Les Paul from scratch - non warmoth

[Danuda]

A short update.

I finally had a little bit of time to work on the guitar.  I have been busy at work so my free time has been limited. 

First up was working on the pickup route templates.  I used a stewmac template and some mdf to build this little guy.


I made a cut out at the top so the template would fit over the fret board.  I then grabbed my drill press and using a forstner bit chewed out a bunch of extra material.  Then I used double sided tape and put the template on the guitar.  Like so.



A little bit of routing later and voila.



I had started to get a little paranoid about doing the pickup routes.  All sorts of disasters kept popping into my brain so I put it off longer than I should have.  In the end it I discovered I was worrying about nothing.  As long as you have a good template it goes great.  The amount of material you remove is minimal so router slip isn't really a problem.  I still haven’t put the little deeper wing sections in yet, but I will add them in later since I ran out of time.  I also made a template for the rear control route and used it to finish the rear route.  I didn't take any pictures of the rear of the guitar and the template is pretty boring so I won't bother putting it in.  The only tricky thing left to do is drilling a hole for access to the neck pickup.  The bridge to the control route will be easy, but the bridge to the neck one won't be.  I may buy a special drill bit to do it just to be on the safe side.

 

[DangerousR6]

A short update.

I finally had a little bit of time to work on the guitar.  I have been busy at work so my free time has been limited. 

First up was working on the pickup route templates.  I used a stewmac template and some mdf to build this little guy.


I made a cut out at the top so the template would fit over the fret board.  I then grabbed my drill press and using a forstner bit chewed out a bunch of extra material.  Then I used double sided tape and put the template on the guitar.  Like so.



A little bit of routing later and voila.



I had started to get a little paranoid about doing the pickup routes.  All sorts of disasters kept popping into my brain so I put it off longer than I should have.  In the end it I discovered I was worrying about nothing.  As long as you have a good template it goes great.  The amount of material you remove is minimal so router slip isn't really a problem.  I still haven’t put the little deeper wing sections in yet, but I will add them in later since I ran out of time.  I also made a template for the rear control route and used it to finish the rear route.  I didn't take any pictures of the rear of the guitar and the template is pretty boring so I won't bother putting it in.  The only tricky thing left to do is drilling a hole for access to the neck pickup.  The bridge to the control route will be easy, but the bridge to the neck one won't be.  I may buy a special drill bit to do it just to be on the safe side.

That looks phuking awesome...Seriously tho, leave off the plung cuts on the ends and just hard mount the pups...It will looks way better.... :icon_thumright:

 

[Cagey]

I had started to get a little paranoid about doing the pickup routes.  All sorts of disasters kept popping into my brain so I put it off longer than I should have.  In the end it I discovered I was worrying about nothing.

"Fear of death is worse than death itself"

-- old Arab saying

 

[Danuda]

Hurray for holiday weekends.

Today was a part I have been looking forward to for a while now.  Time to shape the neck!  I didn’t take pictures of how I did it because it was 88 and humid today and my garage was worse.  Taking pictures slipped my heat stroked brain.  I used a ruler and straight edge and drew guide marks for the curve so I could slice the neck one angle at a time.  I used my grinder to get the rough shape.  Once all of the angles were cut out I took an orbital sander and smoothed it out to make a nice curve.  It came out looking really nice.



and the other side.



I am pretty happy with it.  The fretboard still needs radiusing but the neck feels really nice in my hands.  I also spent a bunch of time sanding the guitar starting with 50 grit and working up to 240.  There are some spots I caught and circled that need some attention, but with any luck I will be able to start putting on lacquer clear this weekend.

 

[Danuda]

That looks phuking awesome...Seriously tho, leave off the plung cuts on the ends and just hard mount the pups...It will looks way better.... :icon_thumright:

I checked on it too see what they looked like.  I may do it.  It has a kind of clean look to it that appeals to me.  It depends on the pickups I get I think.  I would want ones that have the pickup covers.  Straight humbuckers I think look a little unfinished without rings.

 

[Cagey]

Lookin' good! Won't be long now!

 

[Danuda]

Not much to talk about in this update, but a really pretty picture.  I put on the sanding sealer and a few coats of lacquer after sanding the entire guitar down with 50, 150, 200 and then 240 grit sandpaper.



