The amp circuit is this:
http://www.runoffgroove.com/ruby.html
The fret wire is normal fret wire, from stew mac. I have a fret saw for making the slots. Still, it's hard to make them straight. Rather than trying to do complex math to figure out where the frets go, I just save that part for last, put the strings on, and use a tuner and a fret with the tang sanded off to find where the notes go, mark them in pencil, take the strings off and cut the slots.
The part that took the longest was all the sanding, to smooth out all the rough jigsaw edges. To get the right proportions and shape, I downloaded a picture of a Gibson LP and printed it out to exactly half size of a real one. Then I cut that out and traced it onto the wood. I'm making three, so for the first stages (cutting, sanding) I did them all together, but my nephew's birthday was approaching, so I focused on his. It's hard to say how much time I put into it... it was quite a bit. Business was a bit slow for a while so I was able to do more work on these than I could otherwise. Originally I was planning to have two pickups on each with a switch, and volume and tone controls, but decided that was overkill for a kiddie guitar. Would have been cool, though, but I just didn't have the time. Maybe for my daughter's... her birthday's still pretty far off and she's the youngest of the three. I did all the amp circuits at the same time, so that will speed things up a bit. My niece's birthday is in a couple weeks... I've got a lot of work to do. And business has picked up, now too... so I'm going to be busy.
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