mwcarl

Again, I wish someone with more experience would chime in, but I don't think theres anything special you have to do, acetone based stuff is usually pretty thin and will wick into the cracks pretty easily. I assume since you're working on a Les Paul that it has a bound fretboard, probably plastic. The acetone will probably not be good for the binding, so I'd keep it away from that as much as possible. Maybe mask the binding around the inlay with tape.

Keep in mind I've only ever made and installed a couple inlays, never done a repair like this.

I forgot to add, you need to be careful when trying to remove the inlay, it doesn't take much force to break it.

I have only done a few inlays, but this should be reasonably easy to fix. First I'd remove the inlay, if it was superglue that was used you can use something containing acetone to dissolve the glue (like nail polish remover). Then clean up the excess glue in the fingerboard and reseat the inlay. Hopefully someone can confirm that this is a good solution.

Thanks for the comments guys.

verhoevenc: Yeah I did go a bit overboard, but I wanted it to be perfect. I think I came close. I'll probably use less next time. As a tip to anyone else (if it's not already widely public knowledge) wax paper is really useful to reduce after-gluing cleanup. You can see it sticking out when I was gluing the binding on.

avengers63 and padbug: I agree with rustychisel on this (hell I picked the wood and design didn't I), this build would be many times less interesting with uninteresting wood (god forbid painted). Less spalted wood might have worked better, but even more 'normal' (i.e. curly or quilted) would probably look really strange with this shape. Of course that's just in my mind.

rustychisel: Thanks (assuming that you're commenting because you like it).

I've inlayed the fingerboard and drilled all of the holes on the body, so I'm getting close. I'll fret the neck tonight, and soon going to be doing some testing with brushing on LMII waterbase lacquer.

Pickups routed, neck set in (not glued yet).

Front:

Back

Love the burned sunburst and rustic look. I almost feel like the pickguard would look cooler with a bullet hole or two. How do you like those tuners? I have the exact same set that I'm going to use on the guitar I'm building right now.

It's looking great, very clean work. For the headstock inlay, I like the inlay at the top myself, but in middle is good too. Not crazy about putting on the truss rod cover.

Gluing the cocobolo fretboard onto the neck (screwed up the ebony fretboard, went with something else instead):

Gluing ebony binding onto sides of fretboard (thanks verhoevenc, worked great):

Inlays after cutting, not yet set into the fretboard, gives a good idea of what they'll look like, should be done this week:

Inlay closeup, showing binding:

Next up, setting the inlays, routing for the pickups, setting in the neck.

Quick question, I'm binding the fretboard using some wood binding strips (either bloodwood or ebony, haven't decided yet). Is normal wood glue (Titebond) the most appropriate for glueing it onto the fretboard or something else?

I think I'm going to just do a natural finish on the whole thing. You're right that it's not going to be super comfortable, but that was obvious going in. Some progress photos, with top and back partially wetted to show figure:

Core joined, cut and routed.

Top joined to core.

Back joined to core. Should look seamless since control cavity cover is cut directly from the back.

Neck with truss rod.

Okay, I'll have a look at a local hardware store (amazon doesn't ship those to Canada). Are you happy with the way it plays?

Thanks JF, I think I'm going to do something similar to direct mount my pickups. Did you get those inserts from someplace special?

I'm working with spalted maple for the first time, and from what I know and can tell from your photos you should be fine without stabilizing it. Your spalting is very light, the wood I'm using for mine is very 'punky' (that's what they call it anyway). The spalted areas are very soft and if I was to cut into them without first stabilizing them, they would tear and crumble. Those areas require flooding with something that dries hard and is thin enough to penetrate deep into the wood, I used very thin CA glue. Inspect your piece of wood and see whether you think the wood is stable enough to use as is. The other thing to know about working with spalted wood is that it's more toxic than usual, so use a mask and have some way of collecting the resulting dust.

That looks like it would be quite tight, the front pickup routs would be very close to the rear pot routs. I think it could be done with some tweaks and careful measuring. It would be very hard to see the controls when playing, which may or may not be a problem. Nice design though I like the cutouts.

I am on the fence about the horns.

I think they need to be softer... not much just a little less edge they show up really hard right now

not sure that is what they need... However I stopped and left it because I needed to think about it

any opinions? (I like to discount them and do whatever I want anyway )

Yeah I think they look a little too much like 'horns within horns' right now. Maybe take the face of the horns down slightly which should make them look less harsh.

Looks pretty good and you learned the same lessons that I did when I completed my first build. Of course that didn't stop me from making some of the same errors on my second that I'm working on right now...

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm going to be direct mounting the humbuckers on my second build, and I can't for the life of me figure out which wood screws to use that won't strip the threads on the pickup. Any tips?

The finish looks really clean, it turned out really nice. I do wish the figure stood out more though.

Just a small update for anyone interested. Testing the CA as a stabilizer on the back of one of the spalted maple halves, it appears as if the discoloration of the non-spalted areas is not visible once Tru-Oil finish is applied. I guess it would matter if I was intending on doing any staining, but the top and back are going to be natural.

Starting up my second build, received the wood just recently. The build consists of a two piece narra body core, with bookmatched spalted maple top and back. The shape was inspired by another build on this forum (link). The set neck is also narra with a 3x3 angled headstock, 25" scale length and ebony fretboard with mother of pearl inlays. The fretboard will be bound with bloodwood veneer. Black Hipshot Grip-Lock tuners, ebony knobs (2 x volume, 1 x tone), 3-way pickup switch, killswitch, black Gotoh Tune-o-matic bridge, through body strings, and Seymour Duncan Blackouts pickups round out the rest.

The wood being used, minus the fretboard (pending arrival):

Spalted maple top and back respectively, yet to be stabilized:

Narra body blank:

Pickups:

Two bookmatched options for the spalted top:

Wood as they stand now, body blank joined, headstock cut, and MDF template:

Anyone have any tips for stabilizing the spalted maple? I've started stabilizing the back part of one of the halves of the back with CA, it looks like I'll have to get used to the stabilizing making the spalted areas a lot darker. I'm I supposed to apply the stabilizer to the whole piece of wood, or just the spalted areas? It looks like the colour change from the stabilizer sill be too visible to use on specific areas only. The spalted maple I'm using isn't too soft, but looks like it'll still require significant stabilizing.

That looks awesome, I love the look of the grain in the natural finish. Hopefully it plays just as nicely.

I'm starting my second build and really want to use something similar to this body shape. Was going to e-mail the OP to let him know/see if he's okay with that, but can't find a way to contact him. Hopefully he'll see this post.

That neck looks great. The binding is nice too. The side dots seem placed a bit weird to me, but they look good and just as functional.

As it stands now, wired for two volume, one tone (push pull for coil split), three way switch and killswitch (what else can I do with this DPDT switch?):

Okay so I'm more or less finished, all that's left is to level and finish the frets as well as finish the control cover. I may also replace the pickup rings with ones I make from black walnut and find better looking knobs since the amber doesn't really work for me. The string length turned out to not be a problem, there was a fair amount of extra string. Now for the photos:

Rough fretting done and strung up:

I get it about the pickup now, thanks. As for my own grain filling, I was under the impression that maple did not require grain filling, so I didn't. My build uses a sitka spruce back and maple top, and the spruce looks perfectly smooth with the Tru-Oil, and the maple not quite as smooth.