Peghead cut and veneer glued up.....

I didn't get as much time in the shop today as I had hoped because of church, and then a church picnic that I had forgotten about, but I did get enough time to get the peg head veneer all glued up. First, I un-clamped the scarf joint and inspected my work. The joint looks really good. It is nice and tight with a very thin glue line. I sanded the glue squeeze out of and then layed out the thickness cut based on the thickness of the veneer pieces. Once I had that all figured out, I clamped a wedge to the neck and ran the peg head through my table saw. This is the second time I have done it this way, and while it works fine it is a very scary operation that makes me feel like I am a hair from disaster. One little slip and the neck would be ruined. That almost happened this time as when the saw was almost through the peg head, I pinched the blade and it bound up a little. No damage, but this made me realize that I need to either come up with a jig to hold the neck solid through the blade so the fence isn't necessary, or come up with a different method of thinning the peg head.

No matter though, other than a small burn mark from the blade the peg head was fine. I sanded it smooth and glued up the maple and ebony veneer pieces up and clamped the whole lot together. I decided that I want to veneer the back of the peg head also with ebony. I will need to order a piece to do this, and I will need the sand the top down as well as thin the back piece so the total thickness is 16mm. Right now it is 15.5mm so i figure if I take about 1mm off of each the top and back I will have it almost exactly at 16mm. Since I am getting a thickness sander tomorrow, I figure I can thin the back piece pretty easily before gluing it on. The top however will need to be sanded with my random orbit sander.

Here is the glued up scarf joint. Not bad.

This is how I rand the peg head through my table saw. It is a fairly straight forward operation, but it is very unstable. I don't like doing it and I am going to put some thought into making a jig to do this next time.

The peg head after cutting it. It sure looks thin but trust me, I measured it several times before cutting.

The veneers all glued up and clamped.