MassimoPL77

19 hours ago, scorpionscar said:

Amazing work Massimo. The most beautiful inlays I've ever seen. Congratulations

Scorpionscar

Thank you @scorpionscar!

16 hours ago, Prostheta said:

Totally. The last couple of months have been some high-level competition, so I'm glad that you re-entered this month. It's a guitar that you can be extremely proud of; people who've been building for many many years would have trouble pulling off something like your Les Paul.

Congratulations!

Thank you @Prostheta, your words make me proud! And I would like to compliment @KempGuitars, @Osorio and @Andyjr1515 on their amazing buildings!

22 hours ago, Mr Natural said:

Congrats on the GOTM win!

Thank you Mr Natural!

21 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Many congratulations on your very well deserved GOTM win @MassimoPL77.  It is a superb build on so many levels

Thank you Andy! I really appreciated your build: beautiful woods, awesome high gloss finishing and really clean work inside the electronic cavity!

16 hours ago, Patrick Brown said:

Absolutely gorgeous. Amazing work, Massimo!

Thank you Patrick!

2 hours ago, Zoltar said:

Congrats for the GOTM win, looking forward to more inlay wizardry...

Thank you Zoltar, I'm working on some new stuff in these days... I will keep you updated!

I decided to give a second chance to this guitar: this is my eight build so far and was intended to be a sum of all things i've learnt in three years of guitar building. I decided to call her Ladybug, or Coccinella in italian, because of the inlay on the twelfth fret. The guitar has been built following the plan of a '59 Gibson Les Paul, but woods and decorations are all customised.

• The body is made of european ash with a big weight relief chamber, while the top is indonesian ebony, a wood really similar to Makassar ebony, but more porous and lighter.

• The guitar has a full curly maple binding on body, fretboard and headstock with a thin ebony purfling between the binding and the body. The body has a real golden mother of pearl purfling made with the traditional teflon strip technique.

• The fretboard and the headstock are inlayed by hand with a rose themed layout. The full inlay is made of almost 300 tiles and the materials used are white mother of pearl, abalone paua, australian greenlip abalone, green abalone, rosewood, and red dino recon stone. On the headstock the writing Delky (a joke from my surname Del Col) is inlayed in golden mother of pearl.

• The neck is a five parts laminated one (indonesian ebony/hard rock maple) with a 15° scarf joint with a volute.
• The finish is high gloss poly.

• All the hardware is golden: Gotoh TOM bridge and tailpiece; Hipshot open machine heads with tulip button, SD covers on pickups, Freeway 6 positions toogle switch (traditional positions + split coils).
• Seymour Duncan Jazz + JB pickups.
• CTS pots and Orange Drops caps.

Here is the building thread on ProjectGuitar.com for this guitar.

This is my FB page Massimo Del Col where you can see other builds and inlays and this is the official page of my guitars Delky Guitars and Inlays .

Let me know your opinions!

And finally a video of the guitar running through a EVH 5150 made by the young but talentous guitarist Marco Bruni.

16 minutes ago, StratsRdivine said:

 My favorite part is the serrated edges of the leaf inlays.  

Thank you! That part was really a PITA!  but I think that they make the leaves more real!

1 hour ago, pan_kara said:

I agree that the inlay is a bit much when seen on the guitar, but man is this just soo beautiful!!

Makes me really want to try inlaying something more complex than a star (that's the most adventurous I got so far) but seriously cannot imagine the amount of precision and patience that such a design would require. Congrats!

Thank you! If you haven't read it yet, I suggest you "The art of inlay" by Larry Robinson. It's a small book, but it covers the technique very well. He made some dvds too, but I haven't seen them.

10 hours ago, nollnoll7 said:

For my personal taste the fretboard inlay is a bit too much, but I take my hat to that impressive craftsmanship. Great sound.

 

Thanks! As I said before, this guitar was built as a sum of everything I've learnt in three years of guitar building, so I wanted to do a full inlay on the fretboard and on the headstock. I felt in love with inlays admiring Larry Robinsons' masterpieces, so this is a kind of tribute to his style

3 hours ago, bileshake said:

Beautiful instrument, wow.

Thank you!

4 hours ago, Woden said:

It sounds excellent in that video you posted. What pickups did you use, Massimo?

Thank you Woden I've always been in love with the Les Paul design, I believe it's the queen of guitars! 

Pickups are Seymour Duncan Jazz at the neck and JB at the bridge. I like how they sound but one day I would like to try some handwound pickup or PAF replica...

