Bloggaday: Bloggaday 181 – Craftspicable Me: A ’58 Gibson Les Paul pt 2

Bloggaday 181 – Craftspicable Me: A ’58 Gibson Les Paul pt 2

So a couple of months ago I posted a Bloggaday about a faux guitar I was making. It was a work in progress,* so I was going to post another Bloggaday after I finished. Well, the original Bloggaday was here http://thebloggaday.blogspot.com/2010/05/bloggaday-102-ets-my-battle-with.html and was about 90 days ago. I finished it within a week of that last Bloggaday, but I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get this Bloggaday up. Granted, it will be much more informative, but that’s kind of bad. If you want to see the pics now, go here http://s1000.photobucket.com/albums/af128/daviddysart/58%20Gibson%20Les%20Paul%20Guitar%20Creation/

SO, back to the guitar. I don’t play the guitar or anything, but aesthetically, they are pleasing. I’ve always been a fan of the ’58 Gibson Les Paul, so that was kind of the natural choice for the project. Ii went online and found some reference pics. Well, reference pictures are nice and all, but you rarely get good proportion shots. I ended up finding a really nice schematic of the body.

As I was doing all of that, I had to find a suitable material for the guitar. I didn’t want to make it out of cardboard as tends to be a bit flimsy and doesn’t really look all that good. Luckily, I had some big drawing pads from an art class a few years back. The backs of those are really sturdy, so I used those for most of the bodywork. Sadly though, I couldn’t use them to the edge of the body. I did scavenge a really long box though and that worked… okay? It looked terrible, but I don’t know what else you could really use for it. Here’s how I did it though.

For most of the cutting, I used an exacto knife and I think a box cutter here and there. That quite thoroughly sucked. Go to Michaels and check out the backs of those pads. They’re not meant to be cut with an exacto knife. I had to make a cut and then angle-cut beside it to take a small layer off. Repeat many many times. For an entire guitar.

I also used hot glue and wood glue for the gluing. For the knobs and tuners, I bought little knick knacks from Michaels that looked pretty good actually.

Unfortunately, I tend to get a little ahead of myself. I printed my schematic out, but to get a life-sized guitar, I had to blow up the dimensions. I figured how wide it would be and cut out the mass. The problem is, this led to me some really miniscule numbers like 7 and 3/16” and whatnot. I followed the exact ratios for most of it, but towards the end, I kind of said, “Screw it,” and went with simpler ratios that I felt were close enough. It just would have been nice to do that from the beginning.

Well, it looks like I’m already at 500 words, so I’ll pick this up tomorrow. Until then, have a good day. The story get better, trust me.

Listening to

Today, Maroon 5, Jonathan Coulton, and AC/DC all moved into the same playlist. How will these VERY different performers handle being on the same iPod?

Find out this Fall, only on Bloggaday.

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Twitter Tag

Finally posting Bloggadays about the faux 58 Gibson Les Paul guitar I made a couple months ago, only on Bloggaday

Exit stage right to my corner of the interweb > \/

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Youtube Awesomeness

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