Build a Les Paul from Home-Center & Amazon Parts — Part 2: The Build

This page walks through the entire process of building a DIY guitar using nothing but tools and parts you can pick up at a home center or on Amazon.

* The series is split into [Part 1: Planning & Design] and [Part 2: The Build]. This page is [Part 2: The Build].
If you haven’t read [Part 1: Planning & Design] yet, I’d recommend starting there:

Build & Assembly [First Half] (1) — Glue up the lumber and rough-cut the shape

Did you get through [Part 1: Planning & Design]?
Now we’re finally diving into the actual build.

In this section we glue up the body and neck blanks and rough-cut the body and neck shapes.

Gluing up the lumber

First we glue up the body lumber bought at the home center to hit our target thickness.
(We’ll cut it to shape later.)

Body dimensions are shown below.

As I mentioned in Planning Part 5, here are the woods I went with:

(1) Body top: glued maple board, 350 mm (≈13¾″) wide x 600 mm (≈23⅝″) long x 20 mm (≈¾″) thick
(2) Body back: glued cherry board, 350 mm wide x 600 mm long x 20 mm thick

That gives a combined thickness of 40 mm (≈1⅝″) for (1)+(2). I wanted a touch more, so I sandwiched a 4 mm (≈5/32″) plywood sheet between them to bring it up.

Total thickness: 44 mm (≈1¾″).

For the glue-up, I’m using the classic Titebond.
It bonds incredibly well.

Spread glue on each board, stack them, then clamp them tight.
Leave it like this for a day until the glue fully cures.

Clamps off.
Three boards now act as one solid piece.

Body blank — rough cut

Now we cut the glued-up body blank to shape.

For now we just rough out the outline.
Sanding and shaping the surface curves comes later.

Print the blueprint at 1:1 scale, glue it onto the lumber, then follow the outline with a jigsaw.

Glue the blueprint onto the lumber

Here’s the body blueprint printed at 1:1 scale:

Cut around the outline with scissors.
Glue it onto the body lumber.
Regular paper glue is fine here — nothing fancy.

Blueprint glued to the wood.

Cut with the jigsaw

A jigsaw is a power tool that handles curves.

Use a curve-cutting blade and it’ll go through more smoothly.

<Heads up>
As shown below, the area where the body meets the neck gets really thin if you cut to the final shape — thin enough that it can snap.
So leave the area marked (3) below uncut for now — we’ll trim it after the neck is glued on.

Follow the glued-on blueprint and start cutting.

Mostly cut.

Inside-curve sections like the next photo are awkward — making relief cuts first makes life easier.

Body shape rough-cut, done.

Cutting and gluing up the neck blank

Body done — now the neck. Cut and glue up.

As I mentioned in [Part 1: Planning & Design], the neck is glued up from three pieces, like this:

First, cut the lumber to match the template.

Cutting the neck lumber

Mark the cut lines on the wood with a pencil.

To do that, cut out the side-view blueprint with a utility knife and lay it on top of the wood.

Then trace the shape onto the wood with a pencil.

Cut along the traced line.

For this I used a circular saw and a jigsaw.
The circular saw gives cleaner straight cuts, but a jigsaw alone will get the job done too.

Run the circular saw along a straight guide…

Straight cuts come out cleaner with a circular saw, but a jigsaw works too.

For the tighter areas, switch to the jigsaw.

Three pieces cut out.

Problem though: in this state the headstock isn’t wide enough (see below).

So I added little side pieces to bulk it out.

Neck pieces cut.

Gluing up the neck

Same as the body — Titebond.

Prep:
Rough up the mating surfaces with coarse sandpaper (I used #80).
The light scratches give the glue more to grab onto.

Glue-up:
Spread Titebond.
(I’m wearing rubber gloves so I don’t gunk up my hands.)

Doing all three at once felt risky, so I started with two.

Glue them together, then clamp.

Two boards bonded.

Glue up the third piece the same way, clamp, and wait for it to set.

You end up with a solid neck blank like in the photo.

One snag: the cuts weren’t quite to spec, so the headstock end came out with a dip in the middle (see photo).
Plan was to sand it flat later.
→ Spoiler: I gave up on flattening it and just left the dip.
It doesn’t affect anything functional, so I called it good.
I’m calling it “design”!

Smooth the top face — where the fretboard glues on — with a sander.
I used a powered orbital sander.

Neck blank cut and glued up.
Final shaping happens after the truss rod is installed.

Build & Assembly [First Half] (2) — Cutting the truss rod channel

The truss rod (covered in Planning Part 1) is the metal rod buried inside the neck — turning a bolt at one end lets you adjust neck relief.

Now we cut the channel that holds it.

Tool: trim router (laminate trimmer)

This step is hard to do without a trim router — it’s basically essential for guitar building.

First, mark the fretboard position. Lay the fretboard drawing on top of the neck blank,

and mark its outline in pencil.

I set the truss rod so its end pokes out about 10 mm past the end of the fretboard.

Before cutting the channel, I measured the truss rod itself.
It came out to 6 mm (≈¼″) wide and 8.8 mm (≈11/32″) deep, as shown below.

Now route the channel.

Clamp the workpiece down.

Then clamp a straight piece of wood next to it as a guide for the router (see below).
You can’t freehand a straight channel — you need that fence.

Heads up: don’t try to plunge the full depth in one pass — it overloads the router and is dangerous. Take it down ~3 mm at a time.

Switch the router on and run it along the guide.

A few passes back and forth and the channel is cut.

Channel depth: 9 mm (≈⅜″).
Truss rod is 8.8 mm — good fit.

The truss rod’s end is shaped differently and is wider — adjust the channel to match.

Swap to a 10 mm bit and widen the end.

Drop the truss rod in to test fit.

Truss rod channel: done.

Build & Assembly [First Half] (3) — Cut the neck outline, drill the headstock holes

In this section we rough-cut the neck outline and then drill the holes for the tuning pegs.
Still rough-cut territory — back-of-neck shaping and final smoothing comes later.

Cutting the neck outline

Pencil in the cut lines.

Cut with the jigsaw.
Follow the pencil lines.

One side of the neck shaft cut.

(Yes, the truss rod is still in there — no particular reason.)

Now the headstock.

For curved sections like the one below, relief cuts make life easier.

