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Lutherie is an art.The art of converting the soulless wood to a miracle that can speak to
you,sing to you and travel your emotions.Lutherie is a science,teached in universities,but
there are many things that cannot be taught.The luthier through his intuition can put his
trademark to his own creations.It’s not only an art of visible things.The most fascinating is
that it is an art of invisible things,”seen” only by senses…Welcome to this incredible world…

My article refers to my latest construction of a Les Paul style guitar with some differences
from the original,and it is named so because of the feeling created by the top…Invisible
vision!! so,let’s get started!!!!!!!!!!

“Golden waves” guitar project

The whole procedure starts from the design..I have the guitar plans and know exactly what I
am going to need and to do.Its very important to start with plans and not to improvise
during the process ,because of many unpredictable mistakes…The whole thing can be either
drawn by hand or designed by AutoCAD in computers. In guitars with tune-o-matic bridges
it is very important to predict the correct “neck angle”(we will discuss about it later),or the
whole result will be very unpleasant and the guitar will never work…

Then I must gather the woods and select the best item…A good item must be very well dried
to be resonant, and have beautiful grain pattern if it is going to be visible in the result….For
this guitar I use rare and unusual woods. I will use elm for the body, which is a very strong
but pretty light wood with open pores which I need for staining later.I will use indian
rosewood which is an excellent tonewood for the neck ,sandwiched between purpleheart
wood,and cocobolo (dual colored) for fretboard.

The whole building from scratch can be devided in the following categories and
subcategories :
 A )building the guitar body

 1.Making the body

 2.Carving the top

B )building the guitar neck

 1.Scarf joint
 2.Final shape
 3.Fretboard /inlays
 4.Frets

C )Assembling body with the neck

 1.Neck angle
 2.Setting the bridge

D )finishing

 1.Staining the top

 2.Gab filling of burl maple
 3.Grain filling the elm
 4.Base coats
 5.Top coats
 6.Wet sanding
 7.buffing

E )wiring-hardware parts

A guitar building from scratch is a very lengthy procedure.Imagine that at the D stage every
base coat needs about one day to dry and after final top coats,the waiting time before wet
sanding can vary from 2 weeks to one month(depends on the finish type)

So lets begin:

A1 MAKING THE GUITAR BODY

I first cut the slabs and after the jointer machine I glue the pieces.Finding one piece with
these dimension is pretty rare so,we glue two pieces.
Photo #1

The template is ready and I choose the best part of the wood

Photo #2

I then use my bandsaw and cut the profile roughly in order to be able to use my template
to route the guitar precisely .The body is now ready!

Photo #3
It is now time to create the cavities for the electric pots, the switches and the channel for
wiring.Elm is light wood but I need to get rid off wood and besides create a more resonant
guitar.I use my drill to open some holes.Those cavities work best in clean channel playing..

Photo#4

We are now ready to continue in the next stage:

A2 CARVING THE TOP

I draw the profile for the top and cut it

Photo#5

and glue the top with the body

Photo#6

One of the most difficult part in this guitar is to carve the top. Many luthiers do it by hand
but I use my router which I think is the best way to be precise and safe.I have my templates
which I use just to draw the lines and then with a router on a basis a route free hand
Photos 7-8-9

the whole thing is now very rough and flat.I need to sand it

Photo#1

Ok,we are done with it!!time for neck making!!!

B1 SCARF JOINT

The neck can be one piece of wood ,or more.The more pieces, the more stable the neck. I
decided to use Indian Rosewood which is a very stable tonewood with a purpleheart rib
between 2 pieces of rosewood.Another important factor is the grain along the neck.There
are 2 types: quartersawn and flatsawn and has to do with the way of cutting the slab.If the
slab is quartersawn the grain runs along the whole neck,which makes it more stable and
more resonant.The other choice is flatsawn without all those properties I mentioned!!In
adittion I will add 2 carbonfibers which give stability to the neck!!
In guitar there is an angle between the neck and the peghead.The bigger the angle ,the
bigger the sustain.In lutherie there are many ways to get this angle.In our Les Paul style
guitar it is 16 degrees.I just cut the neck in this angle ,twist the “peghead slab” and that’s it…

Photo #11

I then route the neck to put the truss rod with 2 carbon fibers (for more stability).

photo#12

I cut the neck to the final dimensions with the router and have this result
 photo#13

Time for headstock arrangements..After glueing a piece of ebony I use my template to route
it to the desired shape!

photo#14

Ok,time for the fretboard…cocobolo!!an amazing Mexican rosewood!

