sMg Guitars

March 22, 2009

I’ve been paying most of my building attention to the new Parlor, which has, up until today, been for ME.  But as I progress and show it off to Carol, she becomes more and more covetous (one having covet).  She has been picking up guitars (of which there are a few around the house) and playing.  I haven’t heard her play in years, and it’s (dare I say) cute.  She likes the parlor size, and now she’s enamoured with the flavor of the parlor I’m building.  She wants it to be hers, and I’m more than happy to make it so.  Plus, she claims I can play it whenever I want to, so it’s a double bonus.  First, I make my wife happy, and second, I still in almost every way, have my personal parlor.  Oh me, life is beautiful.

I installed the top binding/purfling and the sycamore (maple relative) headstock veneer.  I always thought I would add some red to the binding, headstock and butt graft, but the more I looked at the guitar with the blonde binding, headstock and graft, the better I liked the contrast between the koa/mahogany and the accented binding.  I’m going to keep it white.  And, I’m going to add  some flair (oooh, I hate that word) by trimming out the headstock with some purfling which was originally going to be the back center strip.

I declined from inserting a back center strip to give the back a full koa treatment without any interference.  I will decorate with purfling around the top and back and (a recent decision) the headstock.

It was after I installed the top binding and purfling that I started thinking about the back purfling and headstock purfling.  I did the headstock, took a close look, and decided that the back will also get the purfling, and the maple/sycamore will remain unstained.

The back will remain “clean”, yet will have the same binding and purfling treatment as the top.

I worked carefully to get the purfling on the headstock aligned and bent properly, and I think it turned out nicely.  I’m a little concerned about the edges being of pliable material, but I’ve coated in CA glue to give it some strength/substance, and hopefully the combination of this and the lacquer will give it sufficient hardness and strength (but only results will tell).

So here it is in its prelim form, with a hint of what it might look like when finished.