Electric Guitar build Part 1

Recently I started getting into woodworking and been doing a couple of projects. Mainly I've been doing small things from end grain cutting boards, yard dice, and even bigger projects like toy/blanket chests.  One thing I've always wanted to make was my own electric guitar, or any type of guitar in fact.  I really wanted to make an acoustic guitar but that process is way more complicated and in depth than its electric counterpart, maybe a ukulele will be in the works later down the road.

I decided to document the process of me trying to build my first custom guitar.  After hours and hours of online research, from message boards to youtube to advice from friends that have gone through the process I've finally started the endeavor of building an electric guitar.

First I started the process by choosing the wood that I would be using, after a trip to my local exotic hardwoods store I decided on a two tone guitar style with basswood and black walnut.

Here you can see the rough piece of basswood and behind it the black walnut

Had rip the pieces to size I'm gonna make the guitar an inch and half thick, so I had to rough cut to a little bit bigger than that to leave some room for sanding and planing. Ran it through my table saw but the piece was too big to rip it completely through so I ran it once then had to flip it over to finish the cut on the table saw. 

Here you can see I've already cut the pieces to the right length and depth. I put them together to see how I wanted to glue them up, I first I wanted to put 2 smaller dark walnut stripes instead of one big one down the middle but one I mocked it up I liked the one big strip down the middle more. 

Now it was time for some gluing, applied a generous amount of glue on the joining sides. Type of glue I'm using on this build is Titebond Type 2.

Time to clamp it together, using 7 clamps here

After about 14 hours of clamping, usually I'd leave it overnight but its been so hot the glue sets up really fast.  at this point its time to start planing, you can use and electric planer or an electric hand planer, I don't have a table top planer, but I do have the other two, I decided to use the hand planer to plane both sides. Hand planing was new to me so I had to take my time to fine tune the planer but after that was done it was easy.

After planing both sides with the hand planer, it was type for some sanding, I started with 80 grit on the hand held belt sander, it made quick work of smoothing everything down.

The next type of sanding I decided to do some hand sanding with some 150, then to 220 grit sand paper. This wont be the final sanding, I still have tons of sanding left. 

To make things easier I'm gonna be using my Les Paul as a template for my new guitar.  Its gonna be a modified version of Les Paul/SG/ES line of guitars. First I traced the whole body onto the blank. 

Next I flipped the guitar over because I wanted the cut out or horns on both sides.

I wanted the guitar to have a "Fatter" look to it so I made the body a little bit shorter long wise.

Here is what the guitar looks like after the modifications to the original Les Paul. 

Hard to see in the picture but you can see where I measured and drew where I'm gonna route out for the neck socket, I'll be using a bolt on neck for the guitar. 

Here is the neck I'm gonna be using, I'm recycling a lot of the parts off my old Les Paul.  Most people opt for using a pre-made neck, mainly because the spacing for the frets can be messed up so easily and only the slightest mistake can lead to a permanent un-tuned guitar. I'm gonna sand the neck down to bare wood, right now it a glossy black. 

And lastly you can see here at what its sorta gonna look like once its done.

And that was my first day on making the my guitar! stay tuned for more updates on the progress!