Mahogany and Rosewood - check!

Finally! I managed to track down a reasonable amount of mahogany. Way back, in the back store-room, right back in the corner under a good few tons of other wood, I tracked her down - a 1500 x 350 x 50mm. It took some rearranging of the entire store-room, but it was done, and after all that I still had the nerve to bitch and moan about the price. Eventually I got it for R300 flat. If you want to dish it out, make sure you can take it, because now they refuse to plain and cut to for me.

No problem... I took it back to the people I originally went to, and although I didn't buy it from them, they are cutting it for me as I type this. They also got me a very interesting piece of rosewood for the fingerboard, and charged me R100 flat for the rosewood and the cutting of the mahogany. (Some other guy quoted me R240 to do the plaining and cutting - fuck that for a laugh...) I'll get one body and four necks out of this mahogany, and the waste will be just less than enough for another body... pity really. The rosewood is technically speaking enough for two fingerboards, but as luck would have it, it has a beautiful figure running down the center of it, which will be lost if I cut out two - half of the figure on one fingerboard and half on the other - so I'm just going to let rip and cut out the center piece and waste the edges... another pity really.

All in all - I got all my mahogany and the rosewood for R400 - cut and plained - with three necks to sell. Not to bad. I could probably sell the three extra necks for R100 each, which means I would have gotten my wood for free... bargain!

The 450 x 350 x 45mm Mahogany Body

The body template fits nicely on top - with about 5mm all round to spare.

The body has a nice curl in the grain right about where the cover for the control cavity would be, but I will turn it around to try and save it. Would be silly to cover that up with a maple top - nice as the maple is - but luckily I'm spoiled for choice, and can use both side of the mahogany for the back. Both sides came out well. A few plaining marks, but thats why I left it a bit thick - to sand it off.

Enough mahogany for four necks. The little blocks on top are to be glued on to make space for the 16 degree angle in the headstock.

How it should be glued up...

...and the reality - my clamps are a few millimeters to small... Fuck!

The necks are fine, with no real problems, besides the fact that I got four of them. I'll pick out the best one, and sell the rest. Only real problem is that my clamps won't fit the combined 90mm of the two bits to glue up! I would have to get new clamps anyway to glue the top to the body later, so I'll make sure I get nice big ones.

The rosewood fingerboard, on top of the mahogany necks.

A piece of off-cut rosewood with a splash of teak stain on it.

A piece of Kiaat that I'm still thinking about using.

The rosewood I got for the fingerboard is way to long, but that means I can pick the nicest part, and avoid some of the little cracks in it. The picture does not do the color of it any justice - it's almost orange, and very similar in color to the mahogany. Apparently the term "rosewood" refers to a number of species, all with the same qualities. This is obviously not the dark Brazilian rosewood used on the original 58's, but I might stain it a little darker. Another option I have, is to use a piece of kiaat for the fingerboard - this I got for free as some sort of "ass-hole tax" when they didn't want to plain and cut my mahogany. It's more of a darker brown like the typical Brazilian rosewood fingerboards, but I think the actual rosewood I got - funny color and all - will match nicely with the final color of the sunburst and the rest of the guitar. I'll see what happens later...

The maple is still a huge pain in the ass. I can get maple, no problem, but the flames are lacking. Truth be told, only about 10-15% of the 1958 Pauls came out with any significant flaming, and it was a pot-luck situation as to how much flame you would get if you bought a guitar. Nowadays, the tops are specifically sourced to provide these flames. So... I'm considering just getting a nice piece of maple, with all the little bit of flame I can get, and let it be what it is. Obviously flames would be nice, but a lack of flames does not take away anything from the "authenticity" of my replica - if you think "Les Paul", you think "flames under a Sunburst" though... Decisions, decisions... I suppose I could look again on e-bay or other online sources, but I like to touch and smell wood when I buy it - buying wood online is like ordering a Russian by mail...