LP Build (non-Warmoth)

[davegardner0]

So here's my second work in progress, I thought I'd post where I'm at so far although I've been working on this one for a while so I might not get all of my progress posted right away. It's not a Warmoth kit so hopefully that's okay to post on here!

Anyway, I've always wanted a "real" Les Paul so when I discovered Precision Guitar Kits who do a really nice set neck LP kit I had to give it a try.

I went with the plain top kit with a 59 neck. It's chambered and not bound anywhere.
https://precisionguitarkits.com/product/lp-59-carved-top-our-best-seller

Scary looking shipping box:


The top has a nice figure on half. Hah, not what I was expecting but pretty cool!



Also a nice knot on the plain side...I really like this sort of thing. Much better than a "perfect" piece of wood, at least to me.


I think it's going to look great when finished!


Really nice mahogany for the neck.


The back looks nice too, although it's a bit lighter than the neck. And sorry about the dark photo.


The neck joint literally suctions together, and look how tight everything fits together. Later in the project we'll see how I messed this up with a little help from mother nature...

 

[davegardner0]

I decided that the unbound neck was pretty awesome, but that the body would look a little better with some contrast on the edges. So a friend of mine who builds acoustics helped me rout the binding channel and install the binding. He has a jig that rides up the body contours in the cutaway so the binding can follow this curve. Unfortunately I can't find the photos I took during this process.

The plan is to french polish this instrument for maximum acoustic resonance, plus all the other benefits of shellac. So I added grain filler and then a thin "spit coat" to the back and sides of the body, as well as the neck, to protect them from the stain I'd be spraying onto the top. Once the wood has some shellac on the surface the pores are sealed and it can't accept stain, sort of like if it was masked off. (hence why sanding sealer is often made of shellac).
Unfortunately after 1 coat of shellac the color mismatch between the body and neck became really drastic. Oh well...it's not that bad and sanding off all of those closed pores doesn't sound very appealing...

For the body burst I decided to spray aniline dye directly onto the bare wood using an airbrush. I think this gives maximum vibrance plus it lets the stain interact with the wood grain / figuring for a more interesting appearance. The color looks more "in the wood" instead of a colored filter over top of the wood which is what you get if you dye the shellac or lacquer. The downside when spraying right onto the wood is that it's super super hard to sand back and remove any mistakes, so I practiced spraying the burst several times first.

For this guitar and also the purple bass in my signature I used Keda Dyes, and I highly recommend them https://www.kedadyeinc.com/.

First test to try out the colors I'd mixed. Surprisingly I liked them all right off the bat.


2nd test on a "guitar". This let me practice putting the colors exactly where I want them on the body. I think it looks pretty good!



I did a 2nd practice run on a 2nd plywood "guitar", then waited a few days to make sure I still liked my colors. Then I took the plunge!

First step was to wipe down the body with some naptha to check for any sanding errors that will show up under the finish. This is also the first chance to really see the grain and figuring!


Next I wiped on the yellow dye and let it dry. It's actually yellow with a little red mixed in. Up close the birdseyes in the maple catch the red which looks really cool.



Then the orange (about 2 parts red to 1 part yellow). In retrospect I know that I sprayed a lot less here than I did on the practice pieces. I think the bright maple tricked my eyes.


Then the outer rim is straight brown dye. Again I sprayed a lot less than the practice, which is good considering that I'd already done so on the orange.


Next I looked at it in some different light over a few days to make sure I liked it. It really wasn't what I was expecting based on the practice runs but still I'm really happy with how everything looks. The most important part is that the fades in the burst are all even and in the right spots, and I nailed that so I'm happy.




I had thought that the stain would wipe right off of the binding but surprisingly it didn't, so I scraped the binding to bring it back to white. Wow after seeing the burst effectively with and without the binding I'm so so glad I took the time to add it!

Before scraping



After

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Great work!

 

[davegardner0]

The pure aniline dye sitting on the surface of the wood is totally unprotected, and if I tried to french polish it the dye (which is also alcohol-soluble) would run and smear. So I used some bullseye spray can shellac to seal in the stain and build some clear coat thickness. I do tons of super thin coats (takes maybe 3 seconds to spray each). Luckily the shellac dries almost instantly when sprayed so thin.

