$100 Local Materials Challenge,Patrick DeGreve's Pine walnut Les Paul Jr. (Completed 5/20/12)

[Patrick DeGreve]

I decided to build my first electric guitar as my second challenge instrument. I am going to use a piece of pine taken out of the trash at work for the body, and a walnut drop top. I am going to make the neck from walnut and oak. I bought a set of P90 pickups, and a tune-a-matic bridge from Ebay. Below is a picture of my materials.

[Patrick DeGreve]

My first step was to cut out the body from the pine.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I haven't had a great deal of time this week, and what time I did have for building, I spent on my other challenge instrument. Today I re-sawed the drop top from the walnut.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I got a chance to work on my two instruments yesterday. I cut neck panels from the walnut and oak. Then glued them up, to make a neck block.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Next I cut a 14 degree angle in the neck block, planed, scraped, and sanded the angle to a flat smooth plane.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Here is the neck pieces laid out with the truss rod.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Here I am gluing up the angled piece to the neck, being carefull to keep the oak strips lined up.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Then I glue the heel piece to the neck.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I then glued two "wings" onto the peghead.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I decided to bind the fretboard on this project because both the fretboard and the neck is walnut, and I think it needs the binding to separate the two. I cut 1/8" X 3/8" strips from some maple I have, and glued it on the fretboard.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I cut the neck block to its basic shape, thinned the back of the peghead and neck, and cut the peghead shape.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Here is a shot of the neck, before final shaping, and sanding.

[Jason Rodgers]

Nice work on the alignment of those neck stripes in the scarf.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I laid out the frets for a 24 3/4" scale length, and cut them with the fret saw.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I am using a dual action truss rod that I bought on Ebay for $ 9.95. On the acoustics I have built, I made the access for the truss rods from the sound hole. For this build, I am using a 18" truss rod, and the access is from the neck.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I have been working on this project all week, but haven't posted updates, as I should have, so I have a bunch to post now. The next thing I did was to glue the peghead laminates on. Because of the truss rod adjuster being through the neck, I reversed the design of the peghead from the walnut OM. This gives me a justification of the cover triangle. The laminates are of redwood, and walnut, with BWB purfling between.

[Patrick DeGreve]

I wanted to mimic Gibson's position markers, without using pearl, so I used a piece of backstrip, and glued maple strips on both sides. I will then cut them into markers.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Then using Stewmac's dremmel base I routed a recess for the markers.

[Patrick DeGreve]

After sanding for the 12" radius.

[Patrick DeGreve]

Here I glued the fretboard to the neck.