Headstock cut.
The edges are still rough — we’ll clean those up later.

Outline cut, all the way around.

Fixing a headstock step (one-off repair)

* This step isn’t normally required. *

Because I built up the neck blank from glued boards, small dimensional errors left a step in the headstock area after glue-up (see photo).

Time to fix it.

The step’s pretty big though, so rather than try to flatten it completely I went for a smooth transition.

First I knocked the corner off at an angle with a chisel.

Then smoothed it with sandpaper.

Ended up like the next photo.

Honestly, this one I can totally call “design” (?).

Did the same on the back.

Drilling the tuning peg holes

Drill the holes for the tuners on the headstock.

Use a power drill.

Start with a small bit (around 2 mm) and step up the bit size gradually.

* Place a sacrificial board underneath when you drill.
Without backing, the back face tends to splinter (those nasty little burrs).

One side’s tuner holes done.
(A little splintering on the back, but the tuners cover that area, so I’ll let it slide.)

Other side: same drill.

Test-fit a tuner.
Slides right in.

Holes drilled, done.

Build & Assembly [First Half] (4) — Fret slots and position-marker holes

Next up: the fretboard.
This section covers:

The fretboard blank:
– Thickness adjustment (8 mm to 6.35 mm / ¼″)
– Outline cut
– Cutting the fret slots
– Drilling position-marker holes

The thickness step is unnecessary if you ordered wood pre-cut to thickness, but I trimmed mine down with a router.

Adjusting fretboard thickness

For the fretboard, I cheated and went to a specialist shop (Aichi Wood) — I covered this back in “Planning Part 5: Wood prep.”

Since I broke the “Amazon or home center only” rule there, as a tiny act of penance (?), I’m doing the thinning myself — pretending I’d bought the wood from a home center and needed to thin it to spec.

The fretboard blank starts at 8 mm (≈5/16″) thick.
Target: 6.35 mm (¼″).

Tool: trim router.
Clamp the workpiece down (as in the photo) and rout it down to thickness.

To keep the router moving level, I left a small section at the end un-routed (left photo below).
That little leftover bit gets trimmed off later with a chisel.

Finish with a sander to smooth the surface.

Now 6.3 mm thick.

Cutting the fretboard outline

Cut the blank to the fretboard outline.

Cut out the fretboard outline from the blueprint and glue it to the wood.

Cut along the paper.
This needs to be as straight as possible.
Options:

– Circular saw
– Jigsaw
– Hand saw
– Trim router

are all viable.

Circular saw: cleanest straight cuts when guided. If you have one, use it.
Jigsaw / hand saw: won’t be perfectly straight — you’ll have to clean up with a sander afterward.
Trim router: with a flush-trim (bearing) bit and a guide, you can route a perfectly straight edge.

I went with the trim-router method.
Bit: Makita flush-trim bit with bearing (No. D-08355).

As shown, clamp the fretboard blank on top of a guide board and let the bearing ride along the guide.

Both long sides of the fretboard, trimmed to the blueprint outline.

Now the ends.
You could rout these too, but here I went with a hand saw.
Stack a guide board on top and saw against it.

<Heads up>
If you saw this by hand, use a flush-cut saw (no set on the teeth).

What’s “set”?
Most saws have teeth that are bent slightly to alternating sides — that’s the set.
It widens the kerf so the blade doesn’t bind.

A no-set (flush-cut) saw has teeth that don’t poke out beyond the blade body, so it cuts in a perfectly straight line right at the edge of where you place it.

Ends came out clean.

Cutting the fret slots

On to one of the most important steps in the whole build: cutting the fret slots.

Accurate fret position = accurate intonation.
Take your time here.

Verify fret positions

Lay a ruler from the nut position (= “fret 0”) and check that each fret line is in the right spot.

Holding a ruler against the glued-on blueprint…
turns out the printed fret positions don’t match what they should be by measurement!
The CAD file dimensions are correct and I supposedly printed at 1:1 — no idea what went wrong.

No choice: I marked the correct fret positions on top of the printout in pencil.

All 24 frets marked.
These hand-corrected marks become the source of truth from here on.

Cutting the fret slots

Cut the slots with a fret saw — a guitar-specific tool.

Before reaching for the fret saw, score each fret position with a utility knife first.
* Going straight to the fret saw, the blade tends to wander off the line.

After the utility knife, deepen the score with an acrylic-sheet cutter (see photo).
That makes the fret saw track even better.

Enter the fret saw.
Important: cut a slot width that matches the fret you’re using.
(Or — same thing — buy frets that match the kerf of your fret saw.)

For example, if your fret tang is 0.6 mm wide (see drawing), you want a fret saw that cuts a 0.6 mm kerf — slot width and tang width need to match.

Now cut the slots.

Trace the slot a few times with the tip of the fret saw first, then once it’s tracking, lay the full blade in and saw down.

Cut to roughly 3-4 mm depth.

Fret slots — done.

Drilling position-marker holes (face)

Slots done — now the position-marker holes.

I’m using 6.35 mm shell-inlay dots on the fretboard face.
Acrylic dots tend to be cheaper than shell, by the way.

Just to be safe, I measured the dots:
6.2 mm diameter, 2 mm thick.

Inlay positions need to look clean (it’s purely visual), so I started with a center punch to make a dimple.

Then start small — like a 1 mm bit — and step up.

Final pass with a 6 mm bit.

Don’t go too deep — check depth with calipers as you go.
It’s fine if the dots sit a hair proud of the surface.
The fretboard gets sanded to a radius later, and that pass also takes the inlay tops down level.

All position-marker holes drilled.

Build & Assembly [First Half] (5) — Glue the fretboard on

Glue the fretboard onto the neck.
But before that, install the truss rod for relief adjustment.

Installing the truss rod

Time to drop the truss rod into the neck.

The channel was already cut, so we just seat and fix the rod.

Fix it in place with a dab of CA glue (super glue).

Drop CA glue on the end of the truss rod (see photo).

Same on the other end.

Press it into the channel.

Truss rod installed.

Glue the fretboard onto the neck

Now bond the fretboard to the neck.

This is when you really start feeling like it’s becoming a guitar.

The next photo shows the fretboard sitting on top of the neck (not glued yet).
This is the alignment we want.