After 1 coat, the wood's figuring is already starting to show, and the colors are getting deeper.


After a few more coats. You can also see here that I masked not only the neck pocket but also the TOM bridge and tailpiece stud holes, as I want bare wood in there for the best sound transfer between the bridge and body. The neck pocket masking will stay on throughout the finishing process but the stud hole tape can come off after spraying as the french polishing won't get a significant amount of finish into the holes.
The pot and switch holes, on the other hand, are left exposed as I'd like to seal the end grain in there.



After a few days of spraying lots of coats per day, the spraying is done. I've got some severe orange peel but the stain is sealed in and protected until I accidentally sand through later.




Next is a cycle of french polishing to build up more thickness, and careful sanding to level out all of those bumps. Things went pretty well and uneventful except for the time I accidentally sanded through. A carved top is really hard to sand evenly, even with a foam sanding block! What happened here is that there's a pretty sharp curve in the body in this area, and I didn't realize and put all of my sanding pressure in these two small spots.


Uggh, well that was really frustrating. After thinking about it for a day I decided to try dropping some of the orange and brown stain into the top and bottom spots respectively. Then I very carefully polished over it to try to seal in the stain (which of course has no wood grain to sink into). Surprisingly this worked! I don't think anybody but me could find the spot after the repair. And for what it's worth plan B if the french polishing wiped off the stain was to drop more stain onto the spot, then spray this one small spot to lock it in. This would have left me much more sanding to do though.

Here are some super close-ups of the finish after french polishing. There are a few little fibers stuck in the finish which is pretty much par for the course with my currently level of french polishing skill. Otherwise though things look good, and the finish is getting and flat and shiny. I'll let it cure for a good long while, then do some final glaze coats of shellac to further smooth things and shine them up.

 

[BigSteve22]

Well, color me impressed! That's a great looking burst, and a great looking project overall. Thanks for liking work-in-progress pix as much as I do, keep 'em coming!  :kewlpics:

 

[davegardner0]

Well, color me impressed! That's a great looking burst, and a great looking project overall. Thanks for liking work-in-progress pix as much as I do, kepp 'em coming!  :kewlpics:

Thanks!! Oh yeah I'm all about looking at the pictures too! And I love seeing how other people's projects come together so I thought I'd return the favor. Although in writing this one up I wish I took a few more pics as I'm missing some steps like the binding install.

 

[davegardner0]

Next I french polished the back and sides just like the top, except it went much more quickly as I wasn't trying to sand out and level orange peel. Of course that means I forgot to take photos, so here are some from later in the build. It's a pretty piece of mahogany, but wait till you see the back of the neck!



At this point the body went into storage for a while, and I started working on the neck next...

 

[dmraco]

Very nice work and the French polish is cool.

The Precision LPs are top notch stuff.  Several of the members on the board have them.  I personally have two of the LP Jrs.

What type of hardware you thinking?

 

[davegardner0]

Very nice work and the French polish is cool.

The Precision LPs are top notch stuff.  Several of the members on the board have them.  I personally have two of the LP Jrs.

What type of hardware you thinking?

Yeah I'm pretty blown away with the quality! I've heard PGK got into legal trouble since I first bought my kit (which was 2 years ago) and thats really a shame. I hope they're still doing okay.

For hardware, I'm going with a tonepros  bridge and tailpiece, hipshot locking open gear tuners, and Seth Lover pickups. I'm not sure if I'll like the dullness of the alnico 2 magnets in the Lovers, so I may swap them out with a3's or a5's if i need a little more brightness.

 

[mayfly]

Very nice work this!

 

[rgand]

This is definitely one to follow. I like the progress. Looking forward to more.

 

[davegardner0]

Okay time to work on the neck.

I'd been thinking about the headstock logo and design for some time, but it was pretty difficult to decide on because (a) you're stuck with whatever you pick, and (b) it's hard to visualize what different logos will look like on the completed headstock with tuners, stain, etc.

So, to at least help the second concern I decided to make a mock-up in powerpoint to let me draw out designs and see how they'd look on a headstock.

