I’m making progress on bunch of fronts at the same time.  While I finish up the body details like the electronics cavity covers, binding, and detail sanding, I’ve started in on the neck.  I’m doing a one-piece neck from a nice piece of mahogany.  I started out by making sure that all sides were flat and square, then rough-sketched the […]

There has been no shortage of work on the Les Paul.  So now I feel I’m playing a bit of catch up with the blog.  I was able to have the garage door open in shop this weekend, so that was a nice treat. I tapped into my growing stack of templates for cutting out the pickup cavities and the […]

How can something as small as a guitar have so many bits and pieces?  Here’s a list so far: Body wood (mahogany) Deck wood (hard maple) Neck blank (mahogany) Fret board (rosewood) Headstock veneer (holly) Frets Fret board inlay (mother of pearl) Binding (neck and body) Nut Tuning pegs Bridge Tail piece Pickups (two humbuckers) Pickup rings, plus screws Pick […]

The next step in the top carve is creating the neck and pickup planes.  The neck plane, especially, is one of those ‘get it right’ moments.  Gibson uses an angled neck on many of its guitars to compensate for the high, adjustable bridge.  If the neck were parallel to the body of the guitar, the strings would get progressively higher […]

I’ve been playing a little catchup with the build blog.  Some of these steps happen pretty quickly, but have a bunch of interesting mini-steps to get them done.  The top carve on the guitar is one of those.  Lots of curves, transitions, important angles, heights, etc., all with the goal of subtle elegance. For me, the carved deck is probably the […]