Thread: Mostly Hand Tools Made Electric Guitar

Nice one David. Please post some of the build photos.

Regards from Perth

Derek

There's a very long project thread on the UK forum. It's not complete, and it's full of discussion about objectives that won't make a lot of sense to non-guitarists - may be TMI for some. Not many (maybe not any) are going to build it the way I did, anyway (by hand). It's safer for me to build that way even though it's not accurate (gibson was long ago tooled up with duplicating machines to do the carving and the design is intended to be done in jigs and with specialized pin routers etc).

Les Paul Style Guitar Build | UKworkshop.co.uk

Yes, but how does it sound?

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

yes, but how does it sound?

LOUD, of course!

It sounds like a les paul. It's got regular 500k bourns pots and duncan antiquities, and fairly nontraditional combination of woods, but that has even unplugged, a sound much like a new les paul with a plain hard maple top and rosewood fingerboard.

It's a little snappy, but I haven't gotten out out against the other guitars that I have like it to compare for sure.

(if someone played it on an album as a les paul, you'd never be able to differentiated it from a good les paul, though - it's not at all lacking in anything other than not looking factory made up close).

I leveled the frets twice and cut the nut relatively low, so it's easy playing.


I hope that doesn't sound flippant - if you pick good wood and keep the finish thin, you sort of expect a guitar to be a little stronger unplugged than something you'd buy used for $1500-$2000 (like a les paul classic or standard).

Where you get burned building your own guitars is if you have little bits here or there that are sloppy or not quite straight, but getting a strong sounding guitar isn't too much trouble (or in some cases with the fender type guitars, I have the whole guitar together and something isn't grounded and I just don't feel like going over all of the wiring to fix it right.

The routine aesthetic stuff from the factory, though - like just binding work, everything being tight (on guitars above about $2k) finish wise with no flaws at all, that's harder to match.

Very nice.

I'll be honest, doing the finish work is my absolute least favorite part of guitar building. And yes, that's absolutely what people notice the most. It forces me to be a lot more careful in my workflow.. Don't ding the wood or leave crossgrain scratches, and you won't have to sand longer, risking leaving flat surfaces wavy.

Once you start building, you appreciate the level of fit and finish the factories maintain... On the flip side, with some care, an amateur builder can make a guitar thar sounds a lot better than a factory model.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Very nice.

I'll be honest, doing the finish work is my absolute least favorite part of guitar building. And yes, that's absolutely what people notice the most. It forces me to be a lot more careful in my workflow.. Don't ding the wood or leave crossgrain scratches, and you won't have to sand longer, risking leaving flat surfaces wavy.

Once you start building, you appreciate the level of fit and finish the factories maintain... On the flip side, with some care, an amateur builder can make a guitar thar sounds a lot better than a factory model.

Yes on the factory stuff. The binding lady at gibson is half wizard, half human (there is more than one, and the same lady may no longer be there, but she could apply and scrape binding on a guitar in a minute or two each.

I used ivoroid on this, so that's not going to happen. It's a bear to bend around sharp corners, and I couldn't find my heat gun, so I used a bending iron to warm it, but the bending iron is beyond where celluloid likes to be handled, so it was sketchy.

Even with a heat gun, it's iffy. I also pared the binding channel by hand and laid it out with a couple of gauges (one modified to be able to mark the top).

After doing that, I made a fixture that'll work on a die grinder to do binding accurately on archtop guitars - won't be paring and gouging a binding channel again.

There would be a market (i'm sure there is) for a very thin french polish finish, and though I don't like relic, you could barf for just a second and then smile and say "this is a finish that will relic quickly or repair easily, your choice".).

I'm big in trying anything when finishing a guitar and using a clear or super blonde thin shellac transition layer and spraying target EM WB acrylic with crosslinker (they say not to use the crosslinker on instruments, I go the other way - I get what they're saying - it'll buff easier and take small dents better if it's soft, but not a fan of soft finishes on guitars).

All that said, 100% agree on guitars and prep work - sanding goes with the grain. Even in factories, it generally is done on a linear sander with the grain - you can get away with a 220 grit scratch going with the grain 1000 times in a row. one fish hook going across the grain, and it's no go.

I still haven't decided what I'm going to build next. This guitar is spanky and tight and bright. I'm pondering building a lightweight mahogany LP special, or doing a carved top guitar with bigleaf maple and lightweight mahogany back to see if it's more open. The back of this guitar itself wasn't tight at all, but once you glue the top and the back together, you don't know for sure what you'll get.