First I took a photo of the headstock shape, then clipped it out in gimp, then ran a threshold filter to extract the exact headstock profile:


In powerpoint I added images grabbed from google of tuner bushings, tuner knobs, truss rod cover, etc. to complete my mockup:


Now I can play around with designs and see how they'll look:


I mentioned earlier that I had a friend help me with the body binding...he also agreed to help with the headstock inlay and in return I agreed to help him with a headstock logo for his guitar company called Moonlit Guitars. So this guitar would get the test inlay of the new logo I designed. I played around with lots of ideas for text and also a cool design to go in-between the tuners. All stars/space themed:




I also stumbled across this "Gibson font" on a forum somewhere (wish I could remember where), and I used the letters to construct "Moonlit" with a gibson-esque look, which we ended up using.


Here's the final design we agreed on:

 

[davegardner0]

I ordered a laser-cut pearl inlay of our design from Rothko and Frost. VERY cool.


My friend Brian then inlayed it into the maple headplate.

Design layout


The moon is in


And the rest! My friend used black epoxy to glue the inlay in, in preparation for the black stain on the rest of the headplate. That's why you see a black outline on the text.


Speaking of stain, I airbrushed the front of the headstock, then after letting the stain work into the wood for a minute I was able to brush off the stain on the inlays. Good thing they're non-pourous!


I think it looks really, really good! The stain was 2 parts black to 1 part brown so that hopefully the brown would catch in the grain lines a little and look like ebony.



I forgot to mention this earlier but before the inlay work my friend applied grain filler and then a "spit coat" of shellac to all of the mahogany on the neck except for the neck joint tenon. This worked great to protect the wood and make it impervious to stain, but unfortunately it also sealed the edges of the maple headplate, meaning that they wouldn't accept any stain. So, I masked off the sides of the neck and then painted them with a black paint marker.




Then lastly, similar to the body, I sealed in the stain with some spray can shellac. Then I french polished it along with the rest of the neck, and leveled the bumpy shellac on the headstock as I went along. Here's the headstock about half-leveled:


And here it is after 1 polishing session post-sanding, not quite back to a gloss yet. I'm really happy that a little of the wood grain is showing through since I stained instead of painted on the headplate.


Here's the back of the neck, which built up finish crazy quickly and looks amazing. Woah!! That's some really nice mahogany.

 

[mayfly]

That is quite the thing!!!  Very very cool.

 

[Logrinn]

That came out super nice. Bravo!

 

[Tomatonator]

Very nice burst and inlays. It's also good to see your airbrush - I have probably the equivalent 90s one I used on models many moons ago which I planned to try on my ash body. Did you use the standard nozzle? I bought an extra one with larger coverage so I have a 0.4mm and 1mm nozzles. Also how big of an ink cup did you use? I only have a tiny one so may need to get another so I don't have to refill too soon but they're not too expensive.

 

[rgand]

Nicely done. Looks great.

 

[Cagey]

I agree. Well done, and very impressive.

I think if it was me, though, I'd shoot a couple/few layers of lacquer over that shellac on the headstock face, finish sand and buff/polish that out. As it is, it looks sorta like it's been repaired, rather than painstakingly created. If it was clear over wood grain, that would be one thing, but an opaque surface shouldn't show grain like that, certainly not when nothing else does. It's inconsistent, and implies you ran out of either the time or ambition to do the job right.

I know I'm being a bitch, but that's just me  :laughing7:

 

[dmraco]

This is shaping up nicely.  I dig the headstock!

 

[davegardner0]

I agree. Well done, and very impressive.

I think if it was me, though, I'd shoot a couple/few layers of lacquer over that shellac on the headstock face, finish sand and buff/polish that out. As it is, it looks sorta like it's been repaired, rather than painstakingly created. If it was clear over wood grain, that would be one thing, but an opaque surface shouldn't show grain like that, certainly not when nothing else does. It's inconsistent, and implies you ran out of either the time or ambition to do the job right.

I know I'm being a bitch, but that's just me  :laughing7:

Oh yeah, the headstock is totally not done yet! I was just showing my progress, but eventually it'll get the same treatment as the tele headstock in my other thread. I'd like it to be glossy and match the rest of the guitar...