A metal worker builds a Les Paul

[Jim Estes]

I had written a lengthy post and attached a couple of pics, then submitted the post and then it disappeared. So here are the pics, I'll re-write the story.

I have wanted to do this for quite a while. I have seen some of the work some of the people here have done and thought I'd love to do a project like one of there myself. Work got really slow during Q4 2009 and I had lots of time on my hands.

I visited a cabinetmaker friend of mine to scrounge some wood for my project. I was in luck that day.

There is a local man, who is the grandfather of a well known lead singer of a successful rock band from my home town. This man builds fine musical instruments, mostly by hand, but occasionally he uses some of the equipment in my friends cabinet shop. This man had traded these two pieces of Rock Maple, for some soft maple that would be easier for him to work with. These two boards were very hard and they had a twist to them that would make planing them impossible. For me they were perfect.

I actually traded out some work for them and a board of soft maple to make the body and neck. The work I did was to re-build a Craftsman Shaper table that had been sitting in the back of his shop for years because of a nasty whining sound. After I replaced the two bearings on the shaper shaft, I discovered that the motor was the problem. The peices of sheet metal and felt packing material that Sears called bearings wasn't designed for continuous duty, so I replaced them with sealed roller bearings.

He got a working shaper table, got my project materials. And Away we go.............

[Jim Estes]

I first sawed the soft maple into four pieces and glued them up to make a block thick enough and wide enough for the body. I didn't have a bunch of clamps, so I clamped the width and then placed about 300 pounds of steel on top of that. I was surprised that even after all that weight, that the pieces still didn't squeeze as tight together as I had thought. But, they were bonded well and I was eager to get started. I screwed the body to a peice of MDF and then placed in on the CNC and machined the control cavities and pickup pockets, then milled to outside diameter. I love the smell of that maple when cutting.

[augustus c]

Your work is looking good so far, keep us informed of your progress, I have been wanting to build a Les Paul for some time now, but unable to find any plans I could convert to dxf, did you create your own? and would you be willing to share?

[Jim Estes]

I was planning to take a 7 1/2" and re-saw it on an angle so that I could bookmatch them and create the top. I realized that if I cut a 1" piece on an angle, from 1/4" up to 3/4", that no matter how I flip the pieces, I wasn't going to be able the get a "book matched" look. I tried re-sawing a piece and failed miserably. This rock maple is so hard, that my bandsaw wouldn't cut it I ruined one piece that way. I found somewhere on the net, that I should have rip sawed the board from both sides as far up as my table saw would cut, and then just saw out the 2" center portion that is left. Maybe I'll try that on the next project, but I had a better idea this time.

I was browseing some guitar sites looking for a good color for my axe and noticed a few guitars with a one-piece solid maple top. I had't noticed any of those until I started looking closer. It hit me that I might be able to get the full width from that board. Out came the tape measure and then to the CAD file, and viola I had the stock for the top.

I had to modify the dimensions of the lower bought a little bit but I have a one piece solid rock maple top now.

[Jim Estes]

I was having trouble uploading pics, hope this works.

[Jim Estes]

Machining the top was pretty straightforward. Nothing real complicated, just contoured the top, then cut the pockets and then drilled the holes. After all pockets were done, I used a couple of the holes to screw the top to the MDF so that I could cut the OD. I cut it a little oversized, so that I could re-cut it after gluing it to the body. After gluing to the body, I bolted it back onto the MDF and machined both the body and top OD, and then cut the binding channel.

[Jim Estes]

I had researched making the neck and there are several different ways to create the neck angle. I could cut the entire neck from a thick plank, cut several profiles from a thin plank and then stack them together and glue them up or take a long plank and stack short pieces on the end and glue them up to provide thickness for cutting out the head and heel. One way was to take a single plank and make a 17 degree cut and then flip the short piece and glue it on top of the long piece. Another way was to glue this piece underneath the long piece. The difference being that the "joint" is puched back further down the neck, well under the fingerboard.

I wasn't sure of the best way to create the 17" angle, but during my research I came across a picture of someone planing the two pieces after sawing the cut. The way they were planed was, to stack the two pieces so that the angled ends were oriented together so that when you plane them flat, they are at exactly the same angle.

Lucky for me, I have a mill with plenty of Z travel, so that I could stack the two pieces and then kici them up on a 17" angle and then machine the two pieces together. This made for a very quick and very nice flat angle. Then it was just a matter of flipping the short piece and gluing it in place.

[Jim Estes]

After the glue dried, I sawed away some of the excess material and then screwed the neck blank to a 2x6 board, by drilling holes up thru the 2x6 into what would be the truss rod slot. This way I can machine the whole neck "except the head" without having to stop the program.

I had planned on making two passes over the neck, one rough pass and then a finish pass that I could run overnight. Aftrer running the first pass which took about an hour, the finish was so nice that I didn't even have to run the finish pass. The few little scarfs left between step overs, were very easy to remove with just a bit of sanding.

