Using a template and bearing guided cutter to route the headstock shape.

With the Lil 58 headstock shape cut out, the machinehead holes are marked and drilled with the pillar drill. Holes are drilled slightly oversize to allow for lacquer settling in the holes during the finishing process.

Drilling the holes for the tuners with the pillar drill.

The neck blank has already been cut to width and the neck/body joint made, there’s some jiggery pokery that goes on to make the joint work far beyond a traditional set neck joint. The joint at this stage is dry, I can fit, or remove the neck as necessary without resorting to the use of clamps. This allows me to completely finish the neck on and off the body before finally gluing it in place. With the neck attached to the body I glue on an ebony heel cap.

Gluing the ebony heel cap in place.

The wax paper seen in the picture prevents me from accidentaly gluing the heel to the body. When the glue is dry, I remove the neck and prepare the fingerboard for gluing. The fingerboard is pinned in place with blind wooden dowels during the gluing, this prevents slippage when clamping the glued surfaces.

Gluing the Lil 58 Birdseye Maple fingerboard.

There aren’t that many aspects of my guitar making processes that I guard, but my Lil 58 set neck joint is one (I use the same method on my acoustic guitars), hence the pixelated picture, sorry folks!

The headstock on this guitar is bound with ivoroid to match the body, the channel for this is routed using the hand router and a bearing guided rebate cutter, the bearing is sized to match the binding thickness I am using.

Routing the headstock binding channel.

The binding is prepared and glued in place. The mitres are cut with a sharp chisel. The chisel is used to judge the trimming angle, the flat back of the chisel is kept polished and the reflection used to gauge the angle, quite straightforward if you hold the binding in the channel and sight the refection along the line of direction change.

Using the reflection in a polished chisel to gauge the binding mitre.

The binding is glued in place and then scraped flush with the headstock face and also the sides when the back of the headstock has been trimmed to final thickness.

Scraping the headstock binding flush.

The neck is then carved and scraped to the finished profile, initially with the neck off the body and finished off with the neck dry fitted.

Scraping the Lil 58 neck and heel.

With the neck and heel scraped, I smooth off the transition with cloth abrasive. I then finalize the neck joint, checking for correct neck angle etc as I go.

Final dry jointing check of the finish carved Lil 58 neck and body.

You may notice that there are no fret slots visible in the fingerboard edge in the above picture, the birdseye maple fingerboard has been bound with off cuts of the same wood. The board will be lap fretted so no fret tang is visible.

Lil 58 neck and body dry jointed back.

Lil 58 neck and body dry jointed front view.

With the neck still dry jointed, I will then plane and sand the camber of the fingerboard. The neck will then be removed one last time and the headstock logo inlay will be fitted and, as a custom option for this build, the fingerboard will have a dragon inlay installed – should be fun!

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Final leveling of the fingerboard and the position markers.

You may notice that the fret slots are not seen on the edge of the fingerboard. The board has been bound in birdseye maple, this gives a smoother feel and cleaner look to the edge of the board, no fret tang to be seen. The dots are simple black plastic and are trimmed flush with the board as part of the final sanding/cambering process.

The sweep down from the fingerboard to the headstock face is initially rough cut on the bandsaw. The majority of the carving is done using rasps and files. A guide hole for the truss rod adjustment has already been drilled, I do this with the fingerboard dry jointed and held with clamps. When the carving is near completion I drill the hole to its final size.

Rough carving the headstock face to fingerboard transition.

With the rough carving done I then drill out the truss rod adjustment hole, following the smaller guide hole drilled earlier. Like all my guitars, this Custom T has a bi-directional  truss rod and setup is considerably easier if adjustment can be made at the headstock end.

Drilling the truss rod adjustment hole out to its final diameter.

With the hole drilled, the transition is then finished off with a goose neck cabinet scraper and sandpaper. If you haven’t noticed cabinet scrapers are a favourite tool!

Final scraping and shaping of the headstock face to fingerboard transition.

Other than logo inlaying and fretting, the face side of the Custom T neck is now complete. The back has previously been rough carved, along with drilling of the machinehead holes etc and is ready to be scraped to a more appealing profile.

Scraping the profile of the Custom T neck.

With most of my commissioned guitars, if the customer hasn’t provided specific neck shapes, profiles favourite necks to copy etc then, I will normally start with a fairly generous fat C profile. With the scraping taking me most of the way to my initial goal I then switch to coarse, cloth backed abrasive. This is rolled back and forth and up and down the neck at the same time to help even out the profile and give a good ‘finished’ guide.

Rolling abrasive around the neck to smooth the profile.

