More Making Less

Friday, June 19.

I got to see Mr. Chan today. He runs the workshop for the fine art students. Well, during summer, there are no students. But the workshop is still there. Sanders, saws, tools... my kinda place!

Mr. Chan lets me use the workshop to build guitars. I think he gets a kick out of it. I know I am exceedingly grateful.

Mr. Chan also speaks no English. So you can imagine our 'conversations.'

But today, I found out he's an Eddie Cochran fan.

If you don't know, you better ask somebody.

So a bonus 500 Cool Points for Mr. Chan. Not that he isn't already awash in them.

I got an incredible amount of work done today on my 'Less Paul.'

Let me tell you about it:I have to carry all my tools into the shop. I used a big rucksack. Two, actually.

 I have a lot of tools:

Body blank, neck blank, tools, tools, tools...

First things first. Using a 'forstner' bit, I remove a lot of wood from what will be the place where the neck attached to the body.

Then, using a template for neck pockets, I prepare to rout the area. If you drill it out first, it makes for less wear and tear on the router bit. Getting there...

Ahh, smooth. On to the neck blank. I rout a channel in the middle of it for the 'truss rod', which will fit inside there and counter the string tension, keeping the neck straight. I use a small router for this. It fits! I also had to make a small hole where the neck widens out (the peghead, on the left), so that I can reach the adjusting nut on the truss rod when I need to. The forstner bit is used to 'hog out' the pickup cavities (like the neck pocket) prior to the template seen here being used to make the finished cavities. Pickup cavities finished.

Why are there all those holes, you ask?

Because the bandsaw blade is reallydull.

Using the forstner bit, I drilled holes around the perimeter of the body shape so that the bandsaw would be cutting mostly mahogany (the dark brown wood), which is much softer than maple (the light colored wood).

Look! I drilled the holes for the bridge!

And it looks like a guitar.

An angry little badger of a guitar, but it's a start. Sanding makes it smooth.

Most real Les Paul necks have the tenon cut from the same piece of wood as the neck, without a seam or glue joint.

Well, that wasn't an option for me.

So, using a piece from the neck blank (it isthe same piece of wood... kinda), I fashioned a tenon with a three degree bevel. The neck has to be at  an angle because of the bridge; if it was flat, the strings would be too high.  

I put the tenon in the neck pocket, then the neck. I drilled these holes so that when I clamped the two pieces together to glue them, I knew they would line up exactly as they sat in the neck pocket.

My camera batteries were dying, so I didn't get a picture of the pieces together, but they'll be there next time and I'll get a photo. Holy sh&t!!! Why on earth would I do this?!?!?!?I came home, ate dinner, wrote this much of this blog entry, then started on the inlay for the fretboard. I've never done it before, but I've seen pictures...

These are called 'trapezoid' inlays, and they're very common to Les Pauls. I've just laid out the pieces here, they are not going to be crooked when I inlay them.

Normally, the inlays are at frets 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19, and 21. Because this guitar 'starts' at the 5th fret, there are only 17 frets, so I have less work to do. That's important, or at least useful. Know why?

You know how you do inlay?

Slowly, with little chisels. This is the first one, at the 3rd fret. It took me over an hour, I think. The hole is an abortive Dremel tool experiment.

Because the inlays start higher up the neck, they are too big for their places. So I had to go through and make half of them shorter. Here they are cut to size. Although you can't really tell, the 3rd fret is inlaid and super-glued.

The rest are just sitting on the fretboard.

But they do look better having been thinned.

I can't wait for Monday, 9:00AM so I can go back and get after this thing again.

But for now, I'm done. My back is killing me, and I need to take a shower and get some sleep.