sMg Guitars

May 20, 2008

Decided to rout out a wee bit of the lacewood up to where it meets the BWB, or more accurately, where it didn’t meet the BWB. Used a 1/32″ downward spiral bit and went around twice, adjusting the diameter a skosh to open a channel to accept a two-ply maple binding strip. Aside from the fact that I almost cut through the top, and I broke off the spiral cut bit, I glued in the maple, trimmed it down, and the the end result is visually much nicer than the ragged gaps from the original lacewood BWB inlay.

I cut down the unradiussed maple fretboard to the dimensions in the plans, planed the sides smooth, then relieved a small amount on each side on the band saw to allow for the attachment of rosewood binding. After planing the resawn fretboard and dry fitting the rosewood binding to the fretboard, the final dimensions were a wee bit under the plan dimensions of 43mm at the nut and 59mm at the soundhole end of the fretboard. I always seem to miss the mark on dimensioning either on the too small side (there’s no going back on this one) or way too proud (which requires massive sanding to bring down to size). Ideally, in the future, all my cuts will result a wee bit proud, requiring minimal sanding to arrive at the final dimension. I think this is like practicing a lick over and over again until you have it nailed.