I cut the slots for the frets

photo#15

And glue it on the neck!

 photo#16

My next step is to route for the bindings!!

photo#17

And then there is the neck shaping!!I use a router to shape in the middle and then I do it by
hand!!This step is also very important.there are many types of neck shapes such as C, D,U,V
and so on.It depends on the taste of the player..I prefer to shape it in U shape..

photo#18

The final stages include the inlays engraving and the fretwork..Another aspect of art..
It’s like jewelry and adds many credits on the final result.

photo #19

And finally the frets.

I use a press to place them properly..This step is another important thing. They must be
pressed all evenly and then leveled in order to avoid higher frets which cause the terrible
buzz we all know…

photo#20

After the neck we are ready to continue in part C ,assembling the neck with body…

C1 Neck angle
As I mentioned in the beginning the most crucial part in this building is to achieve the correct
angle between the neck and the body.If the angle is bigger than the desired there will be
buzz and the strings will hit the frets.In opposite case the action will be very high and the
guitar will be non playable…There are many factors which determine the neck angle such as
the scale of the guitar (25.562”in our case),the bridge’s height and so more…

This jig help us route the neck pocket and see it in our angle gauge(4.6 degrees)

photo#21

After this process we route for the binding ,and do the drills for the pots.We will not show
pics for this because it s very easy to do. we are ready to place the bridge

C2 bridge setting

there are many types of bridges.The most common include the bridge and the stoptail which
holds the strings.In my project I will use a “wraparound”bridge which includes those 2 types
in one bridge.

Another crucial part:We have only two holes to drill.If we do them wrong it will be very
difficult to cover the mistake.The correct placement determines the scale and the
intonation..Besides the strings must be in the borders of the fretbord…Fo this I use a laser
pointer to double check it!!
 photo#22

After many many checks we drill the holes,we route for the pick up cavities

photo#23
After glueing the neck the guitar looks like this:

photo#24

The guitar is now ready for finishing…

D Finishing(steps 1-3)

This is a whole chapter,an art which cannot be easily described here.There are many factors
many types of finishes to choose.It is a very very busy process and takes too long because of
drying times and between sandings…The philosophy is simple:we must fill the pores of the
wood,we must stain it and then create a base coat.This will be the basis of a true wonderful
clear coat which will add protection to the wood and beauty.To achieve a mirror like surface
after the final clear coat has dried we sand it with very smooth sandpapers with water and
buff it.This is very similar to car paints or even nail polishing!!!i decided to work with
polyourethane because the final result is very hard to scratches and very glossy.

In our case both burl maple and elm are woods which have to be filled with something in
order to close the open pores of the wood.So,in this stage I have stained the burl maple and
we see the epoxy glue to fill the voids!!
 photo#25

D4,D5 Basecoats-clearcoats

After closing every void we proceed to the final stages:base coats and clear coats:

photo #26

D5 wetsanding

The waiting time has come.In order the finish to become hard we must not touch the guitar
for 2 weeks at least…Then comes the wet sanding.The purpose here is to correct the “bad
“spraying results “such as orange peels,overspraying etc. and get a smooth leveled finish..
 photo#27

D5 buffing

The finish now looks very dull.We must buff it in order to get the desired shine and the
guitar will get it’s final look.We use a buffing machine for this purpose:

photo#28
 E Wiring-Hardware parts

The guitar is now ready!!!We can wire it,add the hardware,the strings and check it..

At this point we must do the set up needed…A common setup includes truss rod
adjustments,action adjustments,intonation adjustments.

photo#29

We have finished,,,The guitar looks like this:

Thank you for reading my article..I can answer to any questions to this email

dimitheodoro@gmail.com
You can watch about 200 photos of this procedure in this link:

http://s939.photobucket.com/albums/ad236/theodoropoulos/Gibson%20Style%20guitar/

short bio:

Dimitris Theodoropoulos was born in 1976 in Athens,Greece.He has studied Physics and is
the guitarist and the main composer of the gothic metal group Shadows Dance.In 2003 “cold
blood industries” released their debut album under the name “A quatrain for the
damned”.Since then he has created a luthier shop in which he constructs traditional
instruments like oud and cretan lyras.His main purpose is to use Physics in lutherie.He uses
TAP TUNING in his acoustic instruments,a method that is used to “tune” the woods and
achieve a sonic balance.He also constructs electric guitars,basses,something pretty
different from traditional instruments.