Anti-slip during glue-up (toothpick trick)

Once the glue is on and you start clamping, the fretboard wants to skate around on the wet glue and is hard to keep aligned.

The trick: pin the two together with a toothpick.
Use one of the position-marker holes you just drilled.
Drive the toothpick down through the marker hole and into the neck. (We snip it off later.)

Toothpick is 2.2 mm at its widest point.

It tapers toward the tip, so a 2 mm bit works for the pilot hole.

Stack the fretboard on the neck and clamp them.
Drill through the last-fret position-marker hole down into the neck.

Lift the fretboard off — the hole now extends into the neck.
Stick a toothpick into it.

* For even better alignment, do the same near the 1st-fret end. I only did the last-fret end this time.

Glue the fretboard down

Titebond again. Prep matters here.
Going in with a “it’ll be fine” attitude turns into a panic real quick (speaking from experience), so set everything up properly first.

Prep

Before laying glue, scuff up both mating faces with sandpaper.
It increases bond strength.

Use coarse paper (#80 worked for me) on the neck face.

Same scuff on the underside of the fretboard.

Use Titebond again. To make my life easier, I have these laid out:
– Titebond
– Rubber gloves (otherwise your hands turn into a mess)
– A damp rag (to wipe up squeeze-out)

Mask off areas you don’t want glue getting onto.
Tape over the truss rod and along the neck sides.

Get a scrap board ready to use as a clamping caul (so the clamps don’t dent the fretboard face).

Prep done.

Glue-up

Lay down the Titebond.

Drop glue on the neck and spread it across the whole bonding surface with your hand.

Glue down — now peel off the masking tape over the truss rod.

Lay the fretboard on top.
Drive the toothpick through the last-fret marker hole as your alignment pin.

Sandwich the scrap caul on top of the fretboard (to protect the surface) and clamp down hard.
Crank those clamps — really tight is fine.

Without the toothpick the fretboard would slide all over the place.
I only used one toothpick (last-fret end), so the 1st-fret end could still drift, but it wasn’t bad — I was able to get it where I wanted without much fuss.

Side view.

Wipe up the squeeze-out with a damp rag.
Easier to clean now than after it’s cured.

Leave overnight.

Fretboard glued to the neck.

Snip the alignment toothpick flush with nippers.

That’s the fretboard glued to the neck.

And that wraps up the First Half!

Going OK so far?
What started as a stack of lumber is slowly turning into a guitar.

The Second Half has more part-by-part work, but it’s also where the neck and body finally come together — and it really starts to look like a guitar.
It takes time. No rushing. Just steady, careful work.

Honestly — getting all the way to the finish line with zero mistakes is basically impossible (in my case anyway).
Sometimes the right move is to just bite the bullet and redo something (in my case anyway).

OK — on to Build & Assembly [Second Half]!

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (6) — Routing the rear pickup cavity

The First Half was mostly neck work — now we move to the body.

First up: rout the cavity for the rear (bridge) pickup. (Circled in the image below.)

Tool: trim router.

Prepping the router setup

For the pickup cavity, we make a template first to guide the router.

1. Cut the “ideal pickup-cavity shape” out of an easy-to-machine sheet (like MDF) — that’s your template.
2. Stack it on top of the body and rout against it.

That’s the workflow.
For the template I used MDF.
Bought a 9 mm (≈⅜″) thick sheet at the home center (453 yen, about $3).

The cavity holds the pickup, so I checked pickup dimensions first.

Pickups bought on Amazon (set of 2 for 6,730 yen (about $45)).

Dimensions are listed on the product page, but I measured to be sure.

Then sized the cavity from there.
Roughly each side + 3 mm of clearance.
Target depth: about 25 mm (≈1″). (The pickup hangs from the front via screws, so as long as it drops fully into the cavity, you’re good.)

Mark the cavity outline on the MDF.

Now cut the opening.
Jigsaw — but first we need a starter hole for the blade. Drill it.

With the starter hole drilled, slip the jigsaw blade in.
Cut along the marked line.

Template opening cut.

Routing the cavity

Rout out the cavity.

Stack the template on top of the body and clamp them together.

Drill out the rough waste first

Hogging out a deep cavity in one go is hard on the bit and risks snapping it.
So we plunge in a few mm at a time — and to make life easier, drill out as much waste as possible up front.
Lots of holes, like in the photo.

Rout to the template

Use a bearing-guided router bit (8 mm diameter) — see photo.

(In my case the cutter diameter is slightly smaller than the bearing diameter, so the cut sits a couple millimeters inside the template edge.)

Time to rout.
Lower the bit ~3 mm at a time.

Several passes later — down to the target 25 mm.

Because the bearing is larger than the cutter, the cut ends up a hair inside the line. To get out to the line, I made a follow-up pass with a 6 mm un-bearinged bit. Bit of a hack, but it worked.

Past a certain depth the bit can’t reach with the template still on, so remove the template and finish the deeper part directly.

Cavity routed to the design line.

Drop the pickup in to test fit.

Sits perfectly.

Rear pickup cavity: done.

The neck (front) pickup cavity gets cut after the neck is mounted.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (7) — Shape the neck

Get the neck ready to join up with the body.

The neck and fretboard are already glued together (see Build (5) — Glue the fretboard on):

First, snip the alignment toothpick off with nippers.

Flatten the neck-to-body joint face

The neck heel (the face that meets the body) needs to be flat.
It’s currently uneven (see photo) — sand it down to a flat plane.

Lay sandpaper on a flat reference (a flat board) and rub the neck face against it.
Spread your weight evenly so it doesn’t tilt.

Check often that you’re not sanding it crooked.

Lay a metal ruler across to check flatness.
Lengthwise and crosswise — both reading basically flat.

Flatten the neck sides

Now the neck sides.
Trim the sides of the neck flush with the fretboard edges (see photo).

I used the trim router.
The fretboard edge served as the guide.

The headstock end is done.
Small irregularities will get cleaned up later — leave them for now.

Now do the heel end.

The fretboard “guide” runs out at the spot in the photo.
(I tried to keep routing past it and made the mistake described below. Past that point I’d recommend just sanding by hand.)

<Mistake>
I tried to keep routing where the fretboard didn’t extend, and ended up overshooting like this…

Lesson learned — switched to flattening with a sander.