The neck joint "tennon" was just a bit oversized. I had left about 0.010" stock on all of the neck for the finish pass. So I machined the tenon to fit the body, I ran several skim passes until I could just push the body onto the tennon and it would hold itself snuggly.

[Jim Estes]

With the body and neck fit together it was time to figure out what to do about the headstock. I wasn't sure I wanted to use the same head shape as the CAD file, but I was anxcious to see the neck finished so I didn't spend so much time thinking about it, I just go started machining.

I veniered the headstock with a thin piece of the rock maple. You can see in the pictures that the rock maple had some worm holes in it. There were some worm holes on the body top, but mostly around the edges, and I was thinking that I could always do a burst finish and hide those. The wormholes on the headstock really bothered me, I was thinking of doing an inlay on the headstock but wasn't sure what to do.

With the neck roughed out, I set it aside for a while and began work on the fingerboard.

I was going for a theme with this guitar. I decided to make this entire guitar from maple. What I read about maple is that it creates a guitar with very bright "high" tones and sort of muffled "low" tones. Since I am not a professional guitarist and I probably won't be playing for any recordings, I am not as concerned with how the finished product sounds as I am with how it looks.

I machined the fingerboard from the rock maple, I machined the back flat, then flipped the piece and machined lines where the fret slots would be cut. I could have cut the slots with a very tine 0.020' cutter, but I was thinking I wanted to inlay the fingerboard with some sort of epoxy mix, and then machine the top radius so I didn't bother cutting the slots.

I actually machined inlay pockets in the shape of Maple Leafs, just like on the Canadian flag. I filled the pockets with a mixture of epoxy and something called "Liquid Pearl". It wasn't a bad looking inlay. But I had stained the piece with an ebony colored stain, and after I applied the stain, the board twisted and bowed like crazy. I tried to staighten it and thought I could save it. After I sanded the radius on the top of the fingerboard, I applied some black stain mixed with de-natured alcohol. BIG MISTAKE !!

The inlay soaked up the stain and turned JET BLACK. It looked cool, but that was the straw that broke this old camel's back. I decided to do something different with the fingerboard.

[Jim Estes]

I set the fingerboard aside and started to work on the truss rod. I machined the truss rod slot for a piece of rod the I had bought fror $2. This is a rod that is used for a screen door to keep the door from sagging. It was actaully two rods, one with right hand threads andc one with left hand threads, and a coupler to join them. If you turn the coupler one direction the rod gets shorter, if you turn it the other way the rod gets longer.

I cut off a piece of the coupler that had the left hand thread on it and threaded in onto the rod. Then I put a square nut onto a socket head cap screw and welded that screw to the other end of the rod.

Now I have a rod with a left hand thread on one end and a right hand thread on the other. I cut slots for the nuts to be seated into and fitted the rod to the neck and glued a piece of maple into the slot above the rod.

Since both ends of the rod are anchored, this makes this a two way truss rod, when turned one direction, the rod gets longer and bends the neck back. Turn the rod the other direction and the rod gets shorter, bending the neck forward.

[Jim Estes]

I really enjoyed working with this ABS binding. I ordered it from Stew-mac. I didn't get the glue they recommend because I read about "binding goop", which is basically some of the ABS dissolved into Acetone. I wanted to see for myself just how good this stuff is. All I can say is WOW !!!! I didn't want to waste any of the binding making this goop so I looked around for something made of ABS. I tried several things, just cut off a little piece of this and that until I found something that dissolved in Acetone. I finally found something, an electrical box, it was brite white and just the thing to make some glue.

The stuff sets up quick too, not quite as fast as CA glue, but MUCH faster than anything else.

I thought I was going to have trouble bending the binding to fit the tight corners, but with a little patients, it bent very nice.
I bought some super stick masking tape to hold it while the good dried.

Trimming the binding down to the edge was the fun part. It really works very nice. I used an exacto knife to scrap it flush.

I think I impressed myself with the job I did on the headstock. It was done in four pieces. One piece for each side and two pieces across the top. I even put some of the good into the engraved logo. It looked very nice when done, but soon after, disaster struck.

I thought that the ABS would NOT absorb the dye I was going to use on the body and beghead, WRONG !!

I saved the binding on the body, and headstock, but there was no saving the logo. It turned almost solid blue.

[Jim Estes]

Getting just the right color with this dye is very difficult. It dries darker than it is when applied, and it gets lighter with clear coat.

I wanted the dark stripes in the Maple, so I did a very light coat of black first, then sanded most of it off. Then applied a dark coat of blue. I sanded the blue to make some light streaks. the difficulty was in getting the general color to be dark enough while still having some of the light highlights in the grain.

Since this wood was already dark, I probably should have skipped the black. Live and learn I guess.