It's been a while since I finished my last build, a white LP custom.
I've started planning the next build. It will be a slow burner as I have a lot of home projects that need doing over the summer.
The plan is a broadly:
- a 54 Les Paul, but...
- White limba / korina body and neck
- Fully chambered with the top carved internally
- Firebird pickups in mini humbucker rings (P90 route)
- Wraptail or tunomatic with Bigsby
- Yellowed shell pink top, natural back
A lot of the build will be similar to my other builds so I won't go crazy with details but will post progress pics.
Inspo for this were the Bartlett explorer and a pink LP I played at the weekend at the Gibson Garage in London. The LP was 9 grand and the relicing was not great.
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The body blank is a reasonable weight, but the neck black is suuuper light. It's only a 40mm depth blank, so I had them cut a scarf joint to get a 17 degree back angle.
I did wonder whether the neck was a different species. The grain looks a bit different with wide rings on the neck, but from the side it's quite similar. I was just quite shocked by the weight, and it sounds like a xylophone when knocked. I haven't seen any other limba to know for sure - any timber experts that would know?
Pictures of top and side of the neck vs body below, neck on the right.
Then I managed to stick a chisel through my right hand thumb and forefinger, so after getting those stitched back together my bank holiday weekend of building is ruined! Slow progress expected for a few weeks.
The neck is VERY light, 300 grams before carving, without truss rod or fretboard. I'm not sure whether this means it will be weak or bendy, or I should be happy. I'm wondering if I should add some carbon fibre rods or something. Experts please chime in!
Annoyingly after thinning the headstock, a brown mark has appeared. I think I'll either leave it, put an inlay over it or maybe fill it and do a pink stinger to match the front of the body.
After a delivery from Manchester Guitar Tech, I've sone a tester for the shell pink. One without any topcoat, and then 1, 2 and 3 coats of light amber. I'm leaning toward one coat, maybe 2.
If in doubt though, use them. I laminated my last limba neck as I wasn't sure about it
I think I'd stinger that headstock
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The usual black should work really well as the overall look will be similar to a black stinger on TV yellow. It won't look out of place
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I'm using UHU Hart, which I've used loads of times before without issue. But, this time, while scraping the binding it peeled off.
I don't know whether it has gone off, this tube is probably 2 years old so maybe beyond its shelf life. Or, is the rosewood excessively oily or something? The dried glue is all yellow where it contacted the rosewood - it normally dries clear.
Any ideas?
Suggestions of other glues would be welcome too!
My back up is always super glue. It can be messier but will work on every wopd or plastic. You have to scrape the back and dampen the wood first with most superglue, or tape it all in place and use water thin glue between the gaps with the ultra thin stuff.
It might also be worth removing the wood oils with thinners or naptha a few minutes before you start, whovuevwr glue you are using
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I used thin super glue and wicked it in with my LP custom build and that worked well, so if the new tube of Hart does the same I'll use that.
I did wipe the back of the fretboard with acetone before gluing it to the neck, but didn't before the binding so will do that too next time.
Thanks!!
A new batch of the glue for the binding and it worked perfectly. The neck and headstock are now inlayed, radiused and fretted, and the carve facets done. The body is carved, bound and the neck pocket routed.
For the body binding I tried the steam from a boiling kettle to bend round the horn, rather than a heat gun. It worked really well and avoids overheating and melting it. Only downside is you have to heat it while it's off the guitar.
On testing with the bridge and bigsby, I found the bridge to be too high and the top E string would have touched the back of the bridge. So, I sanded the neck heel into a bit of a wedge, taking less than 1mm off the body end, and adjusted the top so it still aligned with the bottom of the neck binding. It was about 4.5°, now down to 4° and much better at the bridge.
The neck wood is quite soft, so I'll need to be careful with the carve, it disappears quite quickly under a rasp!
I'm mostly done carving the neck - this stuff carves suuuuuper easy, too easy! Having to take it very slow so I don't take off too much. Hopefully will get the neck glued in this weekend.
I'm a little concerned about the flexibility of the neck so will get the bigsby and bridge fitted next to check it's all good before continuing.
Also got the neck/body carve done bar a little finessing. Revealed a small knot, annoyingly, but not a lot I can do about that now.
The headstock still has the visible mark after thicknessing, so it will get a stinger.
Just waiting for pickups now then It'll be on to finishing.
Took too deep a pass on the neck pickup route and the handheld router spun around and took chunks out all the way around the hole. The template took the brunt of the injuries, and will need remaking, but it managed to destroy the binding on the end of the fingerboard and also take the corners off the side binding.
Luckily I think I can trim the side binding back and run a new piece of end binding full width. The top was already going to be solid colour, so some 2 part filler will deal with the chunks taken out of the top.
Not sure how to get the end binding off, might try a bit of acetone to loosen it, but keep it away from the sides.
Very annoying but salvageable.