The lacquer really makes the grain of the rosewood pop.  In other news, I discovered that I am allergic to either rosewood or Padauk dust.  I am going to have to really cover up when I do any sanding with it from now on.  My arms are all itchy and have bumps on them.  I was wearing a good resperator with a good filter though so thank goodness for that.  Cortizone cream is my friend right now.

 

[Cagey]

You're right, that rosewood has come right to life, eh? Very attractive.

Sorry to hear about the sensitivity. Gonna have to be careful from now on. Make sure you wear long-sleeved shirts, gloves, goggles, and a respirator. Especially the respirator. Spare no expense. Trust me on this one: you don't want to go into respiratory failure. It's the most panicky thing you'll ever experience, assuming you live through it. Even people who are around people who go into it can get hurt. All the movies you've seen where they calmly strangle somebody to death are pure, unadulterated bullshit. Nobody takes oxygen starvation without a serious, survival-fueled, balls-to-the-wall fight.

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Paduak causes an allergic reaction in many people. It gave me hives once long ago.  Be very careful.

 

[Alfang]

Bubinga is another bad one

 

[nexrex]

korina is another one that will drive your allergies nuts. Extra care if you get hayfever. I'm pretty sure it contains a natural pesticide, and it smelly really bad when you cut it.

http://www.mimf.com/archives/toxic.htm

 

[Alfang]

Danuda, thats looking awesome,    Makes me wonder, most of us here, having built a Warmoth or 2 or 3 etc.... swear we'll never buy an off the shelf guitar again.

                                                      Now having built from scratch could you say youl never buy a Warmoth again?

 

[Danuda]

Danuda, thats looking awesome,    Makes me wonder, most of us here, having built a Warmoth or 2 or 3 etc.... swear we'll never buy an off the shelf guitar again.

                                                       Now having built from scratch could you say youl never buy a Warmoth again?

I wouldn't say that.  If I were building a guitar that had a bolt on neck, i.e a strat or tele, I would buy from Warmoth again.  It is still really enjoyable building from Warmoth parts.  The neck thru has been an interesting and fun challenge, but it eats up a ton of time and makes a collosal mess.  You should see my garage!  I actually plan on building another warmoth.  A strat the next time I am thinking.

 

[Cagey]

I actually plan on building another warmoth.  A strat the next time I am thinking.

Everybody should own at least a half dozen Strats. I'm thinking there should be a law. Finance it out of taxes. We already make our neighbors work to pay for our misfortune against their will. Why would they balk at improving our guitar collections? At least that's a Good Thing <grin>

 

[Danuda]

Not enough hours in the day.

I have been swamped at work so the amount of time I get to work on the guitars has slowed.  I have more work on the other two done and they are closer to completion, but the steps are exactly the same as the last first guitar so I figured I would leave them out.  I will post pictures when they look a bit more impressive.
I did get to work more on the final clear coat of the first guitar though.  It looks real nice in the picture, but I have some issues.



If you look at the lower right of the picture you can kind of see it.  Evil sand through.  Now I have a question for people who have done finishing before since I have never had sand through before.  What is the best way to repair it?  Can I just recoat the part that got messed up or should I respray the whole top?  How many coats before I start the sanding again?  Can I just do one light one and buff it out?

 

[Cagey]

Wow. That thing is gorgeous! I'm really impressed! You've done a great job!

I don't remember the start of the thread(s), but is that going to be 7 string or something? Seems like that fretboard is pretty wide. Could just be the perspective of the shot, though.

As for the burn-through, what did you coat it with? If it was lacquer, you can just spot shoot it and get away with murder. Lacquer's vehicle (acetone) will melt/dissolve the previous finish and it'll blend right in. You'll have to re-buff it, but that's not the end of the world. If you used a urethane, things get a lot tougher. You may have to re-do that whole face.

 

[Danuda]

Wow. That thing is gorgeous! I'm really impressed! You've done a great job!

I don't remember the start of the thread(s), but is that going to be 7 string or something? Seems like that fretboard is pretty wide. Could just be the perspective of the shot, though.

