a benefit. Maybe the reason I don't feel like soapboxing is because you know how much they'll complain....because it's their trademark. And it's offensive (possible racist if you're Ben Affleck). Worse still, buyers agree. Thousands of years of woodworking artisan's experience disagree with good reasoning. Don't shoot what isn't broken in the foot, to mix metaphors. Too loose can be too loose if you're relying on the mechanical properties of your glue to do the work for you, definitely. Epoxy is good for retrieving simple joinery disasters, but a guitar shouldn't have to get to that point. Even gluing scrap stock onto a screwed tenon or into a cocked-up mortice and re-cutting them is superior to resorting to epoxy purely for gap filling. I sort of feel like I am preaching to the converted here, Blackdog but you know these words weren't aimed for your ears. Beginners face a lot of challenges. More seasoned builders face most of the same challenges, but with a lot more resources in their toolbox. When I was starting, getting a really tight neck joint was a challenge. So the "tight enough to be able to hold by the neck" mantra became a goal to achieve. I would guess this applies to many/most beginners. Then I learned about glue starvation and thought: Hey, this makes lots of sense ! So in the end nothing can replace good judgement. But I needed to achieve the level of precision required for a tight neck joint first, anyway. If one picks up any book about wood joinery, all of this is well explained. But I don't think many beginners do it. So I tend to agree that maintaining the myth can be a bit of a disservice in a way. The part that is pushing people to learn to work with more precision is not necessarily bad. Let's hope that discussions like these one serve to put more people to question absolute statements and think by themselves. Now about filling the gaps of a poor joint with epoxy… Does anybody really do this ? I have seen in this forum several times posts about rescuing a "not so good" joint using shimming and similar techniques, that are a much more proper way of dealing with the issue. As a bit of trivia, a recent ES335 (A real Gibson) I rebuilt had big air pockets in pretty much every joint (neck-body, bracing-centreblock, etc.), filled without much success with tons of good old titebond. And I also found a real 1961 ES335, that I was considering buying, with a factory shimmed tenon. We can say that at least in the golden age they used more adequate rescue techniques… But in this forum we are all aspiring luthiers. We must aim higher than any factory. And if something doesn't quite go as planned either learn to repair in a proper way or redo…. Something I used to say to my son when he was younger: There are two ways of doing something, Right or Again.

Thanks Scott ! Your very kind ! L.

With my early builds I found it difficult to obtain a really tight joint. So, eventually, I developed the method I still use today: I do not have a generic mortise jig, I make a template matching the tenon every time. It's a bit more time consuming, but gets me the best possible fit without fail. I don't rely on the insertions/removals to loosen the joint, but since that manipulation during the build is inevitable, it's better to account for it. So IMO "making it tight to start out with" is still better than the alternative. I see your point that the slackening is due to fibre compression. But if it is still reasonably tight, a slight sanding opens the grain again and you still don't end up having to fill the gaps with glue (in true Gibson style !) The water in the glue will also raise the grain to some degree. I like using the HHG at slightly thinner than honey viscosity, so the water contents is significant and the glue is easy to spread and impregnates the wood easily. But it's clear, by the time you glue the pieces together "too tight" is definitely a bad idea. Maybe just as bad as "too loose".

This was pointed out already, and looking at the full picture (The almost finished thing) it became obvious that it had to be addressed. Basically, this is a proper replica of the '58 V until you start looking up the neck and then the little Blackdog details become apparent: the offset dots, the wooden headplate and the feathers inlay. So that little remaining stroke of Gibson-ness at the headstock (the TRC) was definitely out of place. I designed a TRC specifically for this, that ties in with the shape of the headstock, and keeps the mounting screw spacing of the old TRC. And made a template for it. I had an offcut of the cocobolo I used for the headplate, but it was a bit too thin. So I laminated it to a 1.6mm maple veneer to build up thickness. Then I cut the new TRC from that. With just the square edges it looked a bit crude, so I beveled the edges with the 45* router bit to expose the maple below from all view angles. VERY slowly, in several small steps, to prevent the router bit from catching the wood and throwing the piece across the room. There ! IMO it looks MUCH better. And this gets us to the point of this build I'm at now.

