guitar builds 10 - 13

Apologies for leaving you hanging for a while. We had a death in the family and that has taken over my life for the last 6 weeks. So here's a mini report of the last 4 sessions.

Session 10 - routed the cavities for the pots to go in the upper and lower bouts of the body.
Session 11 - routed channels from pot cavities to cone chamber for wiring, drilled hole for jack socket and drilled soundholes in back of body. made small blocks and glued them in the cone recess to support it at the correct height.
Session 12 - Fine sanded neck and body then rubbed thinned down nitro-cellulose lacquer into body (two coats to seal it) and about 6 coats on the bak of neck and headstock. Fine wire wool brought the neck up as smooth as a baby's bum - nah smoother.

Session 13 - one of the scariest - spray painting the body and headstock front. About 10 coast at 15 minutes intervals to build up a decent thickness. I was worried about my crappy spraying techinique causing nasty runs on the guitar and sure enough I managed it. Martin assured me it wasn't a problem as we'll rub it down flat before finally polishing it to a high gloss. seems hard to believe it possible but I've seen his finished results and have confidence it will all be fine.

guitar build session 9

Missed another week but last wednesday I was back in the workshop with Martin my luthier/tutor. More neck work. A slight radius was sanded on the fretboard surface. Next, the frets. Starting at the body end of the neck I cut pieces of fretwire allowing a couple of mm overhang. The pre-slotted slots were gently cleaned of sawdust with a fine saw blade. The fretwire was gentyl presses into the slot. Using a small hammer head as a sort of punch, with masking tape to cushion it, using a mallet, the frets were tapped into place starting at one end and working across the face to the other end then the surplus snipped off. The ends of the frets are prevented from springing up with a drop of superglue on the them which sort of gets sucked into the slot. The hammer head was used to apply pressure for about 30 seconds until the glue had set. When all fitted, a file was used to smooth the ends flush with the neck edge. Then running the file lengthways at an angle, a bevel was put on them. The rest of the session was used to further shape the back of the headstock. Photos to come later.

guitar build session 8

Missed a week of building last week. This week it was all on the neck again. Final filing of neck back profile and sanding to a nice finish. Drilled out holes and installed the mother of pearl fret marker dots and edge dots. Drilled out holes for machine heads. Still a fair bit to do but I put the body and neck lossley together so I could see what it's looking like. Starting to get exciting now.

guitar build session 6

All about the neck this week. First job was to attach headstock template, then using a rasp bit in a table mounted router, to route the shape of the headstock around it. Then attach a straight edge template along one side of the neck and route that down to size, same with the other edge. Then some real hard work. To shape the back of the angled headstock roughly, I used a gouge chisel to chop away the surplus, then took it down to almost final shape using a hand rasp. Next we took a lot of the surplus off the back of the neck with an electric planer.

Next job was to route a narrow channel for the truss rod. Just wide and deep enough to take it with very little space around it. We put in the dual action rod then glued and clamped the fretboard in position. Doesn't sound a lot but it took the whole afternoon. Here's a photo just before we put fretboard on.

major changes

I just quit my job today. It's been a total stress situation for a while and it made me feel like shit. So in a month now I will be free. Life will be a blank page. It feels kinda scary and liberating at the same time. I'm hoping that I can concentrate on this aspect of my life and get more productive. I've not done much CBG stuff for a few months now but want to finish some of these projects now and start some others.

Just bought a cracking book on guitar repair from Stewart McDonalds - "Guitar Player Repair Guide". Nothing in there about CBG's but a bit of everything on fixing and maintaining guitars. Real good stuff on three levels of experience which can only be helpful to any guitar building enthusiast. Highly recommended.