Tools used to perform this retrofit: The Gibson Les Paul Handbook by Paul Balmer ($16.50 from Amazon) Dremel™ rotary tool (grinding, fret polishing) Screwdriver with hex head socket, multiple tips stored inside Hex bit for the above, to use sockets Deep 1/4" socket, for jack and pot nuts Narrow walled 5/16" socket, for truss rod adjustment Small Phillips and Standard tip jeweler's screwdrivers Wire snips and needle-nosed pliers Multimeter, digital auto range ($13 on eBay) Pair of alligator clip leads Micrometer, with digital readout ($12 on eBay) X-Acto™ knife Small pistol-grip battery-powered drill with hex head socket Turbo Tune string winder, pulls apart for drill use ($8 from Stew-Mac) Helping Hands clips w/ lighted magnifier and soldering station 25 Watt soldering iron (pen type), chisel tip Desoldering bulb, solder wick for cleanup Solder, 60/40 resin core Wire strippers Bright halogen desk lamp Acrylic ruler with metal straightedge to check fret level (not shown) Also essential: Besides a few cleaning/polishing products, three large thick bath towels to lay flat or roll up, to both support and protect the guitar. Don't let a fear of soldering prevent you from doing your own guitar work. If you can play guitar, you already have more than enough dexterity to do it. Basic instructions and how-to videos are all over the Web; spend five minutes to learn and five minutes to practice, and you'll have it down well enough. Just remember: 1. Heat the part, not the solder; apply solder to the part, not the tip. 2. Don't get the parts too hot. That can melt insulation or fry a capacitor (I've 'cooked' a few pots and ruined them from excessive heating after lots of pickup swapping). Using hemostats or aluminum heat sink clips (even larger alligator clips) can keep things from overheating. ...

The plans were to create brass railing that were .250" thick with rabbeted joints at the the corners. Since I had no milling machine to cut rabbets into the brass stock, I had no choice but to stack two .125" thick pieces on top of each other to form the rabbet. The first step in manufacturing the rails requires raw brass bar stock. The final dimensions call for .250x.750" cross-sectional so I used .125"x.750" brass bar stock so I could stack two together. I cut the pieces to the proper length, making sure to measure carefully with layout lines utilizing a proper pair of calipers (In this case, Mitutoyo digimatics with carbide gaging faces, which doubles up as a transfer scribe very nicely). After squaring up the ends with a machinist level and gentle material removal and angular correction using hand files(!), I scribe some lines to lay out the center point for drilling the hole for #10-32 threaded rod. Oddly enough #10-32 is supposed to have a minimum major diameter of .1831" for class 2A and I was getting .181 -/+ .001" so it seems to be generic threaded rod with no spec ratings. I ended up using a 3/16" drill that drilled slightly oversized to .189". Since this is all hand fitted and eyeballed with the most crude of tools, the hole location has to be fairly precise for everything to fit together tightly and snug. It took a while to check fit and make necessary adjustments.