Guitar 0208 – Late April 2008
April 16, 2008
Spent considerable time planing, filing, chiseling, and sanding the top braces. I recovered sufficiently from my over sawing the braces. Still, there remain some hard angle edges in the brace scallops, and the X brace internal scallop, even though I started from scratch, came in nicely, to about a .4″ depth. This depth may not be enough, but I still have the opportunity to deepen them. I also gouged the top inside several times when chiseling for rounding in the areas where I could not get my finger plane. Not deep enough to cause damage, but cosmetically disturbing.
I installed the bridge plate, and next I will 220 sand all the braces and the the spruce top inside to make real pretty before gluing on the top. I also need to clean up after my epoxy (mixed with mahogany dust) of the back brace entries into the kerfing. I did the epoxy to clean up after the too large slots I put in for the bracing. I shouldn’t have to do this if I slot accurately next time. I also need to round file a slot in the brace between the large brace and the neck block to accommodate a truss rod wrench.
April 26, 2008
Posting today to catch up on recent work done since mid-April. After gluing on back and top used router with flush bit to trim back to sides.
Relieved top and side material to expose tenon slot for neck. It appears that I will only need to take a little out of the slot to ensure the tenon fits deep enough to align top of neck with top of top.
Used a scraper to bring top and back down flush with sides in preparation for routing binding channels.
Carefully tested router channels for depth and height on scrap. Don’t have the right bearing diameter for good channel for purfling. Had to use a smaller one with two layers of binding tape applied to the outside of the bearing to make it larger in diameter. Even then I found the channel to be a skosh to deep. Given the glue thickness, it should come out OK.
Glued down one continuous BWB purfling in top channel, then hurried like hell to glue and bind the maple binding. The binding tape held well, had to do a lot of glue squeeze out cleanup, but in the end there are still minor gaps (and I mean minor) between binding and body which may need some gap filling before finishing.
Tomorrow, it’s channel and bind the back.
tom on 25 Apr 2008 at 6:37 pm #
yo….. your bloggin! I’m lovin blogs these days & your gonna have to keep building guitars so that you can keep blogging. Reading about all the little things you have to do right is making the reality of my dreams of building guitars kick in. I don’t think I have the patience… Can’t wait to hear the OM, I tried #1 when you were in India and it sounded great!
-tom
Cyndy on 27 Apr 2008 at 3:49 pm #
Looks like you are having fun. I totally understand the benefits and losing yourself in the process of the making of things with your hands. I haven’t a clue what it is you are talking about though when you explain your tools and techniques. I’m looking forward to the education.
I blog every so often, but haven’t had much to say lately. I mostly tell stories. If you are interested, you can read my blog at the website I listed.
Bring a guitar with you in May. I’d love to see what you’ve made, and you can explain about setting things too deep and marshmallow clamps and gluing wet wood.
xoxo
C.