Get the side faces (where the neck meets the body) as flat as possible.
Check with a steel ruler — looking good.

Neck side prepped for the body joint.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (8) — Cut the neck pocket in the body

The neck side is shaped (Build (7)).
Now we shape the body to receive it.

We’re cutting the neck-pocket cavity (circled below).

Pocket depth from the design: 32.3 mm (≈1¼″).
Tool: trim router.

Setting up the router

Position the neck where it should sit on the body and clamp it.

Lay a long ruler along the fretboard to make sure the neck sits dead on the body’s centerline.
Take your time here — this is what determines whether the neck ends up straight.

Lay a steel ruler along the body’s centerline and confirm the fretboard center is right on top of it.

With the neck locked in position, butt scrap pieces snug against it on every side, tracing the neck outline.
* All the scrap pieces should be the same height — they’ll be the router’s guide.

Clamp the surrounding scrap pieces, then lift the neck out.

Router setup ready.

Routing

Same trick as before — drill out the bulk of the waste first to lighten the load on the router.

Then rout to depth.
Use the surrounding scrap pieces as the router fence.

Plunge a few millimeters at a time — don’t go for the full depth in one pass.

Neck pocket cut.

Depth is on target.

Test-fit the neck (no glue yet).

Hmm — there’s a gap at the heel of the neck (see image).

That’s because the router’s bit leaves a small radius in the inside corners of the body pocket, but the neck’s heel has square corners — the square corner can’t seat into the radius.

Reshape the neck heel so it seats fully.

Reshaping the neck heel

Trim the neck-heel corners back so they clear the radius in the pocket.
(A bit of over-trim here is fine — the front pickup cavity will eat that area anyway.)

I knocked the corners off with a saw rasp.

Now it seats fully — no contact in the corners.

Side fit isn’t perfect, but I’m calling it good.

Whole guitar at this point.
It’s starting to look like the finished thing — motivation is climbing.

Front pickup cavity (provisional)

Cut the front pickup cavity now too.

That said, this area gets re-cut after the neck is glued on, so you could also wait and do it then (Build (12)).

It’s easier to work on the body without the neck attached, so I went ahead and roughed it out.

Reuse the rear-pickup template, clamp it down,

and rout.

Front pickup cavity to shape.

Body and neck joint area: cut and ready.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (9) — Set the position markers

Time to install the position markers (inlays).
I bought shell dots on Amazon.

The face holes were already drilled in Build (4), so just drop CA glue into each hole.

Set a dot.

Tap it down with a hammer.
Put a piece of scrap between the hammer and the dot to avoid leaving marks.

One face dot in.
Repeat for the other frets.
Dots can stand a touch proud — we’ll sand them flush later.

Now the side dots.

Drill matching holes in the side of the fretboard.

Holes drilled.

Same as the face — dab CA glue in each hole.

Set the dots, tap them down.

Side dots in.

Sand the proud dots flush.

Side dots sanded too.

Position markers in.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (10) — Routing the back of the body

Now we machine the back of the body.
The main job is the cavity behind the volume / tone knobs and the related routing around it.

What we’re cutting in this section

On the body back, we’ll cut features 1 through 5 below.

Main power tool: the trim router.
The router doesn’t see a ton of action in everyday DIY, but for guitar building, where you cut cavity after cavity, it’s essential.

1. Routing the cavity

Make another MDF template.
Trace the cavity outline from the back-view drawing.

Mark the shape on the MDF.

Jigsaw it out of the MDF.
Drill a starter hole first, then jigsaw along the line.

Sand the edges clean.

Template done.

Check the position by laying the back-view drawing on the body.

Once the position is right, clamp the template down.

Target depth: 36 mm (≈1⅜″).
That leaves 8 mm of body wood under the volume / tone knobs.

To save the router some work, drill a bunch of holes inside the cavity area.

Rout to the template.

<Side note>
Routing a relatively large opening like this gets awkward in the middle of the cavity.
(The router’s small base plate ends up only half-supported on the template, which makes it tippy.)

A larger acrylic sub-base for the router fixes that.

Curious? See the article below.

Routed it with the bigger sub-base on.

Clean up with chisel and sandpaper.

Cavity cut.

This is where the volume and tone knobs live.

2. Drilling the volume / tone knob holes

Measure the volume pot shaft.
7.7 mm diameter.

Drill 8 mm.
Don’t go straight to the 8 mm bit — start with 2 mm or so and step up.

Volume and tone holes drilled.

Drop a pot in to test fit.
One thing — break off the little anti-rotation tab in the next photo with pliers; it gets in the way.

Test fit.
Looks good.

Now the pickup-selector hole.

I put the selector close to the volume / tone knobs to keep wiring simple.

Selector shaft measures 11.4 mm.

Drill 10 mm, then open it up to size with a tapered reamer.

Test-mount the selector.

Length was a bit tight, but it mounts up.

3. Wiring holes and channel

Run the pickup wires through to the back-cavity side.

Pickup lead measures 4.3 mm in diameter.

Drill a 5 mm hole.

The hole comes through into the front-side pickup cavity, like in the photo.

(I drilled from the back and the position lined up okay, but with margin for error, drilling from the front is probably safer.)

Pickup wire fed through — looks like this on the back side.

This wire needs to reach the back cavity we just routed.
So we cut a routed channel along the circled path below.

Trim router again.

Use a piece of scrap wood as a guide and run the router along it.

A few mm at a time, and the channel is cut.

4. Output jack hole

Drill the hole for the output jack.
Roughly the spot in the photo.
The jack wires also tie back into the volume / tone cavity.

The jack measures 20 mm.
It mounts to the jack plate.

Need a hole at least 20 mm.
I used a 22 mm Forstner bit.
Buying a bit just for one hole feels a little wasteful, but I couldn’t find a better way…

Drill in from the side.

Through-hole drilled.

5. Step down for the back cover

To make a flush surface for the back-cavity cover, step down the area shown in blue in the diagram.

Make another template,

and rout.

Step routed for the back cover.

Depth: about 3 mm.

Body back routing — wrapped.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (11) — Shaping the neck and body

Time to shape the neck and body.

Carving the back of the neck

Carve the curved back profile of the neck.
Main tool: a saw rasp.

Once you remove material there’s no putting it back, so go slow.

Clamp the neck down,

and start carving with the saw rasp.