6 hours ago, meatloaf said:

Wow what a stunning guitar, you must have the patience of an angel, that inlay work is absolutely awesome and the best I have seen, Beautiful work. absolutely  love it.

Thanks a lot Meatloaf! I'm really happy that you like it!

Here are some pics of the assembled guitar:

 In addition to standard three wires, I had to use other two for the split coils, so, all in all, there are five shielded wires running through the body. I was a little worrying about noise, but luckily the guitar is not noisy at all!

The sound of the guitar surprised me: having used really dense woods like ebony and ash for the body, I was waiting for a more trebly, sharp sound, while I think that the guitar sounds equilibrated. I wonder if this depends on the large chamber routed in the body.

Now the guitar is almost finished so I took a photo with the hardware. I choose golden hardware, because I think that it matches better with the wood and complements the golden mop purfling.

I f I could go back, maybe I would also put EVO gold frets...

Now it's time to varnish. I didn't want to dye the wood, so to get an hi gloss finish i decided to use polyurethane and acrylic 2k finish. This combination is really easy to sand and you can get a mirror surface with no need of wet sanding.

This is the guitar after clear coat. The mop stands out a lot under lacquer!

And this is there result after finishing and buffing. I couldn't be more happy!

On 21 ottobre 2017 at 3:16 AM, Mr Natural said:

really impressive work @MassimoPL77. You obviously love inlay- I can't even imagine cutting that much pearl. Well done and it looks incredible. 

Thank you!

On 21 ottobre 2017 at 10:48 AM, Prostheta said:

As I took Nina through each of the pictures, she said "huh!" in surprise more and more....hahaha....Nina is also a woodworker, but unlike me, not by trade.

Thank you Prostheta! I'm glad that Nina liked it!

19 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I'm not sure I've ever seen inlay of this quality on a guitar before...

Last time I saw anything close, it was on a priceless cupboard made in the 18th Century and now pride of place in an English Country Manor House that tourists flock to see....

How will you prevent chipping when you drill out the 5th string tuner hole?

Thank you Andy, I'm really flattered for this comment 

To cut the hole I used a drill press drilling the headstock from the back and going really slowly. It was stressful!

On 18 ottobre 2017 at 8:00 PM, ScottR said:

That much inlay makes my fingers hurt and my eyes twitch just thinking about it. You are a patient man. And a gifted one as well. Beautiful work!

SR

Thank you Scott! But, as you can imagine, the real patient in the house is my wife!

23 hours ago, Zoltar said:

Wow, and to think I've been worried about inlaying dots neatly

That's stunning Massimo, I'm not surprised it took a while. I often look at guitar makers' work and think that they'd be excellent furniture makers. I reckon that you'd be great at silversmithing too!

Thanks Zoltar! My father is a furniture maker. I followed a different path in life (I'm a teacher) but I've inherited the passion for woodworking.

8 hours ago, Norris said:

Wow! That's a fabulous inlay and a great demonstration of patience

Thank you Norris!

3 hours ago, Skyjerk said:

WOW!

 

Massimo, I am speechless. Your work is awesome!

Your inlays are absolutely beautiful. I do my own inlaying, but have chickened out and paid someone else to actually cut the shell for me (except for some more simple pieces). I wish I had your patience  

Thanks Skyjerk. As I started inlaying I felt immediately in love with this technique. For me it's so satisfying to work  with mother of pearl and I'm always surprised by its changing colours and the different effects that you can achieve!

The neck is the part of the guitar that differs the most from the traditional Les Paul: I made a 5 parts laminated neck with a 15°scarf joint and a volute. To start I glued together the sandwich: ebony /maple/ebony/maple/ebony. The ebony is the same asian wood used for the top.

(Sorry for the low quality of the next photos : I don't have pictures of the building process of the neck for this guitar, so I'm using some pictures of an older build made with the same woods)

This is the result after planing:

To cut the scarf joint I used the table saw with this jig: I clamped the neck blank to the jig which is 15° angled to the blade:

After planing it was time to glue the two parts together. Between the two parts of the neck I glued a thin board of maple; once carved, this board will take the look of an arrow.

To glue everything together I used five clamps: two clamps to keep in position the two parts of the neck, the others to put pressure on the joint.

This is the result after planing:

And this is the "arrow":

Now let's go back to the photos of the Les Paul!  

