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Home made Les Paul


Freeman Keller

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First, an introduction. My name is Freeman and I don't own an electric guitar. I've been playing acoustics for fourty years or so and have built a few, but until lately I've never owned or hardly even played an electric. But that is changing

 

Second, are build threads OK here? If so I'd like to share my progress - I've posted some acoustic builds at that forum and they've been pretty popular. If this stuff is boring or not appropriate or something, let me know and I'll stop.

 

Next, it all started last summer when my son was visiting. He brought a couple of guitars along, including his candy apple Epi and a little amp. Plugged it in and handed it to me - I played a few of my usual thing - Dust in the Wind, Freight Train, Candy Man - they sounded pretty good but the string are sure light. My son said "dad, you should build one of those".

 

A few days later a package arrived

 

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Then another.

 

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Thought the red wood might make a nice cutting board, the grain on the light stuff wasn't very straight and I thought about throwing it away. Oh, well, I traced the plans on the red wood and cut it out

 

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Clamped the cut off onto my belt sander so I could true up the body

 

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And drilled some holes

 

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Last steps for the red wood was a little work with the router

 

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I'm going to put this away for a while and see if anyone want me to continue.

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While your comments may have been tongue-in-cheek, as they say, yes, some here may say build threads are amongst the most valued threads, and some beautiful work has been done and documented here.

 

See FlyWithV's build threads - or Meandi's work, which you, as a frequenter of HCAG, very well may be familiar with. Also SDShirtman has been posting some very fine work. Linus had a nice build going. In the past, Atrox, AJCoholic, and GuitarNoobie put together some fantastic work and documented it here. Also check out the In The Shop thread if you have not already.

 

For what you're doing I cannot recommend GuitarNoobie and FlyWithV's threads highly enough - they should be an enjoyable read. Ah, but apologies for the lengthy digression.

 

Anyway, I would love to see the ongoing documentation of your build, and thank you very much for posting the work you have done already.:thu: Oh, and mighty fine wood you have acquired as well...

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If it were me I'd chamber the hell out of that mahogany before the cap went on. Pearly Gates style

 

Yea I know it wouldn't be a Les Paul that way but hell...I can BUY a Les Paul.

 

Like this but I'd probably not have that channel for the pickup select wires...I'd just run them around the back of the tailpiece. You'd get "long tenon" sustain more that way.

 

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OK, with all this support, lets see what happens. Even tho that maple had really crooked grain I figured (no pun, eh?) that I'd better use it. I could always paint it red or something. Normally with an acoustic I use my big smoothing plane to "shoot" the edges for joining but I wasn't comfortable with something this thick, so I took it to my local cabinet shop and ran in thru the jointer (as any of you builders know, TAS is even worse that GAS - "honey, can I have a jointer for Christmas?"). While there I also ran the pieces thru their thickness sander (I don't dare ask for one of those too).

 

Brought them home and glued the two pieces together, trying to line up all those little squiggly lines (really sorry about the funky lighting in the picture, my photography is even worse than my building)

 

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Cut out the shape from the drawing leaving a little overhang. Then, having routed all the channels and holes shown on the drawing into the back, I smeared glue all over it

 

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and stuck the maple piece on

 

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Lets let the glue dry until tomorrow, I'll post some more then.

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