Time for my next project... :D

This week, now that the body pieces are sanded to rough thickness, we position the profiles of each part and then decide on our edge jointing for the bookmatches. Then a little edge planing and some glue-up. After that, i shape the sides and the top and back see some drum sanding to final thickness. I think we might be ready for bracing soon!

 
In this episode it's all about bracing. Now that the front, back and sides are shaped, we can focus on the structure inside the body. I have a nice piece of sitka spruce that's perfect for this and I set about getting the absolute most out of it as I can. Thanks for watching!




 
Unsure if ya'll are bored with this already but here's this week's installment ...

This week, I start out with deciding whether to radius the top or not, thanks to a very good comment by Gabriel Hoffman - http://www.hoffmanguitars.com/ -- and explain my reasoning for the direction i chose to go. Then we set about doing the radiusing and then cutting the main joinery for the braces. It's starting to look like the inside of a guitar!

 
In this episode, it's time for a couple jigs. We start out making up a slab that will be used for an outer mold jig. In the process, we have a little hiccup with the vacuum press. While that's cooking, we do up a new fretboard radiusing slab since I sold the last one. After that, the mold parts are cut and assembled into a decent shop-made clamping rig. Thanks for watching!




 
Looking good. What kind of 2 sided tape are you using on the cnc? Carpet tape?

Pretty soon you'll have the shop wall full of jigs.
IMG_0965.jpg

Got any plans to build a guitar humidor/display case at some point?
 
Yep - carpet tape - i found a bulk of a dozen or so rolls on ebay a while back. I still have like 8 or 10 rolls left. It's skookum stuff!

Yep - i'm getting there already - two drawers full just for the 335 :p

I haven't planned on making display cases yet - but it's not outside the realm of possibility. I would like to hang a bunch on the walls of my game/music room some day, though.
 
This episode is a tough one. I need to make some final decisions before much more progress can be made. I still haven't decided on binding or rosette or even fretboard, headstock or bridge species. This episode shows a little of that process (about 10% of the actual agony, lol). But in the end some decisions get made and then I start focusing on the neck.

Info on Ziricote: http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/zircote.htm

Thanks for watching!

 
This week the first order of business is fixing that mistake from last week. Oops. After that, I set about making up the blanks for the rosewood fretboard, headstock plate and bridge. I found the really dense rosewood resawed so well, I could almost just set the fence to final dimension and run it. Very little drum sanding necessary... That was pretty cool.




 
This week is a little random - first, a fixture for the CNC to hold fretboards consistently to be slotted. This worked out really well and now I'll be able to repeatably place fretboards in the right location for slotting and other cuts. It's really going to help with all future fretboards. Then after that, I decided to take a shot at making my own rosette. This was probably the most difficult way to go about it, too - we're experimenting a little bit so hopefully it turns out okay.




 
First, a few toys come in and we take a quick glance at those. Then it's time to start getting neck ready for the truss rod. Once that's done, I decide to take a stab at making some rosewood binding. Finally, we get the wings for the headstock glued on as well.




Thanks for watching!




 
This week, it's all about the fretboard. I install and configure the fret slotting rig onto the CNC and cut the slots - I really need to modify that code to generate arched slots one of these days. Once slotted, I finally decided on an inlay for the fret markers and I cut pockets for those. After that, it's back to the bench for radiusing and gluing in the inlays... oh, except......

 
I liked this episode a lot. First, I take care of the oops on the first fretboard and make a new one the right way. After that, I set about polishing that thing to a very high gloss. The natural oils in the rosewood really burnish nicely. Then i turn my attention to that rosette once again. I finally got in the purfling so I could get the inlay mounted. Good progress in this one!

Thanks for watching!



 
This one has its ups and downs for sure! First, we check out the results of the rosette inlay and scrape everything flush. Sound hole gets cut and we turn our attention to the back. Ugh. Another speed bump. Once past it, I set about gluing the bracing to the top and back. Things are moving along!

Thanks for watching!


 
With the bracing glued on, it's time to set about the task of getting them shaped. A few lessons were learned here - scallop the ends early, that makes things easier. Glue them on in stages if you can - shape the X braces before you glue on the others so they aren't in the way. Overall, they came out great - no failures!

Thanks for watching!

 
Now that we have a side bending machine, guess what time it is? Bending time! It goes off pretty well without much of a hitch. After they're bent, I get right to gluing in the heel and neck blocks. I also start getting the last of the bracing and reinforcing strips shaped for the top and back. Pretty good episode - major progress made!

 
This week, we return from the neck/heel block glue up and it's time to put the kerfing on both sides of the body. We also get the last few bits of bracing fitted and glued on to the top and back. There's also a little segment where I show a torch-heated branding iron in use to give a sense of how much actual time it takes to heat one up. After all that, we sacrifice my botched fretboard from earlier to make a bridge plate which comes out really nice. We're almost ready to make a box!





Thanks for watching!



 
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