I use a similar method to blend the profile up to the back of the headstock, initially its carved with a file and then finished with a narrow strip of abrasive in much the same manner as the profile smoothing.

Blending the neck profile to the back of the headstock with a narrow abrasive strip.

The neck is then in a state of limbo where, if possible and agreed, the customer can check how the neck feels to them, remembering that it has been made initially ‘fat’. In this case the customer didn’t want a skinny neck but did request a more slender feel to the upper register.

The neck has now been final carved and will be finished prior to fretting, a method which I have only recently started using but certainly has significant benefits.

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Rough cutting the Lil 58 body shape on the bandsaw.

With the Lil 58 body blank glued up last time, the serious machining starts. Initially the body is rough cut on the bandsaw. The body is then cut to its final shape and the pickup cavities etc are machined with the router. This guitar will bound in ivoroid so a binding channel is also cut using the router and a bearing guided rebate cutter. When I no longer need the top surface of the body for a reference the carving begins.

The top is carved in stages, initially its roughed out with a purpose self-built computer controlled router before being fine carved and finished with thumb planes, a disc sander and scrapers. The initial carve is smoothed out and a recurve (sweep up to the edge of the body) carved with the disc sander and thumb plane. This gives a more natural sweep to the finished surface.

Carving a recurve with a disc sander for a more organic feel and look.

With the carving near completion the binding is prepared for installation. The binding is cut by the supplier using a saw and the edges are often a little rough. I smooth the bottom edge out with a block and some abrasive paper. It may seem pointless to some but it really does leave a cleaner edge if the timber receiving the binding is going to be left natural.

Using a block and abrasive to smooth the bottom edge of the binding.

To get the binding round the tight curves of the horn I warm the ivoroid with a hair dryer, not too hot though as its pretty flamable! I tape the binding round an mdf pattern and warm it to get the initial curves in the right place.

Using a body pattern and hair dryer to set the initial bend in the ivoroid.

When the binding fits the body closely it is glued in place. Binding tape is used to secure the ivoroid as I work my way around the body. Its then set aside to dry before being scraped.

Gluing the binding around the Lil 58 body.

With the binding in place the final carve, scraping and sanding begins. The horns on the Lil 58 are quite tight so these are carved using thumb planes of various sizes, the smallest being about 1/2″ long! The binding acts a level/depth gauge to work to as the carve is sculpted.

Using a thumb plane to sculpt the top horn carve.

The top is then sanded from a reasonably coarse 100 grit through to 240. The coarse grit helps to soften the transition between curves and give the carve its final form. The horn and waiste areas are hand sanded but the larger tail area is sanded using a random orbital. Notice the channel for the pickup wires that was routed before the body halves were glued.

Using the orbital sander to blend curves and smooth the finish carve.

The final areas to be carved are around the neck joint area, these will be finished when the neck is married to the body.

To allow the fitting of controls through the carved top the control cavity base is stepped. This leaves enough thickness in the top for strength but enough thinness for the fitting of the pots and switches, typically 4-5mm is enough.

The stepped control cavity of the Lil 58 carved top.

The rib or belly carve on the back is quite gentle on the carved top as the body edge is a bit thinner than on a standard Lil 58, here it is being finished off with a cabinet scraper.

Final scraping of the rib or belly carve on the back of the Lil 58 body.

This leaves the body pretty well complete until the neck is fitted, then final carving and finishing off can take place.

The completed Lil 58 top carving.

Next time I will be making and fitting the neck.

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Being a Lil ’58 Pro, the guitar will feature a mahogany body with a premium quilted maple carved top. The neck will be maple and will feature a chinese dragon inlay in the birdseye fingerboard. Sidewynder pickups, gold Gotoh hardware and an amber burst front will finish the guitar off. Should be an interesting build and has all the ingredients to make something special. First I need to prepare some stock materials.

Cross cutting mahogany boards for body blanks.

The raw mahogany board is cross cut on the table saw into two suitably sized blanks, this board is perfectly quarter sawn and has a very resonant tinder dry feel, the type of wood that sounds musical before you do anything to it. The blanks are then trimmed to a more suitable thickness on the band saw. The offcut is set aside, and will be used for acoustic components.

Trimming the stock nearer to finished thickness on the bandsaw.

Once the rough stock is prepared it is planed to a little over the required thickness and has the edges squared up too.

Planing and thicknessing the body stock.

When the mahogany is prepared, I can then focus on the maple top. The billet for the top was split some time ago and just needs to be thicknessed and prepared for gluing up. The top is book matched, this means the original single block of wood was split on the bandsaw and opened out like a book, as a result you get two mirrored figured halves.

The bookmatched quilted maple top chosen for this Lil ’58.

