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Monday, February 19, 2007

I'm baaaaaaackkkkkkk............

DAY 29

The bug is finally gone and I am back at it! It sure is nice to feel back to my old self again. First thing I did, after of course hooking up the new propane tank for some heat, was to do a little shop cleaning. It is amazing the amount of junk I end up with on my work tables. Once that was done, I turned my attention to the fretboard. I laid out the side dot markers, drilled and installed them. Then I sanded the edges flush and decided it was time to do some frets. I cut the first fret and realized I needed to do something different than my last guitar. Because I put binding on the fingerboard, I needed to cut the 'tangs' off of the ends of the frets so they stopped short of the binding, but allowed the fret to extend over the binding. If I had been thinking ahead, I probably would have purchased a tang nipper from Stewmac, but of course I didn't so I needed to come up with a different method. First I tried to cut using a pair of dykes and my end nippers. This cuts just fine, but it bends the end of the frets making them un-usable. I scratched my head for a while and then it hit me..... my dremel with a grinding wheel! I got it all rigged up, cut a fret and started grinding the end. Wow that gets hot fast! I decided a jig to hold the fret was in order. A simple block of wood with a slot cut in it that the fret could just fit in upside down was the ticket. It took me about 2 hours to cut and grind all 20 frets, but I got them done. I hammered the top 14 frets in and nipped them to the edge of the fingerboard. Tomorrow I will sand them flush with the edge, and glue it up to the neck. I know I keep saying it, but I also need to spend some time with the neck angle measurements to see if I need to make any adjustments to the top. I probably need to do that before I glue the fingerboard so I can use the false fingerboard method that Ted used. So who knows, maybe it won't get glued on tomorrow.



As promised, here is a picture of the peghead after sanding the epoxy off. I wet it with a little naphtha so you can get an idea of how it will look under lacquer. I am pleased with it.


Here is one of the frets with the tang ground off each end. I will invest in the nippers for the next one.


The fingerboard with the first 14 frets installed. If you look at the blown up picture really close, you can see the white marker dots. I would have done black but I didn't have any and I don't want to wait a week to for them to arrive. I might throw it on my next order and drill these out and replace them with black, I am not sure yet. They are pretty visible in person, but not so much in a photo.

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