One side roughed in.
Solid clamping really lets you focus on just carving.

An old trick from luthiers — wrap a rubber band around the neck and you can read the cross-section profile at a glance.
This shot says I’ve still got more wood to remove.

– Check the rubber band’s curve
– Grip the neck and feel the thickness / shape
and keep carving.

Quite a bit removed with the rasp.

Refine with sandpaper.
I started with #80 (coarse).

Grip-test it as you go and shape until it feels right.
At this point I also did a pass with mid grits (#120, #240).

When the grip feels right, you’re done.

Body contouring and sanding

“Contouring” is the carving on the body that lets the guitar fit comfortably against the player’s body.

Here we do the back contour — the scoop on the back of the body where the player’s belly rests.

Pencil in the area to be carved away.
It’s easier to track progress with the lines drawn out.

Saw rasp again.

(I tried a chisel too — but as a hobbyist it didn’t go well.)

Ended up just using the rasp.

Refine with #80 sandpaper.

While I’m at it, I sanded the body sides too.

Contour, done.

Next step — neck-to-body docking.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (12) — Docking the neck to the body

Now we glue the neck onto the body.
Once that’s done, we trim the leftover body material, sculpt the front-face curves, and rout the front pickup cavity.

Gluing the neck to the body

Dry-fit first as a sanity check.

Lay a ruler across the fretboard and check the height.

At the bridge position, the height is 12.5 mm (≈½″) (string height adds a few more mm on top).

At the time, I told myself “great, on target!” — but in hindsight that should have been ~5 mm taller.

As I’ll explain below, with this height the bridge ends up bottomed-out (12.7 mm / ½″ minimum) for ideal action.
Which means I lose the room to lower it any further.

For that reason, the blueprint files in the “Planning” article have been updated:
– Neck angle changed from 1.5 degrees to 3 degrees.

Anyway — back to gluing.

Scuff the mating faces with coarse paper to boost adhesion.

Same on the neck side.

Spread Titebond…

Clamp.
Use a scrap board between the clamp and the fretboard so the clamp doesn’t dent it.

Wipe up the squeeze-out as much as possible — once it cures, it’s a pain to remove.

One night later — Titebond has done its job, neck and body are locked together.

Trimming leftover material and front-face contouring

With the neck attached, do another round of shaping.

Trimming leftover material

Now that the neck’s glued, the leftover body material we kept earlier (shown below) can finally be trimmed.

Try the jigsaw — but the fretboard’s in the way and only gets you so far.

Finish off with a hand saw.

Make relief cuts (see photo) and remove material in chunks.

The cut faces are rough — wrap sandpaper around a stick and clean them up.

Smoothed up nicely.

Now make the upper-fret access more comfortable by carving back the area circled in red.

Saw rasp,

then sandpaper to smooth.
Nice flowing curve.

Front-face contouring

Round over the top of the body.

Carve material out of the area shown in pink in the photo to create the front contour.
(Up to you — pure aesthetics.)

Saw rasp.

Carve until the curve looks right, eyeballing it constantly.
Then a quick sand to smooth (final surface comes later).

Body face contour roughed in.

Front pickup cavity (final)

Gluing the neck buried part of the front pickup cavity we’d cut earlier.

Re-cut the front pickup cavity properly.

Routing again — same routine, drill out the bulk of the waste first.

Lay the template down to guide the router.
The neck’s already glued on, so the fretboard sticks up — to keep the template level, shim under the dotted area in the diagram with scrap.

Rout against the template.
Need a bit more depth, but with the template stacked on, this is as deep as the bit reaches.

So I removed the template and kept routing — using the cut already made as the guide.

Test-fit the pickup — drops in cleanly.

Front pickup cavity: done.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (13) — Sanding the fretboard radius

Step where the flat fretboard gets a curved (radiused) profile, like in the photo.

At first glance you’d think — there’s no way to do this neatly by hand, right?
But —

You can buy radius blocks — wood blocks with a curved face for shaping fretboards.
The numbers (“254”, “305”) are the radius in mm: smaller = more curved, larger = flatter.

Common fretboard radii:
Fender: 7.25″ (184 mm)
Gibson: 12″ (305 mm)
PRS: 10″ (254 mm)

My main guitar is a PRS, so for the same feel I went with 10″ (254 mm).
(Pick whatever radius you want.)

Stick sandpaper onto the 254 mm side with double-sided tape.
Coarse paper — #80.

Clamp the guitar down,

and slide the radius block back and forth across the fretboard.

Don’t bias your pressure to one side — keep it even.
Watch the sanding pattern as you go.

Sanded down until no flat spots are left.

Step up through finer grits to finish.

#120 to #240 to #400 to #800 to #1500.

By the end the fretboard is glassy-smooth and feels great.
Fretboard radius: done.

Quick general sanding pass over the whole guitar.

Edges too.
Use the saw rasp where it helps.

Same on the back of the neck.

Fretboard radius and overall sanding: done.

Build & Assembly [Second Half] (14) — Setting the frets

Time to drive the frets into the slots.

Sanding the fretboard packed sawdust into the fret slots — clean those out first using the tip of the fret saw.

Slots clean, drop a fret in,

support the neck on a wood block, then tap the fret in with a plastic-headed hammer.

First fret in.
* Make sure it’s seated all the way down to the fretboard.

Drive the rest the same way.

All the way to the last fret.

The frets stick out past the sides of the fretboard — trim them off with end nippers.

One side of fret 1 trimmed.

Trim every fret the same way down to the last.

Try gripping the neck and you’ll see — the fret edges bite into your fingers, totally unplayable.
On a factory guitar those edges are dressed back so they’re smooth.

File the fret edges down with a file.
The next photo shows a regular file, but there are dedicated fret-end files too.

You don’t want to file your nice fretboard surface, so use the metal protector plate that comes with a fret file (placed like this),

and dress the fret ends.
Tedious work, but a critical step for playability — put on some music and just chip away at it.

Finish with sandpaper for a smooth surface.

All frets dressed.

Lay a steel ruler across the fret tops — confirm they’re level.

If a fret isn’t fully seated and pokes up higher than its neighbors, you’ll get bad notes.
Example: if fret 10 sticks up, fretting at fret 9 might still sound the note for fret 10.

Frets — installed.