Quilted maple can be difficult to work, due to its undulating grain it has a tendancy to tear when planed. I use a set of sharp planer knives and a fine cut to flatten one face. When I have a reference face I use the sander thicknesser to true up the opposite face, there is no risk of tearing when using the drum sander. Both halves of the bookmatched top are prepared to the same dimension, taking care to take the least amount of material off the bookmatched faces. With a carved top the bookmatch is often lost to some degree as a result of the carving.

Drum sanding the maple to final thickness.

The maple is cut down to a manageable size and then glued to the mahogany blanks. In this build I am making two mahogany and maple blanks which will be joined to make the finished stock, sometimes I glue the mahogany and maple as a seperate top and back and then glue the top onto the body. It doesn’t matter which way it’s done but if the back is more than two piece I would join them seperately.

The prepared stock is glued together.

Once the glue is sufficently dry the clamps are removed and the Lil ’58 blanks have the centre gluing edge prepared on the planer.

Squaring and truing the gluing edge for the Lil 58 body.

Before I glue the two halves together to complete the body blank for the Lil ’58 I machine a small channel along one edge, this will provide a route for the neck pickup cable to run, it’s easier  to do this now rather than trying to drill two angled holes later an hoping they meet.

Routing a pickup cable channel in the centre gluing face.

When the pickup cavities are routed, the channel should magically appear at the bottom of the cavities.

Using sash cramps to glue the two halves of the Lil ’58.

The two halves of the Lil ’58 body are glued and clamped. This is left to dry overnight before final prep that will allow me to cut out the body.

More on that, and other stages of this build, next time.

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The body is made from two pieces of American Red Alder, joined and then thicknessed on the drum sander. Alder is a traditional solid body tonewood which is resonant and has a pretty even response across the frequency range.

Two piece Alder body blank glued up and ready to work.

With the alder glued it’s thicknessed to a little over its finished dimension. The blank is then left for at least a few days to settle and then thicknessed again, to final dimension.

Sander thicknessing the body blank.

The blank is then cut out on the bandsaw to a little oversize. All being well, the blank is machined to its finished shape and has the neck, control, and pickup cavities cut on the router.

Routing the front body cavities.

When the cavity routing is done the body edges are rounded over on the router table and the back ‘belly cut’ is then carved.

Rounding the body edges on the router table.

The belly carve is cut with a microplane rasp and then finished off with a cabinet scraper.

Finish scraping the belly carve.

Once done, its down to finishing off and sanding before final prep and spraying.

Body sanded and ready for spraying prep.

The hardware for this build has arrived and I have to say i’m keen to try the pickups, a pair of mini ‘wide range’ humbuckers built in the traditional way from Jaime at The Creamery. The bridge and tuners are from Hipshot in the USA, the bridge includes stainless steel saddles for improved resonance and response.

The body, before completion with some of the hardware.

Time to get on and make a neck for this now. I already have a nice piece of birdseye maple set aside for this.

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Custom T completed.

For those who missed the build posts, the body is swamp ash and finished in pale cream. The neck is birdseye maple and features an ebony fingerboard which, unusually for this style of guitar, has a shorter 25″ scale. Like my Evo guitars, this build makes use of my ‘Ergo’ three bolt neck system.

‘Ergo’ three bolt neck joint borrowed from the Evo.

The guitar is loaded with a pair of Bare Knuckle ‘Mississippi Queen’ P90 pickups which work very well. The switching and general wiring is traditional – volume, tone and three way, with no mods or departure from the norm for this style of guitar. The tortoise shell scratchplate finishes of the look nicely.

Close up of the body.

The headstock is a traditional slab finish and not set back. In this instance we opted to use Sperzel tuners with graduated post heights to eliminate the need for string trees. The nut is brass and the logo is inlaid abalone.

Staggered Sperzel tuner posts eliminate the string trees.

The design and build brief for this guitar was for “a tele on steroids..”, personally I think it has worked, and very well. The smile and stream of profanities from the customer when first plugged into his Mesa Boogie said it all!

I am currently working on another ‘T’, this time based on a 72 deluxe, more on that another time.

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The ‘Living With’ article is available to view on the Media page of the web site or you can link to the PDF here.

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The body is bound in 2mm thick grained ivoroid which is glued and taped as I work round the body. In order to bend the binding round tight curves, like the horns, I heat it with a hairdryer and overbend it slightly. The binding is glued using a specialist ‘solvent weld’ adhesive.

Gluing the ivoroid binding in place.

When the glue has cured the binding is scraped flush with the top and sides of the body using a sharp cabinet scraper.

Trimming the binding flush to the body with a cabinet scraper.

