Sunday I went to my 4th of 5th guitar building class. As I stated in my previous post, I did a lot of pre-work so felt that I would be ahead of the game and that turned out to be true.
I discussed a few minor imperfections with Eli, my instructor and he helped me try to repair these areas. One was a bit of tear-out created during the scraping process. The tear-out happened on the back which is made from a veneer product. We used a wood filler/putty and tinted it to match the veneer. Here is a picture of the pre-fix. The post fix makes it nearly invisible.
Next we put the inlay in on the 12th fret and the inlay dots on the various fret including on the side of the fretboard. It turned out quite well as you can see from the picture below (this is before sanding and polishing the fretboard).
Next was sanding and polishing the fretboard. This took the longest as we were trying to get a very flat surface between the nut and past the 12th fret (beyond the 12th fret wasn’t nearly as critical for playing though I got to the 14th fret before the fretboard thinned out). The polishing was amazing and got a very smooth and shiny fretboard. Next was installing the fret wires into the fret slots. I bent one and positioned another incorrectly but with a little work, this all resolved itself. Here is a shot of the process.
The last step was to attach the neck and position the bridge and saddle. I needed to mark the position and then put some blue tape down so that the guitar body is ready for finishing. I’ve ordered several different shellac flakes and some pore filler that should arrive in the next few days. Here are a few shots of the positioning.
I’m going to use some of the burl stock that I used for the head stock to create a cover for the truss rod adjustment nut and also to cover the heal of the neck base giving a little additional character. We have 2 weeks before our next class so I need to get the body (and preferably the neck too) finished before the next class. After the body is finished, I also need to glue the bridge down (Eli loaned me the bridge clamp). That will leave the last class to attaching the hardware and the strings and then tuning up the guitar for play of strings, sound, straightness of neck and any other last minute adjustments.
And lastly, Eli was proud of the work his students were doing and showed off my head stock and other elements of my guitar and my fellow student’s guitar. Here is a picture of Eli capturing the moment.
UPDATE: When I got home from this class, I found the heal of the neck was cracked. I glued and clamped it up. I’m a bit surprised as I didn’t see this crack when I left. I’m pretty sure the glue up will leave it in good shape.