And that’s the end of Build & Assembly [Second Half].
Nice work!

The shape is basically there.
What’s left is finishing — paint and parts.

Finishing (1) — Paint and surface finish

Time to paint.

For an electric guitar, looks are a huge part of the package.

Personally, painting is one of my favorite parts of any project — guitars or otherwise.
It doesn’t always come out the way you pictured, but that’s part of the fun. Enjoy it!

For this build:

– Water-based paint
– Brush and rags (no spray cans)
– Sunburst-style finish
– Water-based varnish for a gloss top coat

That’s the plan.

“Sunburst” — a finish where the color fades from bright in the center of the body to dark at the edges.

…words only do so much, so

<What it ends up looking like>

Final finish below.

Paint prep

Painting one face at a time gets tedious, so I hung the guitar from the laundry pole using wire through the tuner holes.

The fretboard doesn’t get painted, so mask it off.

I used “tonoko” (Japanese clay-stone wood filler) as a base.

It evens out color absorption, but mainly I wanted a clean boundary at the body’s top-to-side edge for the “binding”-look line — tonoko keeps the edge crisp instead of bleeding.

(Sanding sealer should give a similar effect.)

Brush the tonoko on.

Whole guitar coated.

Once dry, hit it lightly with sandpaper, then wipe off with a towel. (Powder flies — I did this outside.)

For the line at the body top-to-side boundary, my plan is to leave that area “unpainted” so the bare wood shows through.

To make it, mask off a 3 mm wide strip with masking tape.

Run the tape along the body sides.

3 mm masking tape applied around the entire perimeter.

Paint prep complete.

Painting

Paint with water-based color, brushed on and worked with rags.

Paint the back of the guitar

I wanted a wine-red, but the wine-red straight out of the can was a bit bright, so I mixed in a touch of black.

Paint the back of the body, the sides, and the neck.

Back painted.

Paint the body face — water-based sunburst

The face of the body — the money shot — gets a sunburst gradient.

Color came out too bright — fail

First attempt — way brighter and poppier than I wanted (see photo).

I almost rolled with it since I’d already done the work, but no — restart.

Once the paint dried I sanded it back off.

Sunburst with water-based paint

For the gradient, I pre-mixed a series of colors from dark (outer edge) to light (center).

Base colors: yellow, wine-red, black.
I mixed them as shown to get a yellow-to-black sequence.

Layer them on starting with the darkest at the edge.

I put the darkest color around the perimeter first, applying with a rag.

Then layer the second-darkest in with the rag.

Blend the boundary by rubbing with a paint-loaded rag.
If you think “uh, it’s already dried, I can’t blend it” — keep rubbing. The boundary really does soften with persistence.

Second color down.

Third color, blending as I go.

Fourth color: orange.

Once the orange went down, I realized — actually, I want to push the wine-red ring closer to the orange center too!

Course-correct — overlay orange on the wine-red ring.

Yes — much better.

Body face paint — done.
We’ll add gloss varnish later.

Paint the headstock

Headstock is solid black.

Mask off the sides,

and lay down black.
Solid color = easy mode.

Headstock paint: done.

“Binding”-style accent line on the body sides

The accent line on the body sides is just bare unpainted wood.

Since I masked it off before painting, peeling the tape should be all I need to do — but…

…some paint did creep under the tape.

Sand off the bleed-through.

Cleaned up.

Color coats are done.
From here, varnish + buffing for gloss.

[Gloss finish] Varnish and buff

Color’s down — now we go after a glassy gloss with varnish and elbow grease.

Varnish, sand, varnish, sand. Repeat.
Step the grit up: #400 to #800 to #1500 to #2000.
Then move to compound: #3000 to #7500 to #9800 — finer and finer.

The gloss you get out of this is genuinely impressive — totally worth doing.

Like the paint, I went water-based for the varnish too.

Brush varnish over the whole guitar.
Keep the fretboard masked.

Wait for it to dry.

Pro tip — to keep the brush from drying out, seal it inside a zipper bag.
That way it’s still soft and ready to use the next day.

Once dry, sand.

Start with #400.
Sand with a polishing motion.

Sanding will leave a chalky white residue (see photo) — don’t worry about it at this stage.

Wipe with a rag.
That’s one cycle. Repeat with finer grits.

Second varnish coat.

Once dry, step up to #800 and sand again.

After #800.
Gloss building. For everyday DIY this would be the end — but this is an electric guitar, so we keep going.

Repeat the varnish cycle, walking up #400, #800, #1500, #2000.

Surface progression at each step.
The bumps fade away and the surface gets glassier.

After topping out sandpaper at #2000, switch to compound.

Compound is a paste with abrasive grit in it.
I used automotive scratch-removal compound.

Step through #3000, #7500, #9800.

Use the included sponge applicator over the whole guitar, then wipe off with a rag.

Surface at #3000, #7500, #9800.
Hard to capture in photos, but the gloss keeps deepening.

Paint and gloss finish — done!

Peel the masking tape off the fretboard.

And there it is — a sunburst-look finish from water-based paint, water-based varnish, brushes, and rags. No spray cans needed.

Back’s wine-red. The compound buff really pays off — beautiful gloss.

The guitar build is in the home stretch — next up: parts.

Finishing (2) — Mounting the parts

Paint’s done.

Time to mount the parts.
So close to finished now!

Tuning pegs

Mount the pegs. (The photo below is what this section ends at.)

The headstock holes are already drilled — so this is just about installing the tuners.

Slip the tuner up through the hole from underneath…

then secure with the nut from the top.
A box-end (socket) wrench lets you tighten without scratching the guitar’s face.
(A regular wrench works too — just be careful around the finish.)

Tighten with the socket wrench.
Don’t crank it for dear life. Trust me — I’ve crushed wood doing that before.

All six nuts tightened.

Drive the included screws on the back to lock them in.

Tuners installed.

Tailpiece — and don’t forget the bridge ground wire

Now the tailpiece.

Tailpiece and its studs.
The studs press into the body, and the tailpiece sits on top of them.

Confirm the position.
Lay the blueprint over the body and check with a ruler.
Tailpiece sits about 40 mm (≈1⅝″) behind the bridge.

With the position confirmed, lay masking tape over the body and mark the position on the tape.

Photo shows the tailpiece position.