As for the burn-through, what did you coat it with? If it was lacquer, you can just spot shoot it and get away with murder. Lacquer's vehicle (acetone) will melt/dissolve the previous finish and it'll blend right in. You'll have to re-buff it, but that's not the end of the world. If you used a urethane, things get a lot tougher. You may have to re-do that whole face.

Thanks.  I am really happy with how this thing is turning out so far.
As far as the fretboard looking wide it is just the angle.  That and I have not done the radius on the fretboard yet so it looks chunkier than normal.
I used lacquer for the finish since that is what I am comfortable with.  Thanks for the advice.  I will reshoot the spots I burn through tonight.

 

[Danuda]

Not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

Fret work is one of those things that I had worked up in my mind as being incredibly difficult.  There is a ton of stuff online about how to do it and apparently no one does it the same.  Looking at some methods you need about $1,000 in tools.  I went the slightly cheaper route.

I started by cleaning the fret slots out.  They were full of dust from doing the radius on the fretboard.  Stewmac has a fancy tool for scraping them out.  I just used a scrap piece of 320 grit sand paper and ran it back and forth a couple of times in each slot.

The fretwire I bought came wound up in a big loop.  I checked it to the radius of my fretboard and it was already bent basically where I needed it.  Fancy fretwire bending tool not needed.  I cut out all of the fretwire using some wire cutters I use for doing electrical wiring.



I didn’t want to spend the money on a fret press as they were pretty expensive.  I also didn’t like the idea of cutting the frets wider and using epoxy.  I decided to go the glue the slot and pound them in route.  I looked all over for a plastic tipped or brass hammer like I saw recommended everywhere and couldn’t find one.  In the end I bought a $3 4 oz normal hammer.  It worked great.  The internet told me a regular hammer would damage the frets, maybe, but I was careful and I noticed only minimal scuffing which would be taken care of when I leveled the frets anyway.  I am sure those hammers would be real nice if you did a lot of fret work though.  One dented fret would mean pulling it out and that would suck.



Here I have started putting the frets in.



Voila, done.  All those nasty sharp fret ends need to go though.

I used a wire cutter with a flat face from a big box store.  This is one of those cases where I am not sure why the online guitar store stuff is so expensive.  It appears to be the same tool they sell online, but it was a lot less.  It looks exactly the same as the $29 fret cutter it is just $24 cheaper.  It is possible that the expensive one is designed to work on stainless steel frets since they are harder.  Not sure though.



Now all the ends are cut off.  The next step was to get them completely flush and then put a little angle on the ends.



I used the level in the background to do this.  I put 320 grit sandpaper along the edge (I just held it there) and ran it up and down the side.  Then once it was flush I turned it on an angle and repeated that step.  It worked really well and saved me from buying those nifty files.  I can see why you would normally use them though.  If you did any amount of guitars you would burn through a fortune in sandpaper as it rips it up a lot.  But for me and my one guitar this worked great.

Fret leveling time.  Did I get lucky and they are all perfect?



Nope look at all that sky.

I taped up the fretboard to protect it.



Then I colored the fret tops with a black marker.



You cant see it well in the picture but it is there.  I used the same level as before and wrapped it in 320 grit sand paper to level the fret board.  I did it once, it wasn’t quite perfect and then did it one more time.  Just right. 

This is where I will probably need to buy another tool.  The tops of the frets were not crowned so I crowned them by eye.  They look pretty good, but I think I am going to spring for a really nice crowning file.  After I re-crowned the frets I polished them out starting with 600 and moving to 2000 grit sandpaper.



It turned out really nice and the frets are nice and level.  I oiled the top of the fretboard to make it look nice, but I skipped the sides as I need to do some lacquer and I was worried if I dripped oil past the fretboard it would mess up the adhesion.

I ordered the rest of my hardware from Warmoth (the tuners and bridge) so I should be getting those on sometime next week.  Is it technically a Warmoth guitar if all the parts are from them?  I am going to most likely source out one thing on the guitar and that is the guitar nut.  I looked at how much a set of files costs and then how much the local guitar tech charges to cut the slots for me and it just makes more sense for him to do it.  Everything I have read online says that doing the nuts is very tricky and it is incredibly important for it to be just right. 

 

[DangerousR6]

:blob7:

 

[Eric Banjitar]

Great tool improvization and, again, great work.