December 13, 2010

Apprentice Devin is taking 3 weeks off to visit family and still needs around 30 hours of shop time to fulfill his apprentice hours.  We’re making good progress and there should be enough time to finish this guitar in his remaining time.

The purple heart we originally selected to use to bind the body is too brittle and came out of the bender unusable.  We changed to ebony for binding, loaded it up in the bender and left to cool while we routed the channels for binding and purfling for the top.

101213channel

The purfling, a brown/black/white ladder was also bent along with the binding.  It came out a wee bit wrinkled.  This fiber laminate is probably best hand bent.  We removed the wrinkled area and inserted a fresh piece which butts up invisibly.

101213purfling