Mark each stud-hole position with a marker so we can drill them.

Stud diameter measures 11.5 mm with calipers (the smooth part, not the knurled section).
So I need an 11.5 mm hole — but I don’t own that size of bit…

Bought an 11.5 mm bit — DIY rarely needs one this size.

Stick masking tape over the spot before drilling — you’ll get a clean hole.
Without it the surface can splinter, and you’ll be sad.

Pilot with a small bit first.

Open up to 11.5 mm.

Tailpiece stud holes drilled.

Important: install the bridge ground wire.

“Bridge ground” is a wire that ties the strings to ground.
Without it, the amp gets a constant hum.

You know how the noise drops when you touch the strings on an electric guitar? That’s the bridge-ground path doing its job — your body and the guitar share ground via the strings, and the noise gets shunted away.

It’s called “bridge ground,” but on a Les Paul it usually attaches at the tailpiece.

Run a wire from the tailpiece stud hole through to the back cavity.
Yellow line in the diagram below.

Drill an angled hole from the stud hole through to the back cavity to make that path.

Drill broke through from the stud-hole side as shown.

Feed the ground lead through.
Strip the insulation off the end.

Then press the stud in so it makes contact with the bare wire.

Tap the stud in with a hammer (it’s pretty stiff)…

I put a board between the hammer and the body to protect the finish — a piece of scrap wood works fine too.

Both tailpiece studs in.

Add the included screws…

and slide the tailpiece on.

Tailpiece — installed.

Bridge

Onto another critical part — the bridge.

The bridge for this build.

To get the bridge in the right spot, I temporarily strung the 1st and 6th strings and tuned them — letting the actual notes pin down the position.

Drop the nut on temporarily for this.

Place the nut and string the 1st and 6th strings.

Bridge is just sitting in place — strings then carry on through to the tailpiece.
Design scale length: 25″ (635 mm) for the 1st, +4 mm for the 6th = 639 mm. Place the bridge so those values land where they should.

* Set the saddles to their middle position.

From here, find the bridge position where both standard tuning and octave (intonation) tuning agree on the 1st and 6th strings.

Octave tuning is covered in detail in the next section (“Final adjustments — Intonation”), so apologies for the order, but flip ahead for the procedure.

At the position where intonation lines up, the 1st-string scale length comes out close to the design value of 635 mm.
The 6th lands roughly 4 mm behind, near 639 mm.

To lock in this position, mark the bridge stud-hole locations.

The pen tip didn’t quite reach, so I marked with a thin drill bit.

Hole positions marked.

The bridge studs measure roughly the same as the tailpiece studs (11.6 mm).

Pilot with a small bit first.

Lay masking tape over the spot to prevent splintering, then drill 11.5 mm — same as the tailpiece holes.

Hammer the studs in.

Same finish-protection trick — slot a piece of scrap between the hammer and the body.

Bridge studs in.

Add the height-adjustment thumbwheels…

then drop the bridge on.

Bridge: installed.

Conductive shielding paint for noise control

Brush conductive shielding paint into the pot and pickup cavities.

Most production guitars have this.
It cuts the kind of buzzing hum that picks up off radios, fluorescent lights, etc.

One catch — just painting it isn’t enough. It has to be tied to ground.

Paint the back-cavity that holds the pots and wiring.
Multiple coats and a thick layer is best.

Painted.

Same paint inside the pickup cavities.

<Important>
The shielding paint is on, but at this point it’s not doing anything yet.
You absolutely have to tie it to ground.
See the “Mounting the pickups” section below.

Output jack

Mount the jack the cable plugs into.

This is the plate that holds the jack:

And here’s the jack itself.

Screw the jack plate to the body.
I held it temporarily with masking tape first.

Drive the screws.
Pre-drill pilot holes first — way smoother.

Jack plate mounted.

Now the jack — solder a signal wire and a ground wire to it.

Picked up some hookup wire at the home center.

Soldering to the jack.
That tool in the photo is a “helping hands” / soldering stand.
(Not strictly required, but it makes solder work dramatically easier.)

Wires soldered to the jack.

Push it through the jack-plate hole from the back…

then secure with the nut from the front.

Jack — installed.

Mounting the pickups

Time to mount the pickups.

Pickups are the area you most want shielded from noise.
We painted shielding paint earlier, but right now it’s electrically floating — let’s connect the pickup cavity to ground.

[Important] Tie the pickup cavity shielding to ground

Painting on the conductive paint effectively wraps the blue area below in a metal “shield.”
But — on its own, it doesn’t actually shield anything!

Reason: the shield isn’t connected to ground.

The mechanism is — noise (changing electric fields) induces charge on the shield, and that charge flows away to ground, so it doesn’t get into the wires inside.
For that to work, the shield must be tied to ground.
[Don’t care about the why? Skip ahead — just take this as a rule.]

To do: connect the blue area below to a ground wire.

The trick I used: solder a metal washer to a wire, then screw the washer down inside the cavity.
(The other end of the wire ties to the jack’s ground.)

Solder washer to wire.

Screw it down inside the pickup cavity.

Once the other end of this wire reaches the jack’s ground, the cavity shielding is properly grounded and actually shields.

Pickup mounting prep — done.

Mounting the pickups

Now actually mount the pickups.

The pickups I bought.
“NECK” goes in the front (neck) position, “BRIDGE” in the rear.

The data sheet says to short the red and white leads together — solder their tips, then wrap them in tape for insulation.

The pickup doesn’t bolt directly to the body — it hangs from the “escutcheon” (the surrounding ring/frame).
Pick an escutcheon that fits your pickup size.

As shown, run the included escutcheon screws through springs, then through the screw holes on either side of the pickup.
That suspends the pickup from the escutcheon.

Then mount the escutcheon (with the pickup hanging from it) onto the body face.

Drop the pickup into the cavity…

Screw the escutcheon down.

Same routine for the rear pickup.

Pickups: installed.

The two screws on each escutcheon adjust pickup height — fine-tune later once everything’s together.

Knobs, switch, and wiring

I went with a Les Paul-style control layout.

For the wiring I followed online references.
The schematic below is a Les Paul wiring diagram from Guitarworks (a Japanese guitar parts shop).
This is what we’re wiring to.

For the volume / tone pots, the points circled red below get soldered to the back of the pot housing. (The pot back is then tied to the ground network.)