Pickguard and pickups mounted and wired. Time to cut the remaining nut slots and to adjust the nut action. The strings fan out to the tuners rather sharply on this headstock design, this has to be accounted for on the nut slots. I use the Stewmac spacing ruler, and make pilot slots with the thin 0.010 nut saw first, and then enlarge the slots using thicker nut saws and the nut files. I finish the slots with a bit of deburring with 240 and 400grit paper. For nut action I use the method of fretting the string at the 3rd fret and measuring the clearance with feeler gauges between the bottom of the string and the top of the 1st fret. The following values (in mm) work well for me: 0.35, 0.30, 0.25, 0.20, 0.15, 0.10. So here she is, still sans-finish but in all it's angular glory: The guitar plays really well and the preliminary assessment of the sound is quite promising. It's a bit neck heavy, but from my research this seems to be intrinsic of the design. I have an extra-wide leather strap that pretty much takes care of this problem. Fully assembled it weights 6.5lbs, very light. I will refine a few details of the neck profile and maybe shorten the heel a bit more and make it sharper like on the originals. And then will proceed with the finishing stages.

How they achieved string grounding on the original V's is still a mistery to me. I've seen different things in pictures, and in any case it was unclear if it was the factory original setup or a later mod. On Bigsby and Trapeze tailpiece equipped semihollows, Gibson usually run a wire from nearby to the bottom strap pin into the control cavity. Then they simply pressed the bare wire between the tailpiece plate and the body rim. I thought about doing something similar with the V tailpiece, but then opted for a solution that I like better. This is what I also did on the Bigsby equipped ES355. I used one of the tailpiece mounting screws. From the top opening of the mounting screw hole closest to the cavity I drilled the wire channel into the cavity. Then run the ground wire so that a bare section of it goes vertically into the mounting screw hole (difficult to see in the third picture, but it's there. So, when the tailpiece is in place, the mounting screw threads bite the ground wire against the wood and make a very solid electric contact. At this stage I decided that it was a good idea to test fit all the parts and also check if I liked the neck profile as it was, so after polishing the frets (they were already leveled and crowned) I assembled the guitar. First the wiring. The control harness on the pickguard is wired first (for the final assembly I will add a sheet of aluminum foil under the pickguard). Then the pickups, output jack and tailpiece ground are wired to it.

With the neck in place it was time to position the bridge. Since I have a separate tailpiece, I prefer not to base the positioning in any measurement, but to do it empirically. I cut the slots on the nut for the two e-strings, they don't really need to be at the right depth at this stage, if they hold the string in place is enough. The high e-strings of light gauges require hardly any compensation. The saddle will end up pretty much at the scale lenght position. So I set this saddle on the bridge to the front-most position and then back off just a turn of the screw for margin. The low E-string is the one that will need the most compensation, and thicker strings will require even more. So I set the saddle about 2/3 back of full excursion. This will allow some intonation marging for fatter bottom strings of "normal" gauges whithout slanting the bridge too much. This is a good time for filing the saddle slot for these two strings, not too deep, just enough to keep the strings in place under bending or heavy strumming. I load the two e-strings of the gauge I like for these instruments (usually 10-46), and mount the bridge loose over the top with some wooden spacers below to get enough clearance for the strings to ring freely. The spacers need to be short enough to keep the bridge post holes free. And then clip the piezo-equipped tuner to the bridge body. Then I tune the strings up, not necessarily to pitch, but within the tuner recognizable range. And test the intonation at the 12th fret: the harmonic and the fretted note. Move the bridge around untill both strings run aligned properly with the neck sides and intonate well. That's the desired position for the bridge. I remove the tuner and with the bridge held in place by the strings' tension (I may tighten the strings a bit more to increase the tension) I take the body to the drill press. With a 4mm bit (I use the metric version of the Faber ABR bridge). Using the bridge itself as the guide, and with the drill off (rotating the chuck just by hand), I mark the drilling positions on the top. Now I just remove the bridge and drill pilot holes of the desired depth for the bridge posts (I like the posts to bottom out on the holes). In this case I used a 3mm bit. On harder wood, like maple, it can be necessary to tap the holes for the posts threads, but Limba is so soft that just driving the posts in takes care of the tapping. I choose the metric version of the bridge because I prefer to use extra-long posts. You need about 15mm of the post portruding from the top for proper bridge action. The stock posts are usually 30mm (or less) long. That leaves 15mm to thread on the body at most. That doesn't clear the maple on Les Pauls, and on a 335 type barely get past the kerfed spruce bracing ! I like the posts to thread all the way into the mahogany back on LPs and solidly into the maple center block on 335s. I also prefer bronze posts for sound reasons. Metric 4mm bronze threaded rods are locally available from any hardware store, while 6-32 rods are a lot more problematic. That is why I use the metric posts whenever possible. The bridge posts are now in place. One little thingy I had forgotten at this stage is that the treble-side post of the bridge goes through the pickguard. I had not foreseen a hole for this. I measured carefully and drilled an oversized hole (about 9mm diameter, like I've seen on large SG pickguards) on the pickguard template and corrected the pickguard accordingly.

