sMg Guitars

August 21, 2009

I started construction in earnest today on guitar 905.  This is the walnut OM for John.  I’ve got the drum sander working to perfection and it is cranking out some very nice thickness sanded side plates.  After sanding the side plates down to around .110″ I set up the bender for the OM shape and put the first side in.  It is now sitting until tomorrow when I’ll bend side 2.

The back will go into the thickness sander tomorrow.  It’s a really nice piece of claro walnut with lots of flame.

The top is a very impressive sitka spruce with straight tight grain.  Even before planing, it has a rich tone.  I’ll run it through the planer to bring it down to thickness.

It already has a nice amber color, so may not need much if any tinting to give it that warm old look.

John is still deciding on the fret markers and is tending toward simple.  From simplest to less simple, here are some options:

Using 3mm paua dots only:

3mm paua dots only, doubled up on frets 5 and 12:

Doubled up dots replaced with paua notched diamonds:

Each photo also shows the ivroid strip which will bind the fretboard.  Note that this fretboard has not been tapered yet.