* Solder doesn’t bond easily to the pot housing, so it’s totally fine to skip the pot-back joint and instead jumper the lugs together with a piece of wire. (Honestly often easier.)

The pot back has a lot of mass and sucks heat away from the soldering iron, so add some flux — solder will flow much better.
Soldered up like this:

For mounting, the little anti-rotation tab in the next photo gets in the way — break it off with pliers.

Time to seat the pots — but the bushing collar is wider than the hole I’d drilled, so I widened the hole at the surface (just the surface, no need to go through).

Pot fits.

Add washer + nut on the front side and tighten.

Same install for the volume and tone pots.

Pickup selector switch goes in the same way.

With the pots mounted, time to wire it all up.

Solder according to the wiring diagram from earlier.

About the two capacitors circled red above — Les Paul mod culture says you should swap them for “Orange Drop” film caps…
but they’re pricey.
The voltage rating is 600 V — way overkill for the tiny signal levels in an electric guitar.
I went with cheap regular film caps instead.

Soldered up like this.

From the front it looks like this.

Push the volume and tone knobs onto the shafts.

Just push them on.

Phew — electronics: done.

Mounting the nut and shaping the slots

Mount the nut.
Glued in with CA glue.

Press it tight against the fretboard side and glue down.

The nut is glued, but the string slots come too shallow from the factory — open them up with a nut file.

A nut file is a guitar-specific tool — comes in widths to match each string’s gauge.

* The slot should slope so it’s higher on the fretboard side and lower on the headstock side.
File on a slight downward angle, like in the photo.

Filing in progress.

How deep should the slots be?

I saw a rule of thumb online — “fret the 3rd fret, and there should be ~0.2 mm clearance between the string and the 1st fret.”
Cut too deep and you’ll get fret buzz, and recovery means a new nut, so err shallow first, then fine-tune for playability after the build is done.

Nut: installed.

Strap pins and back cover

The big parts are done — but resist the urge to rush, and finish the strap pins and the back cover.

Mounting the strap pins

The pins that hold the strap on.
Anyone who’s made it past everything earlier in this article won’t break a sweat here.

Heads up: don’t drive the included screw straight in or the wood may split. Pre-drill a pilot hole.

Pilot with a 3 mm bit.

Same on the front side.

Drive in the strap pins.

Strap pins: installed.

Back cover

The back-cavity (with all the pots in it) is wide open — let’s add a cover.
I cut a piece of 0.5 mm aluminum sheet from the home center.
(Plastic / acrylic might be even easier to work with.)

Cut the cover shape out of the blueprint and trace it onto the aluminum with a marker.

Cut with metal shears.

Thin aluminum cuts easily.
If you don’t have shears, go with wood or acrylic instead of aluminum.

Test-fit on the back cavity.

I want to be able to take the cover off and put it back on, so I drove threaded inserts (M4) into the body.
Bought 4 mm-thread inserts at the home center.

Per the instructions, drill 6 mm pilot holes.

Three pilot holes (locations shown).

Hammer the inserts down into the holes.
Hitting them straight with a hammer worried me — I didn’t want to mar the finish.

So I put a screw on top and hammered through that.

Inserts driven home.

Drill matching holes in the cover for the screws.
Center-punch first, then drill (with a metal-cutting bit).

Deburr the cut edges of the aluminum with a file.

Set it onto the back of the body,

and screw it down.

Nice work!

The long road of the build is essentially over — only setup and adjustment left.

Finishing (3) — Setup & adjustment, and finally — done!

Every step of the build and parts mounting is now complete.

Almost there.

Setup

Tweak the guitar so it plays well.
A rough first pass here, then fine-tune as you actually play.

String height (action)

Too high — hard to play. Too low — you get fret buzz.

Bridge height

Spin the thumbwheels under the bridge to raise / lower it.
Slack the strings off slightly before turning.

Final-tune the nut slot depth

Now do the final pass on the nut slot depth from the previous section.

Truss rod

This adjusts neck relief.
Common rule of thumb: hold down both the 1st and last frets simultaneously, and the gap between the string and the fret around the middle (~12th fret) should be about the thickness of a postcard.

Turn the spot circled in the photo with a hex key to dial in relief.

Intonation

Re-do intonation now that everything’s in place.

What is intonation?

By the geometry of the guitar, “you can tune the open strings perfectly and still have fretted notes go sharp or flat.”
Compensating for that by moving the saddle forward / back to fine-tune string length is what intonation tuning is.

Procedure: either
1. Tune so that the fretted note at the 12th fret is exactly one octave above the open string,
or
2. Match the fretted note at the 12th fret to the harmonic at the 12th fret.

That’s how you set string length.
Personally I don’t bother with the harmonic — just use a tuner and method 1 (compare open vs. 12th fret).

How to do intonation

Step 1: Tune the open strings.
Tune each open string accurately as usual.

Step 2: Check the fretted 12th-fret note.
Press down the 12th fret normally, pluck, and read the tuner.
(You can also compare against the 12th-fret harmonic.)

Step 3: Move the saddle.
Use the tuner reading to decide which way:

12th-fret note	Adjustment
Flat (low)	Move saddle toward the neck (shorten string)
Sharp (high)	Move saddle away from the neck (lengthen string)

Pickup height

Adjust pickup height with the screws shown in the photo.
(Bonus of building it yourself — you actually understand how the mechanism works.)

For pickup height, just play and tweak by ear.

Done!

Finished — finally!!

One-of-a-kind original guitar — born.

The look is mostly Les Paul-based.
Body thickness ended up at ~45 mm (≈1¾″) — a thickness I personally find comfortable to play.
Weighed it though — 4.3 kg, heavier than I expected.

Playability is solid — honestly, I think it stacks up against a factory guitar.

The paint job came out exactly the way I’d hoped.

Maybe a Stratocaster type next?

Did your guitar come out OK?

It’s a real journey — but the feeling when it’s finally done is like nothing else.
Hope this site helped on your own DIY-guitar adventure.

There are still plenty of rough edges on this site, so I’ll keep updating as I go.
See you around!

Missed the planning stage, or want to revisit the drawings? Head back to Part 1: Planning & Design. And if you’d like to see how a from-scratch build looks without the beginner scaffolding, there’s my PRS-style build log too.