eubie

It has been a couple weeks since we did any serious work on the Les Paul build, but they have not been idle weeks. In the shop, we spent some quality time working on jigs that will make life much easier over the next few weeks – I’m working on documenting those builds, and hope to post them in other forum channels as appropriate over the weekend. Out of the shop, I saw the Beach Boys in Santa Barbara at one of Brian Wilson’s last appearances, I watched Zach (son #1) jump out of a plane, I spent half a week at Pacific Beach in San Diego (Data Quality conference and paddle boarding on the bay), and I hung out at Disneyland twice. Probably more than you were really interested to know, but the point is, it’s been a busy few weeks. But today, Josh (son #2) and I were back at it. We got our dual-action truss rod in the mail this week. I know it’s upside down in the pic – no need to comment, We need to make a template for routing the truss rod channel in the neck, but we really wanted to work on the guitar today, as opposed to making templates again, so we set the neck aside, and pulled out the mahogany body base. The glue up was nice, but still needed to be surfaced flat, and since we don’t have a planer/thicknesser, or a drum sander, we built a router sled surfacing jig and went to work with that. The process went smooth as silk – it turns out that actually surfacing the board was far easier than the process of building the jig. I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to work, but sometimes it just surprises me when things work the way they are supposed to. Of course the next time I'll be able to just reuse the jig instead of building it again, which makes the extra time spent building a reusable jig totally worth it. The glued up mahogany board came out nice and flat and measured out at 1.59 to 1.61 all the way around. It still needs some sanding before it’s ready to have the maple top glued on, but I was very pleased with how even the surface came out using the router sled. With the surfacing done, I was reminded how pretty the grain is on this piece of wood. With the surfacing done, I moved on to rough cutting the body to shape. I started on the band saw but quickly realized that it would be easier to cut most of the waste off at the table saw. So after a few cuts there, I moved back to the band saw made pretty quick work of getting the body roughly to shape. I’ll clean up the final shape at the router table with the MDF template – a task which is on hold until the new router with a 1/2″ collet makes an appearance. Josh is pleased with the progress so far, and had been doing a great job learning the ins and outs of the wood shop. Here’s a bonus shot of him getting his first lesson in sharpening chisels and plane blades a couple weeks ago.

It has been a while since Pt. 2. Will there be a third part, as mentioned?

Ok - I can picture that and will definitely put that in my arsenal. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Quick question for ya. That's a nice crisp edge you have at the top of the scoop on the lower horn. I'm impressed, not just that you got a crisp edge, but that you kept it very clean on the second pass. I'm curious about your technique/tools. Seems like sandpaper would have given you a much softer/rounded edge. Chisels would be a challenge on a curve like that. Scraper?

I realize that 'better' is a subjective evaluation that may vary from person to person, but I'd say this looks fantastic!

That's looking great. I applaud your courage doing a hand-carve without a lot of woodworking experience. It looks like you've got a good eye for the proportions though. I'm curious as to why the pickup cavities have changed shape since the earlier pics.

Spent part of the last two weeks building jigs, but did get some work done on the neck this weekend. Last status of the neck was a blank cut out from our mahogany board with a block glued up at the head end to accommodate the angled headstock. That’s been sitting for a few weeks and is ready for a little more attention. The first step was to true up the top surface, which had a little extra height in the middle, and I made quick work of that with a nice sharp plane (thanks Josh!). The neck is actually laid out at a slight angle across our board to take best advantage of the direction and pattern in the grain, so I didn’t have a good, square edge on either side that I could lay on the band saw table in order to make the angle cut for the headstock. I clamped a couple of thin, straight boards to either side, so I could feed the piece into the band saw at right angles to the center-line of the neck. That worked out fine, and I got the top and side profiles cut out with no problems, as well as the underside of the headstock. Here’s where I ran into a problem though. When I went to cut the bottom profile, I realized I needed a reference line, so I grabbed my MDF template, and discovered that I didn't have a flat side to set the template on to trace the line. The wings on the headstock held the full-length template off the side of the neck. I guess this is just a long way of saying that I used the side neck template to make a new side neck template that excluded the headstock so I could lay it on the side of the neck and mark my reference line. So anyway, I did that, and then cut the bottom profile. Not really all that dramatic in retrospect. With the neck rough cut on all four sides, and close-to-final surfaced on the top, the next step was to shape and surface the headstock. I started by hand planing the top surface flat, and down to the nut-position reference line on the neck. And that’s where we are at this point. The next step is to surface the back of the headstock to the correct thickness and flatness. To do that, though, I need to finish building the router thicknessing/surfacing sled (it's about 90% done, but I also still need to buy a router bit). Oh well, more reasons to spend time in the shop. Then on to final side-shaping of the neck and headstock, work on the fretboard, carving the back of the neck… obviously still lots to do!

Nice - I'd love to see more pics from some different angles that show the contours. -- se

Looks like you are making great progress. How are you doing the body carving? Rasps, angle grinder, gouges? -- se

The upwards pointing horn has a more traditional look, which I think is at odds with the overall non-traditional look of your guitar. For my money, I'd go with the downward pointing horn. Either way, I like it! -- se

Looks like a great project. Beautiful color on that walnut. -- se

I realize this is an old thread, but if the original image could be updated, it would make all those measurement posts useful again. Thanks, -- se

8" or maybe 10" sounds about right. I have 24", 12" and 10" straight sanding beams, and find that I'm always grabbing the short one for fretboards. Even that one (the 10") feels a little long when I am working on ukes, but I like it for guitars. -- se

End of Sunday this past weekend. Just the main bench, but the rest of the shop is similar.

