Replica Les Paul rebuild

jase128

@WezV ; any chance of some tips on refinishing, the colours look excellent do you mix them yourself? what spraygun do you use? how many coats etc where do you buy your dyes/paints from please

excellent job so far, its making me want to have a go at my Epi339

WezV

Hottubes said:

Good work there Wez, who had it before the butcher of Baghdad !!

We have already had most people who actually work on guitars, of all skill levels, say similar has happened to them.   If we are negative about the fact it happened to this guitar, I won't feel comfortable showing  the rest of the process.  I would rather we just accept an accident happened without any additional silliness and let me show how it can be fixed for those that might benefit from it in the future.... the story of it is already covered in earlier posts.

jase128 said:

@WezV ;; any chance of some tips on refinishing, the colours look excellent do you mix them yourself? what spraygun do you use? how many coats etc where do you buy your dyes/paints from please

excellent job so far, its making me want to have a go at my Epi339

I'm not best placed to do that.    I'm pretty much making it up as I go along, and there are some great tutorials out there.


I have recently changed to aniline dyes for the browns and reds.   These are powders you mix in with the lacquer and thinners..    best advice with these is to keep the tints light and build up slowly.  I did thinned Amber all over, then a thinned tobacco tint (outer burst), then a thinned red/tobacco mix ( inner burst)... red will fade out

And always be willing to wipe off the whole lot with thinners when it goes wrong

impmann

If the plug is a problem, you could always make it far better looking with a GoldTop. ;-)

Joking aside, it’s a great project. Thanks for sharing 

WezV

Goldtop was mentioned actually.  I've covered figured wood before for the gold

As was adding some F-holes and chambering from the back.  This isn't as crazy as it sounds as it has already been weight relieved and capped on the back, but it would  open up a lot of unknowns  .    Also, the ideal position for the f-holes wouldn't cover the plug anyway.

....

I will start work on the neck properly soon.    Think I'm going to go for a traditional single action rod.   Not something I usually bother with, but I think this needs it.  

WezV

I don't often do traditional one way truss rods, but thought I would do one for this.

That means routing a curved channel, so a jig was needed.  I did consider going  for a straight, angled channel, deeper at the body end... but decided to try curved.

 True to form I kept this as simple as possible.  No pics of the jig, it was just a piece of 4mm ply with a 12 mm slot down the middle.   I then put a 3mm block at either end of where I want the truss rod to be, and screwed the ply directly  into the edges of neck blank  at the 7th fret location, outside the outline of the neck.

That allowed me to route a nice even curve that's approx 1/2" deep at the 7th fret and 9mm deep at either end.    



I then extended the channel to the end of the tenon so we will see a flash of maple on the neck pickup cavity.

The original neck was medium tenon, but I'm extending to a full long tenon for the replacement.

Access route was done by hand with a carving knife.   Headstock has been trimmed to width so I can add ears.

SteveRobinson

WezV said:

That allowed me to route a nice even curve that's approx 1/2" deep at the 7th fret and 9mm deep at either end.    

I realise you're a bit younger than me but is there an age range where we are comfortable using metric and imperial measurements interchangeably?

WezV

SteveRobinson said:

WezV said:

That allowed me to route a nice even curve that's approx 1/2" deep at the 7th fret and 9mm deep at either end.    

I realise you're a bit younger than me but is there an age range where we are comfortable using metric and imperial measurements interchangeably?

Haha... I think most my age can't think in inches, it only sneaks in for me because I've been working on guitars for 20 years.   

SteveRobinson

I use whichever seems most convenient. I'm trying to move to metric for string height but that's mostly driven by my losing my inch string height gauge!

WezV

My string height gauge is imperial from when you could only get them at stew-mac and they hadn't made a metric one yet, but I think of string height in metric and nut height and relief in imperial.

Mattharrier

SteveRobinson said:

WezV said:

That allowed me to route a nice even curve that's approx 1/2" deep at the 7th fret and 9mm deep at either end.    

I realise you're a bit younger than me but is there an age range where we are comfortable using metric and imperial measurements interchangeably?

I think it partly comes down to what you're talking about - flexible hoses for taps are 15mm at one end, and 1/2" at the other for example, and we sell sheets of acrylic in 2, 3, 4mm but the stock size is 8'x4' so they are sometimes interchangable.

Like scale length and action height - former almost always in imperial, latter almost always (outside the US) in mm.

I don't think it's necessarily an age thing, more an industry thing!

WezV

need a maple fillet.  A quick dig through the wood stacks reveals a quilted drop top that's the perfect thickness, and wide enough to spare  a bit being trimmed off the edge

Forgot I had this.  its a lower grade due to the knots, splits and fact the figure doesn't extend all the way to the edges, but that will make a good top on something



anyway, I use the washer and pencil trick to transfer the curve on the bottom of the  channel to the edge of the maple


and i cut the fillet.    


I also cut the ears at the same time, giving me everything I need for an "authentic" Gibson style neck (except for the veneer, which will be a pale wood, likely maple as I have that here already).  The ears were cut from a different piece of old mahogany with different grain direction.   I would have used an offcut from the neck, but it would probably match too well to give the proper Gibson look.


The little bits for the ears came from my new neighbour.   Its always worth letting people know you are on the lookout for old mahogany.  In this case, he came back with a bag full of small wood turner bits from his dad with some amazing weight and tap tone, too small for anything where that would matter though.   But that's another set of eyes that will let me know when they find a bit of old mahogany out in the wild.

PeteC

Thanks for the detailed documentation @WezV.   These threads are some of the most interesting and educational on the whole forum. Please keep up sharing such interesting narratives - its fascinating to watch.  

euan

How helpful is the ragdoll at woodwork?

WezV

euan said:

How helpful is the ragdoll at woodwork?

He's a Maine Coon.   Likes to be involved, very little help 

euan

Sounds about right 

BillDL

barnsleyboy said:

I'll be following this with a great deal of interest to see how the repair turns out. If only to assess whether or not something similar could be done to this wood butchery that Andy's guitars in Denmark Street carried out for me.

My heart still weeps!

Is that a sunburst Fender Flame or Esprit?

PeteC

I love the simple and highly effective approach to the curved truss rod channel.  Nice piece of flexible ply screwed down to make the curve - why didn’t I think of that when I did my second DC junior. I spent a lot of time making a curved router guide out of MDF !  Wish I had seen this way before.

looking forward to see how you approach the rest of the neck

Jimihendrix1987

I enjoy this type of posts. You are very skilled ! Please carry on. Will bring popcorn

WezV

PeteC said:

I love the simple and highly effective approach to the curved truss rod channel.  Nice piece of flexible ply screwed down to make the curve - why didn’t I think of that when I did my second DC junior. I spent a lot of time making a curved router guide out of MDF !  Wish I had seen this way before.

looking forward to see how you approach the rest of the neck

I think I saw it done somewhere else so I can't take credit.   The other version i saw  had a couple of bolts going through so it could be clamped into place rather than screwed, but I had a nice wide neck blank here so plenty of room just to screw it down  

SteveRobinson

WezV said:

My string height gauge is imperial from when you could only get them at stew-mac and they hadn't made a metric one yet, but I think of string height in metric and nut height and relief in imperial.

I'm hearing that metric measurements soon will be illegal to use