To make the heel I cut a portion of the neck and I glued on it, then I cut the tenon. With my equipment it was easier for me to make an angled tenon, while the neck pocket is flat.

I think I nailed the neck and body joint

And this is the joint after trimming the neck: 

Here is a photo of the routed headstock. Later I will glue a 2mm ebony head plate on it.

And finally two shots of the guitar:

6 hours ago, Norris said:

Welcome and thanks for posting. That's some beautiful work and an excellent result!

Thanks Norris! I'm a member of this community since 2014, but up to now I was only lurking for infos and admiring the work of others. Only now I've found courage to contribute.

Before starting to carve the top I routed the back contour with a 5mm concave bit.

Now I'm ready to start with the top. Firstly, using seven templates I route the lines on the top. I work with an arm router, so I have to doubletape the templates on the back of the guitar.

Then I had to route the neck plane and the pickups plane. To do it I made a simple jig: an MDF board with two screws, which gives a great control of the angle.

Using this it was easy to set up the right angle.

4.2° for the neck plane:

1.4° for the pickup plane

In this last photo you can see the three different angles on the top

Now it was time to start carving the top. My tools were a sander, some small scrapers and a lot of sandpaper. This ebony is really tough, so I needed some hours of hard work to reach this result:

After another session of carving and sanding i was really near to the final result. I also made the covers with the same wood of the body. I was lucky enough to find some pieces of wood which match the grain of the body.

The top is not perfectly book matched, but the most different part near the neck pocket will be covered by the fretboard and the neck pickup.

I don't like to see screws on wood covers, so I opted for some small but powerful neodymium magnets to keep all the covers in their positions.

I wanted a dark wood for the top, because I like the contrast between the top and the body, so I found this asian ebony, really similar to Makassar, which was very figured and enough thick to be a Les Paul top (16mm). 

Firstly I glued the two parts together:

Then I glued together top and body using my vacuum pump. To be sure that the wood doesn't move I tightened two screws on the pickup positions.

I've bought this pump to glue veneers, but I had really good results also with thicker woods and now I wouldn't go back for clamps!

Here is the result after routing the sides: the glue line is almost invisible.

Hi! I'm an italian amateur guitar builder. I started this hobby three years ago and I recently finished my 8th build. As I posted the pictures of the guitar on the "guitar of the month" contest, I decided to open a thread here to publish all the photos taken during the building process.

For this Les Paul build I followed the plans made by John Catto, but I didn't want to build a real replica: I respected all the original sizes and the top carving, but woods and some building choices were customized. 

To start I prepared all the templates

Then I glued two pieces of ash from the same board, and i cut the body leaving some space  for refinishing it with a router.

Next step was to route the channel for the wiring and, on the other side, the cavities for the pots and the toggle switch

Now it's time to see how much this piece of ash weights

This is really too much! A finished guitar would be near to 6kgs! So I decided to route a large weight relief chamber.

This is the template

And this is the result after the shock diet!

Near to 1kg less!

Hi, I'm an amateur guitar builder from Italy and I want to introduce you “Ladybug”, my 8^th build. I've started building guitars and inlaying 3 years ago and this guitar is supposed to be a sum of all things I've learnt so far.

For this guitar I wanted to do something challenging, so my choice felt on a Les Paul style guitar. For all the sizes I followed the plans made by John Catto, but woods and some building choices are customized.

• Woods are european ash for the body and asian ebony for the top. European ash is really heavy, so I routed a big weight relief chamber to keep the overall weight under 4.5kgs. The neck is a 5 parts laminated asian ebony/maple with 15° scarf joint and a volute. The fretboard is Gabon ebony.
• Scale 24,75", fretboard radius 12".
• Pickups are a hot rod set by seymour Duncan: Jazz at neck position and Jb at bridge position. Pots are CTS and caps are Sprague Orange Drops. The toogle switch is a Freeway with 6 positions (3 traditional Les Paul positions and 3 split coils).
• Hipshot open machine heads and Gotoh bridge and tailpiece.
• The inlays on fretboard and headstock are made with white mop, abalone paua and green abalone (approximately 300 tiles). The ladybug is made with recon stones and ebony.
• The binding is flamed maple and the purfling is a five parts maple/ebony/golden mop/ebony/maple.
• All covers are held in place by neodimium magnets.

This is the link to the building thread

And this is the link to the Facebook page where I publish my works: Delky Guitars

Here is a video of the guitar running through a EVH 5150.