OK, I finally found some time for posting. Let's carry on with the tale of the V... Next, inevitably, came the point of no return: gluing the neck. (well, not really a point of no return, but a serious commitment anyway: I hate to have to remove a neck !) First I lightly sanded the tenon with 320 sandpaper to allow an easier neck insertion. I usually cut the mortise for a VERY tight fit of the tenon. With the successive removals/re-insertions of the neck it slackens a bit. But if it is still too tight all the glue will be expelled from the joint: not good. So it's best to sand a little, I like to have an easy insertion barely needing any force to set it in place, but the neck should still stay put and not fall off. Another thing I do with the 320 sandpaper is slightly round off the lower edges of the tenon, this ensures a proper seating without any significant area reduction in the gluing surfaces. I masked the area leaving just a small space around the joints to avoid having to remove excess glue in too large areas. The gluing process itself is the same I described for the fretboard. With the ambient heater and the extra support of my wife with the heat gun. And applying the HHG to both surfaces with a brush. The clamping of the neck is really simple. Just one clamp does the job. After the glue dried, the final sanding of the neck joint took care of the excess glue. This went really well, hardly any glue line visible. And this is what it looks like after cleaning a bit of the excess glue from the top and the cavity.

Hey Chris ! Thanks for the nice words. In this particular case the foam is needed because the frets are already installed. But even if there are no frets, I would still use the foam as it will indeed provide a more even pressure all the way to the edges. Besides, this long radius block is far from perfect, I made it myself with a slanted table and the safe-T-planer. So the radius surface is not exactly circular but very slightly elliptic and not perfectly finished either. I used it in the past for the coarse wood removal of the fretboards, then for the finer radiusing I would switch to the Stewmac 8" blocks. Today I only use this block as a caul, for coarse radiusing I use the router jig I've shown some posts back.

I did a test run of the recess on a pice of mahogany with a very shallow (1/8" cutting lenght) template router bit to find the proper depth that will keep just the ribbing of the rubber portruding. Everything went well, so on to the actual guitar body (template held in place with some double sided tape): And we have the anti-slip rubber atrocity sorted out. The thing will be glued over the finish. I'll definitely keep the gluing reversible, I reserve the right to eventually replace it with something more elegant down the road.

Continuing with the tale of the V... Nut Setting. For the nut I had a choice of materials. I have the usual Graphtech Tusq that I have successfully used in most of my builds. I have some nylon blanks that would have been "vintage correct". I have bone blanks which are usally considered quite good. And I have a couple of blanks of "allegedly" real mammooth ivory that I got for free some time ago… What can I say, it looks just like bone to me, but decided to give one of these a try. Thicknessed and inserted in the neck slot I scribed the outline of the fretboard on the nut with a scalpel. Roughly saped the nut with files and sandpaper and finally adjusted the ends to the fretboard sides. Glued in place with a bit of CA glue. There's something between CA glue and mammoths… It grabs this material like there's no tomorrow ! I was lucky that I dropped the nut in the slot in just the right spot, because there was no merging to reset the position at all, it just went solid the moment it made contact ! Now about the anti-slip rubber pad…. The V shape is notoriously uncomfortable (make that outright impossible) to play while sitting down. It just slips off your lap. The clever guys at Gibson back in 58 noticed the problem on the first prototypes and came up with an equally clever solution for that. They went straight to the factory warehouse and took some ribbed rubber floormat material and glued a piece on the side that supposedly sits on the lap ! Then end result: It still slips ! So players willing to play the V while sitting down just straddle the guitar over the right leg and that more or less makes it playable… Like uncle Warren does here: This feature was replicated on the re-issues of '83, and it's also found on the modern Historic Collection ones. Even the Tokai copies of the '80s had it ! It's clear that the looks of a proper '58 Flying V would not be complete without the anti-slip rubber atrocity on there. So a man ought to do what a man ought to do…. off I went to a car-stuff store nearby and bought me some rubber floormat material, ribbed on one side with the "vintage correct" pitch of 9 ribs per inch. Yeah baby ! You have to be thorough with these things ! For around 4 euros I got enough rubber for maybe 20 of these…. The anti-slip pad sits in a recess on the body side, so a template had to be made. The little fence on the template has been carefully located to align with the guitar body and center the recess on the side accurately. Used the template to mark the back of the rubber material and cut a test piece of the pad with a cutter and scissors, and I got lucky: it matched the template really well.

