As I was mentioning, I spent the good majority of the past weekend working on the guitar, while Nicki and Anna were in Cincinnati. Nicki brought the camera along, so I had dug up our old one to try to get some photos while I worked. I had forgotten, though, that our old camera is kind of on the fritz, and really isn’t all that interested in taking pictures any more. Still, I managed to get a few pictures taken as I did a bunch of work finishing up the box of the guitar and continuing to work on the neck.
For starters, I made this jig to rout the mortise for the neck to bolt into.It all looks so simple and straightforward as I look back on these pictures, but you wouldn’t believe how nervous I was with that router cranking full blast into my nice clean guitar top. It turned out pretty good, but it may need some cleaning up.
I finished sawing the tenon and drilling the holes for the bolts. It fits fairly well in the mortise, with possibly just a little bit too much side to side play. I’ve still got a lot of fitting to do, as this is one of the more critical pieces of joinery in the guitar.
I set up my router table again, and routed out the headstock shape. It looks pretty nice, though I did get a few small chips that tore out. I’m not too worried, I think I’ll be able to smooth everything out.
I had my bending machine back out, as I bent the bindings and the herringbone purflings. I had been sort of simultaneously dreading and looking forward to doing the binding. The prospect of routing multiple channels, measured in hundredths of inches, into the top, back, and sides of the guitar just seemed like a tragedy waiting to happen.
Here’s a (pretty bad) shot of how the binding channels came out on the top. The back was a bit trickier, due to the 20-foot radius which makes it so that the router can’t cut a perpendicular channel to the proper depth. I struggled for a while, but eventually figured out a way of making it work.
With the channels cut, and after much fussing to make sure that they were uniform etc, I was able to glue and tape the bindings into place. Here’s how it looked on the back.
The top was even trickier, as I had to glue the binding in simultaneously with the herringbone purfling along the top.
Once the glue dried, I took the tape off and set about scraping all the dried glue off. This took forever. Actually it’s still not even quite done, but I’ve had to move on to other things for now. I go back and work on it in short bursts.
Here’s the top looking mostly done.
And here’s a view that shows the back and sides, as well as the end wedge which was tricky. I actually mitered the narrow side purflings to meet and not cross the end wedge, but it’s not really all that noticeable for all the effort I put into it. Still I think it looks better this way. You can also still see some of the glue that still needs to be cleaned up in this photo.
Another view of the top and sides.
I also managed to get the fretboard mostly put together. Here I’ve got the fret locations all laid out and ready to cut. I managed to cut all the fret slots, cut the taper into it, and glue on the bindings. I still need to sand it to radius and do whatever inlay I am going to do on it, which is what I’ve mostly been working on recently.
This picture shows the fretboard and the guitar body as it looks today. It’s really coming along. I’ve also been working on the neck the last couple days, and it is coming along pretty nicely.
More pictures probably coming soon.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Mary // Feb 13, 2008 at 6:13 am
WOW!!! Don and I are both so impressed with your skill and determination. The guitar is beautiful!
2 Jim // Apr 16, 2008 at 11:07 am
Looking great!!! I plan on building a guitar myself this summer…I have an idea on how to go about things. What type or kind of glue do you use to glue the binding into place? Take care. I await your reply.
Jim
3 dan // Apr 16, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Thanks Jim.
I was confused for a second as I thought you were my (non-guitar-building) friend named Jim.
As far as glue on the bindings go, it depends on what kind of binding.
This guitar has wood bindings, so I just used plain wood glue (I use LMI’s white glue, but lots of people just use Titebond).
I think some people use CA (superglue) but I’m not sure I’d dare go that route.
For any celluloid/ivoroid bindings you have to use a special cement that chemically reacts with the binding. The luthier shops all sell that stuff.
Good luck with your upcoming guitar project. It’s fun.
4 adam johannsson // Sep 21, 2008 at 11:54 am
hey i am trying to put a binding on a guitar body that i bot from stewartmacdonald.com, and i have no idea what to do. I need the steps and maybe the right size of binding for my body. It is a les paul body.
5 Chin Sayaovang // Oct 15, 2008 at 4:45 pm
your is very impressive. I want to ask you a question on my electriv guitat, I rework the whole guitar I am confuse what to do first, should I paint first then put the binding or the binding first and then paint?
6 dan // Oct 16, 2008 at 7:04 am
Hey adam and Chin.
I can’t provide much in the way of first hand knowledge, as I’ve not built an electric guitar.
In general, though, you want to get the bindings in place first. Read around on some building forums for the specifics, or glean what you can from my posts. When I started building this guitar I knew next to nothing about the process. There’s a lot of information available out there.
My hunch for painting a bound electric guitar is that you want to mask off your bindings before finishing (with tape or something similar), then peel off the masking once your finish has dried, and clean up any finish/paint that got onto the bindings with a razor blade or scraper.
Good luck.
7 Geert // Oct 11, 2009 at 2:55 am
Although it may sound counterintuitive, the binding on an electric guitar should indeed be in place before applying the paint. Unfortunately, my Gibson Les Paul clearly shows that the paint that somehow got onto the binding hasn’t been removed properly
8 Elias Marquez-Garcia // Nov 16, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Hey. I’m helping a friend build a set neck Les Paul from a kit. Problem is, the thing is pre-bound, an I have never had any experience with binding. How would I go about painting a bound body?
9 dan // Nov 17, 2009 at 7:58 am
Elias, I’m no expert as I have never painted a guitar. I think there are two schools of thought, you either mask off the binding before hand, then paint, and then remove the masking tape leaving you only a little bit of clean up, or you just paint the whole body and then carefully hand scrape the paint off the bindings afterward using the edge of a razor blade or something similar.
Lots of people do it both ways, just a matter of preference.
Good luck.
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