Looking forward to seeing this guitar come together, but that radiused sanding block jig is what really jump-started me this morning. I love seeing the creative solutions that other builders come up with and this is one that I can't wait to copy! -- se

Looks great. That's a beautiful piece of mahogany for the body. Do you have a planer/thicknesser, or do you use another method for thickness planing? I ask because I don't have a planer and am thinking about how to get various pieces of my current project down to finished dimensions. Right now the likely approach will be a router sled with a planing bit - I'm not confident I can hand plane a flat surface. -- se

Love the proportions on this guitar - it really looks like its going to be a beauty. -- se

This Weekend's Progress This weekend’s work on the Les Paul focused on the neck, and played out in three main accomplishments. Convert the pencil drawings to computer drawings Select a board and glue up the blank Make router templates Reproducing the pencil drawings in the computer was important because I want to be able to use these layouts again, and if I had just cut out and used my hand drawings, they would have degrade pretty quickly. Besides that, I can easily edit the drawings in the computer to vary things like scale length, headstock design, width at the nut, etc. In this case, the drawings are good to go, and if you look closely, you can see that we have indeed switched the headstock from a traditional Gibson design to more of a PRS look. Next, the drawings went onto the mahogany in different spots and at different angles to select the best part of the board from which to extract a good, stable neck. We did this with a follow up instrument in mind, and selected a piece that we could reasonably get two good necks from and cut out a blank. The board isn’t quite thick enough to manage the angle of the headstock, so we also glued up a block at the head end, and then set that aside to dry and settle for a couple days. We had considered the possibility of just making the neck without the templates, but decided that the likelihood of a follow-up instrument is high enough that it would be worth the time to have the templates for the future. So the drawings went onto the MDF and a nice top and side template resulted. The side one will be pretty versatile, but the top template has the PRS headstock on it, so if we decide to do something different with the next one we’ll either have to lop off it’s head, or make another with a different head. But that’s a decision for another day. I rough cut the templates on the (new!) band saw, then finished all the straight lines with a known-straight edge and router, and all the curved lines on the spindle sander. The results are very satisfactory. Bonus Content: I also finished my vice build/install, and am really happy with how it turned out. It's not super pretty, but it works like a champ! We also had a little fun making fidget spinners in between guitar tasks. And at the end of it all, my build partner disappeared and left me to clean up the mess!

I put a piezo in an acoustic not too long ago - just a standard add-a-pickup job. But doing so got me thinking and reading a little about the relative merits of piezo vs. transducer vs. microphone pickups. What I really wondered is whether a combination of two of these approaches, mixed at the preamp would give a more robust sound that would overcome the weaknesses of any individual approach. I'm sure I could have found plenty of opinions on the interwebs, but I finished that particular project and moved on to other things. Your post just made me wonder a little again.

Ok - I didn't want to be the forum noob that went straight off topic on his first post, but having been asked... Here's the '69 Fiat. And here's the '69 beetle. Start, Finish, and a pic of the proud owner. Basically, the older son is into cars, so at 16, we built him a car. The younger is son is into guitars, so we're building him a guitar. Lucky for me, I'm into both And one parting shot... We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

The standard piezo pickups I see all over the place are obviously sized for a typical six-string saddle. Do you use the standard size for a 12 string, or do you have a source for a longer one? Or do you fabricate them yourself (I secretly hope it's this).

Hm - closer reading makes me think something more like this, only as a solid body. (?)

Glad you revived this build, and this thread. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product. The video you posted back in the day is blocked for me, so I'm wondering about the look you are going for. Is this the direction you are headed?

Context: I'm fairly new to the ProjectGuitar community, and to guitar building, though I've played for 35ish years, and have been woodworking for 25ish. I've done a few repair/restoration/modification projects on electrics, acoustics and ukes, and am embarking on my first full, from-scratch electric build. I'm building it with my son (which, of course, is super fun for me) who has recently gotten serious as a player, and is interested in learning a little about the build process as well. Here's some shots of the shop, which I recently reorganized to be more guitar friendly (previous focus had been classic car restoration - '74 Fiat Spider, '69 Fiat Spider, '69 VW Beetle). And this is us: What we're thinking: It will be a pretty straightforward Les Paul, though we may take some liberties with the pickup configuration and the headstock design. We have African mahogany for the body base and the neck, maple for the top, and a nicely figured wenge for the fretboard. We might use the wenge to veneer the headstock too, but that's still an open discussion at this point. We're going to do an traditional carve on the top, most likely using the angle grinder with carving disk approach as opposed to the router and sander approach or the gouges and chisels approach. What we've done so far: The build is just getting started. We've been studying plans (and making our own where we need them), making templates and gluing up blanks. We dutifully searched the internet for Les Paul plans and dimensions, and started our design from there. We found most of what we needed, with the exception of good dimensions for the neck. So I extrapolated from what I had and drew up the neck myself. We've made MDF templates for the body, including one to use for routing the body itself, and for the electronics cavities. The other is for routing the weight relief cavities, and the neck cavity. If this build goes well, we have enough mahogany and wenge to make another one, so hopefully these templates will have a future as well. We've cut out and glued up the blanks for both the base and the top. The boards came S3S from Cherokee Wood Products in Upland, CA, and it only took a little tuning with the plane to get the edges flat and square for gluing. What's next on the agenda: Laying out the neck and getting it rough cut from the mahogany board is our next step. The new band saw just came yesterday, so I have some set up and tuning to do on the tool before we put the blade into our good wood, but hopefully by the end of the weekend we'll be ready to start thinking about cutting the body shapes out of those blanks. Hope you'll enjoy following along with us. We'll be glad to hear any input, suggestions and ideas. Cheers! -- se