I will resume one or both of these sometime soon. I'll make a thread here so I can share it with you guys. I think the Hollowbody will be more interesting, because from the building point of view the other one is just a Les Paul….

Yes, HHG can be tricky ! I had my experience with a badly glued fretboard and I learned my lesson. Fortunately the glue joint can be undone fairly easily, without damaging the parts. And I like the fact that it cristalizes when dry and does not remain rubbery like the modern glues do. That is why I keep using HHG for the most critical joints even on my designs: fretboard to neck, and neck to body. For all the minor joints I use good old Titebond. Oh, and thanks for the tip ! I never thought the laser could do any damage to the camera...

Hide glue fondue. This has been going brilliantly as usual, Luis. Your vintage accurate stuff is a delight, but I'm also a big fan of your own creative designs. Have you done any of those since we last saw you? SR Thanks, Scott. I have a couple of designs I'm working on, but haven't finished any of the Blackdogs lately. Right now I'm also working on a LP Custom for a (very patient) friend, but got a bit hooked with this V when I found that piece of Korina. The "new" designs I'm working on are a fully hollow BD Doublecut, a concept alike the PRS Hollowbody, i.e. carved top and back, in- and outside, on a normal sized body, and sound holes. I've already developed the blueprints and designed the templates for the internal carving of the top/back, but still need to make them. The other design that I have in the pipeline is pretty much the same as the BD Singlecut, but with a twist. The original BD SC is more along the lines of a PRS, with a thicker top, thinner body and 25" scale. In the end it does not feel or sound like a Les Paul, why should it ? So the "new" one (I call it BD SCLP) is the Singlecut but with all those elements that make the Les Paul feel and sound: thicker mahogany back, thinner hard maple top, shorter scale with the R18 fret spacing, 17* headstock angle, new headstock design and LP-ish type of electronics and hardware. The idea is to achieve a Les Paul in disguise. Blueprints are ready, proper woods are available, I just need to start. The hard maple top is not going to be bookmatched so it is likely to end up as a Goldtop, it has some flame, though, and will look nice on the exposed sides of the top (faux-binding).

The key for drilling through-body holes that are correctly aligned at both sides is to drill in two steps to avoid the drill bit deviations due to different wood grain densities. Limba is rather soft and the risk is lower than what it would be on maple or even mahogany. But still, I like the ferrules on the back to line up nicely. So I applied the same technique usually applied for Telecasters, after all, it's exactly the same problem. So this part is probably old news for the Tele-builders out there. After drilling roughly half way from the top with a 3.2mm drill bit and using the template I set up a base on the drill press with a 3mm diameter pin slightly shorter than the drilled holes. Fixed the base with the pin accurately aligned with the same 3.2mm drill bit I used before. Set the drill press so that with the chuck in the upper position there is more than enough clearance to slip the body between the pin and the drill bit, and set the drill depth stop so that the tip of the drill bit ends up just short of the top of the pin. Then, positioned the body face down, inserting the pin in the existing string holes on the top and drilled from the back. Then repeated the same process with the larger drill bit for the ferrules' recess, with a depth stop set to leave the ferrules flush with the back. The end result is perfectly aligned holes on both sides. Just did a quick check with the tailpiece mounted on the top using the mounting screws, and with the pick guard in place, and it all fits nicely.

Before gluing the neck I needed to drill the through-body holes for the strings. Doing all this drilling is a lot easier if I only need to move around the body. First step is finding the correct position of the tailpiece on the body top. I already knew where my actual centerline was, but doublechecking for the ouside strings' path was more accurate. Using again the laser level I simulated the path of the two E strings, from the nut to the tailpiece. The pickguard also needs to be in place to find the optimal longitudinal position of the tailpiece, so that everything fits together nicely. With the tailpiece correctly positioned I clearly marked the center of the three tailpiece mounting holes that I would then use for template alignment. Using the actual tailpiece I made a template for the string holes with oversized (but centerered) holes at the mounting screws positions. I positioned the template on the top (fixed with some double sided tape) visually aligning the large holes with the markings I made on the body, being careful not to be thrown off by parallax. Then drilled through the template the 1/8" holes to a depth of around 20mm.

