Shaping the top

Started shaping the top on Saturday. I am using the Wagner Safe-T planer, which in my opinion is one of the most useful items to have for your shop if you don't have a planer. I think they cost about $45 at www.stewmac.com or www.lmii.com.

Chucked into the drill press, the safety planer allows to thickness freehand by moving the piece. I run the Safe-T planer about 1600 rpm. The tool comes with an oxide wheel that you can chuck into your drill press to sharpen the cutters underneath.

First I went and marked the top in pencil with some rough contouring landmarks and sketching for 1/4", 3/8", 1/2", and then I used the Safe-T planer to start cutting the contours.




A few other folks use methods such as hand-carving the whole top, grinder, sanders, chisels and gouges, or jigs with routers.
This is actually my first time carving the top of a guitar, using hard maple as well as the safe-T planer in this manner.

One thing that helps for the neck angle is that I can tilt the table to 4 degrees and plane down at a specific angle. You can't feed the material from higher side to lower side, you have to take a full sideways cut. In this picture, you have to have the body go from front to back to get the full profile of the angle.




Here is a front pic after some passes at 4 degree angle.
I didn't take it all the way down to spec of 1/4" at the front. I decided to work the rest of the top first.



Here are a few passes using the Safe-T planer for the plateaus.

The maple top

I got a maple board 3/4 thickness from Crosscut Hardwoods.
I picked through and got a plain maple top with some burly, swirly, nice anomalies for $25.
For the first guitar, it beats getting a bookmatched top of flame for > $150. I actually have another half a maple board left that would be good for making some bolt on maple necks with rosewood fingerboards.

I'm not a fan of flame maple anyway. I like the original '59 look of the plain maple tops.

Here is a pic of the band sawed and joined maple top.

Weight relieving or chambering the body

So the body with the control cavity route was 4 lb, 7 oz.  

I decided to chamber the body.  

I bought a 1 3/8" forstner bit from Freud to use for the switch hole and it is a much better forstner bit in my opinion.  It hogs much better than the Rockler cheapo specials.

Here is a picture of making mahogany chips.  

Notice in this picture, some small router freehanded cavity outlines that I would use later with the template follower bit for clean up.

Here is the body after forstner use on the 3 weight relief cavities.

For cleanup I used a template follower bit using the freehanded cavity outline, then routed down to a further depth.  

There is probably between 0.5 to 0.75 inch (closer to 0.75 inch) left on the back.

Also I left a 1 inch border in the body cavity to the sides, and a solid block for the tail or strap pin. 

The pickup area, bridge, and stop tail will all be to solid mahogany underneath.

I think this is a good compromise of weight relief and keeping for tone of a Les Paul.  I don't want it to get too hollow sounding.

The body at this point weighs 3 lb, 8 oz so I took out nearly a pound.

Cleaning up the control cavity

The body is rough cut to shape from the band saw.

A shot of the back shows that it is a 3 piece mahogany body.

I used a template and router template bit for the contoured control cavity, however I free handed the ledge for the control plate.

At this point, I pretty much may have forced myself into custom making a control plate, because I have read on the internet that sometimes the control plates that you can buy don't match the plans.  I also tried to clean up the edge with a dremel and found the bit was getting pulled into the wood.  I will clean it up with a chisel (once I get my sharpening stones that are on order).

The body at this point weighs 4 lbs, 7 oz (which is slightly more than my son weighed when leaving the hospital).

It was at this point that I decided to go ahead and do the chambering for weight relief.

I'm guessing that the guitar with this body would come in around 9 lbs or so.

Getting ready to sink into wood!

So, I've already started this project, and I'll briefly bring up the timeline.First I got for Christmas a big block of mahogany and some 1959 Les Paul plans from my loving wife, courtesy of www.stewmac.com !!

So I set out with some tracing paper to make a plywood template of the Les Paul shape.

Next, I created a plywood template and traced this onto the block of mahogany below

I also used the plans to calculate where the control cavity is located, and where I was going to put possible chambers for weight relief.

I used the drill press with a 1" forstner bit to hog out the control cavity wood. 

I found that my cheap $9.99 forstner bits set are not really that great quality (my impression), as you can see the results here.  I think if your forstner bit is not super sharp, it is more difficult to drill partial holes.    Lesson learned about how to hog out material efficiently.

1st Electric Guitar

Hi all,

I started making an acoustic guitar last year, but got into the electric mode recently.

Since I can't afford a real one, I wanted to try and build a Les Paul copy. 

I've got a rosewood fretboard blank, and a mahogany neck blank from the acoustic guitar kit that I will use for this project, since the acoustic is put on hold.

I'd like to finish the acoustic kit, but since I'm playing more electric now, and the only time I can get any serious guitar practice time is late at night, the electric works much better for being quieter in the house, and I can turn it up in the headphones through my PodXT.

Here is a pic taken from the internet of a very nice plainish maple top Les Paul.


Here is a nice Les Paul in natural finish with a plain top that I like too