The fingerboard and headstock are bound in the same way though in this case the binding is shallower and thinner and the binding is cut and mitred at the sharp corners.

The bound headstock with ebony head veneer.

Before the neck is joined to the body I finish as much of the neck as possible as it’s much easier to work when the two are still seperate. Access to and around the heel is where finishing gets harder if the two are joined so, this is finished and sanded before joining. This leaves me with just a little clean up to do around the joint when the neck is permanently fixed. Before I carve the neck heel I glue on the ebony heel cap, I usually fit a heel cap to all the the necks on a Lil 58.

Rough carving the neck heel with various rasps.

Once the rough carving has been done I use coarse cloth backed abrasive strips to blend and even out the curves and transition from neck to heel. Cawls are taped around the neck tenon to prevent any damage to the edges of the joint.

Blending in the transition from neck to heel with coarse abrasive.

When the heel shaping is complete I finish shaping the neck profile before carving the transition between neck and headstock. The carved neck is scraped and then any bumps are smoothed out using a coarse abrasive strip rolled in a zig zag fashion up and down the neck.

Roll sanding the neck with coarse abrasive.

I carve a volute where the neck meets the headstock, for increased strength, rigidity and I like the aesthetics of it. The upstand is shaped with a medium thumb plane and is finished off with various scrapers. A rasp and round file are used to blend the area leading from the neck to the headstock sides.

Carving the volute with a thumb plane.

Finishing off with a goose neck scraper.

With the majority of the heavy neck work completed I can then move on to checking and adjusting the neck joint. The neck joint is keyed and self tightening when clamped in one direction. This allows me to dry joint the neck for final check of neck angle and side to side accuracy, also for cambering the fingerboard, dotting and fretting.

The neck and body dry jointed for a first fit.

When all the neck work is completed the neck and body will be seperated again, final sanded and then permanently glued in place.

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In the mean time I’ve been moving along with a Lil 58 build. The body was cut out and machined a little while ago, with the neck now catching up and should be ready for a customer fitting later this week.

Lil 58 body waiting for binding, and it’s neck components.

The body is American Poplar and the maple neck blank has been prepared. The fingerboard is old growth Indian Rosewood, one of  few remaining old growth boards that I have and sourced many years ago. The board has now been slotted at 25″ scale and two octave.

Routing the body binding channel.

Like the body, the fingerboard will be bound in ivoroid and lap fretted. The body will be finished in gloss black, with chrome hardware, including my favoured choice of Gotoh 510 wrap around bridge and Sidewynder pickups. Should be sweet!

The resulting channel for the ivoroid binding.

I should have some more progress pics of this build in the next day or so, so check back soon for more.

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Cutting maple stock to width on the table saw.

Unlike a traditional J Bass, the headstock will have a back angle, this will eliminate the need for string trees and will make the headstock stiffer and less prone to forward bend or twist, often seen on ‘flat’ five string headstocks. The maple is figured and was roughly planed flat before being finished to a touch over size on the drum sander.  I’ve had the drum sander for about a year now and I have to say I don’t know how I managed without one for so long, it’s a godsend when preparing figured or difficult timbers.

Once the stock is flat and square I can cut the angle for the scarf joint. The angle is not that steep, I use 10 degrees which is enough to create a string break angle over the nut and not so much that it results in a shorter, weaker joint. I cut the angle using a jig on the table saw. With a sharp, clean blade I can cut the gluing faces in one pass. Ocassionally I need to do a second light trim if vibration has maybe caused a ripple in the cut faces.

Using the table saw to its full capacity to cut the joint.

With the joint cut the two parts are glued. This type of joint is very prone to glue slip and requires both parts to be clamped to prevent slippage before the actual gluing faces are clamped. The joint is left overnight to cure.

The prepared joint glued and clamped.

If anyone is wondering why I use a scarf joint then please let me explain, a few people do see it as an aesthetically inferior means to produce an angled headstock. The weakest part of any guitar neck is in the area around the nut, the thinnest and narrowest region. A one piece neck is particularly weak in this area due to the run of the grain fibres. By using a scarf joint the fibres in the timber run parallel with all long faces of the neck, ie there is little run out of  grain fibres into a face. This dramtically increases stiffness and strength at the headstock. The nature of modern glues also means that the timber will fail before the glue joint does. An added benefit is it’s considerably more material efficient than a one piece neck.

A graphical explanation of why I use a scarf joint.

Once the glued blank is cured I can dress the fingerboard gluing face. Again this is done with the drum sander. To enable me to allow for the headstock angle the neck blank is supported on a wooden block.

Usingthe drum sander to dress the fingerboard gluing face.

Next, I will cut out the neck shape, route for the truss rod and prepare and glue the fingerboard.

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