Forgot to mention what I was getting toward - I typically use dewaxed shellac to seal a guitar, and then if the top coat is going to be clear, but there's going to be color on the guitar, I've had decent luck (supposing good wood) with the transparent engine compartment auto colors in a can. Their color is vivid, but it's not that intense, so it's not easy to see when it's not on *perfectly* even and the wood is clear through it. Once it's mostly dry, you can pad a transition coat of shellac and blast WB finish over it and get what looks like a dyed finish, but it's just a toned coat.

I'm not sure what this stuff is called off of the top of my head - it's trans colors that are not intended for engine blocks or the upper level heat resistance (as in, not the VHT high temp paint or anything like that). I guess it's for people who have a lot of alloy trim in a car and want to be able to see through the paint but add vivid color to it.

It relieves the need for the same level of pre-finish fill or surface perfection that you need to have if you do an automotive style paint like a fender.

Of course, the fender style allows you to use body filler and make a really smooth surface since it won't be seen.

Lovely guitar David.

Well done.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by IanW

LOUD, of course!

Fair enough, but what about the guitar?

A second guitar, made nearly the same way, but not quite the same type.

In this case, a les paul special type guitar that will be lighter to see how different the mid and low tonal range of the guitar is. I guess not surprisingly now, using indian rosewood and hard maple in combination resulted in a pretty bright even guitar (whereas les pauls tend to be minus some top brightness, maybe a little minus in the bottom end, and very strong in the mids.

This was a surprise.

Instead of making a second guitar identical to the first, I decided to make a pair of these and use sort of cheap wood (but it's not all cheap). The body is honduran mahogany (but a blank that was only about $90, a one piece blank) and the neck is quartersawn cherry resawn from a table/furniture slab. There is a second partly done to follow this one and that one will be all cherry.

Cherry makes a good guitar - actually a very nice guitar body, but even quartersawn, it can be a little lacking in stability. We shall see.

The fingerboard and peghead overlay are "castelo boxwood" which is a wood a step harder than maple but works and feels like it's far softer. It is an unbelievable mid hardness wood to work - like a light color somewhat softer ebony (it's about as hard as hickory or pecan or whatever else in teh 1800-1900 range.).

I have a theory - that getting a strong open guitar of this type with strong mids and a lot of resonsance is a lot easier to do without a carved top. The carved top is added to a les paul for purposes of "perceived quality" (gibson had carving machines already and wanted to use them because fender didn't have them and fender was at one point threatening to run away with the entire market).

Neck is bound with chinese ivoroid. pickups will be gibson Burstbucker pro and the hardware (bridge, tailpiece) are some kind of US manufacturer (probably WD products). The seller will not disclose the maker, just that they're casted and finished in the US (which may seem unusual, but this kind of thing is a small industry and things like that seem to survive OK in the US vs. larger heavier stuff).

finish is buttonlac - for a whole gaggle of reasons, but it is indefinitely repairable and you can literally sit at a desk watching youtube and apply it very thinly.

The overlay looks darker than the fingerboard only due to the amount of buttonlac. Mahogany and cherry, and maple and rosewood...jeez, across the board - they all take on a wonderful tone with buttonlac. When someone seals and finishes a guitar with a clear finish or a two part polyurethane, it's missing this (so the finish gets toned at least in the lower coats).

20220306_124144.jpg

I did do the initial cutting of the pickup cavities with a trim router on this one, but I just don't like it and won't do it again for the next. The neck is made freehand to a pattern. Lovely work to do by hand. There are lots of bonkers setup to rough out a neck with a bandsaw, rough with a router and then do all kinds of nonsense but it's far nicer (especially with things like the peghead volute) to do all of it hand and eye.

20220306_150537.jpg

(some additional french polishing on the back should even the color out a little bit more).

no inlay on the fingerboard on this one - it will get small rosewood dots at the edge of the fingerboard so as not to interrupt the wood as much as typical larger center dots do.

I don't inlay onto the face of the fretboard, but I do inlay small dots into the left side (top when playing) of it so the player can see the fret positions. Aluminum rod works well. It takes a nice shine and is easy to work.

Fortunately, I'll be the player until I've made too many guitars to keep (not sure what that would be - the mrs. would like that to be 10 guitars ago, so ...)

At any rate, I knocked rosewood through a dowel plate and made 1/8th dowels and installed them very early this morning before anyone was up. worked well and gave me an excuse to use a patternmaker's gouge to flush them with the top of the fingerboard.

I found out a couple of years ago that I look at the fingerboard when I got a collings 360 with markers only on the side - I was lost the whole time. I'm sure I could've gotten used to it - haven't added side dots to this one yet, but we'll see.

Rosewood isn't the greatest for dowel plate use, but I'm sure there's worse.