So, carrying on with the story. To glue the fretboard in place I use pins to achieve a positive quick positioning and also to avoid slippage when clamping. As you know, working with hot hide glue is a bit of a pain. You have to be real quick. Basically, I drill small, shallow holes on the back of the fretboard (one close to the nut and another close to the end) and insert short pins cut from nails. Then I position the fretboard over the neck where I want it and press down to mark the position of the pins and drill the equivalent holes on the neck. Then check that the fretboard is properly aligned when the pins insert in their respective holes. This process is not terribly accurate, and the fretboard may not end up perfectly aligned. If that happens, I drill new holes, move the pins and try again. The fretboard is thoroughly cleaned and glued to the neck using hot hide glue. I warm up the space around with a heater-blower. This also slightly warm the gluing surfaces up. Usually my wife also helps with a heat gun at the low setting and from a little distance while I spread the glue on both surfaces. I use a long radiusing block with some foam padding as a caul, and clamp everything evenly and "reasonably" tight to squeeze the excess glue out. That fancy bronze colored thing at the left is my glue pot With the fretboard set the final shaping of the neck can take place. I'm leaving this one slightly rounded for a fat '58 kind of feel. Front to back, the thickness is the same I used for the '59 LP necks (0.89" at 1st fret, .98" at 12th), but the shoulders are a bit more rounded. I have noticed that on the original Gibsons of the late 50s the necks had a tendency to be more crude-shaped on the cheaper models. I based the profile I used on the 59 LPs on a the neck of a real 59 LP Custom that was a delight to play. But the necks of some vintage Juniors and Specials felt like a tree in comparison. It's amazing how the actual profile affects the feel, even when the actual thickness is about the same. (By the way, all these pictures are from the archive. The guitar woodwork is finished by now, and I have assembled it to check fitness of all the parts and specifically to test the feel of the neck. It's not really THAT fat, I'm happy to say that it is very comfortable to play.) With the neck in place, I use a laser level to project the fretboard side lines on the top and determine the true centerline of the neck. The tailpiece and bridge will be aligned to this, and pretty much always there's a slight difference with the body centerline. In this case I found that the error at the bridge position is about 1mm, which I consider pretty good. After this the frets got leveled and crowned. I didn't bother polishing the frets at this stage. Coming up next (when I find a bit of time…) is the positioning of the tailpiece. That one was interesting.

The pick guard (if I end up using the white one, likely scenario) is actually parchment white. So maybe a bit of ageing of the white part of the TRC would make it match better. I'll see when the time comes...

I know what you mean. I have mixed feelings about it too. I'll see how the head plate looks under lacquer first. It should darken significantly. But if the TRC looks too out of place I can always make another one in cocobolo, probably abandoning the bell shape too. That will always be a sure bet.

The geometry between the pickguard, the control cavity and the tailpiece is a bit critical. I bought the tailpiece from a parts vendor in Germany (Crazyparts.de, Crox guitars in the UK also sell the same one), it is supposedly "vintage correct". The same vendors also sell the pickguards, but I opted to make my own according to my plans to be sure that everything will fit properly. I made the template, and this is the result. The bevels were cut using the same template and a 45* bevel cutting bit. I also bought some vintage-white/black/white pick guard material that I have just received. This material will be more correct for a 58 V, so I made another one.

Before the fretboard could be glued in place I needed to get the inlay on the headstock sorted out. The fretboard would get in the way when I had to use the dremel routing base. No fancy inlays this time, just the Blackdog Feathers Logo on the headstock. This first step is to glue the pieces in place using some cellulose sanding sealer (easy to unglue later). Then I scribe with a scalpel around the pieces to have very clear marks for the routing. I use a Dremel with the StewMac routing base and inlay bits to make the recesses and glued the pearl pieces in place with epoxy mixed with cocobolo dust: And, once set, everything is sanded down flush. Once the inlay was done, I enlarged the tuner holes accordingly and did a quick fit check:

Happy New Year everyone ! Hope you had a great time during the Holidays Season ! I will try to resume the posting here. Things are getting busy at my day job, so it may be a bit intermittent. After the body work I showed you already, the shaping of the neck begun. I do a rough neck shaping, removing as much wood as possible but leaving a couple of mm of the edges untouched. This is to retain the taper on the fretboard gluing surface unmolested. Once the fretboard is glued in place, more wood is removed from the neck sides and the curve merges with the fretboard. But in the first shaping is when most of the wood support is removed and I leave it like that for some weeks to see if the neck remains flat or if there is any movement that needs to be corrected. These days I do most of the shaping with rasps, to remove the bulk of the wood, and then coarse (60-80) sandpaper for the "finer" shaping. Finally scrapers and finer sandpaper round up the process. I did a preliminary merging of the neck heel with the body shoulders after this, just to have a feeling of what it will look like.