Tail block and neck work.....

Today I got quite a few things done. The first thing I needed to do was to trim the sides so they fit in the mold. I marked both ends and cut them with the band saw. Once that was done and the sides fit in the mold, I cut a tail block and sanded it to the radius of the bottom of the guitar. I glued that up and clamped it. I then cut out a neck block, and routed out the mortise for the neck tenon. It was at this point that I realized that I had made a mistake. I cut out the blank for this block with the grain running the wrong direction. So, I cut another piece from some scrap but it was too short. I ended up having to glue two pieces together to make a blank to use. Ahhhh, the joys of forgetting to check the grain direction!

Since I needed to let the neck block dry I turned my attention to the neck itself. When I left it, I had put the peg head veneer on and located the nut edge. I picked up by laying out the truss rod channel and routing that out. After that was done, I got the heel block and sanded one edge very flat. Once I was happy with the fit on the neck, I glued it up and clamped it all together. At this point, I ran out of clamps and all of the major components were drying so I decided to call it a night.

I have a fairly busy weekend and week ahead of me so I am not sure how much work I will get done. I want to do some work and of course my daily playing practice. My oldest daughter is graduating high school this Saturday, and we are having a party for her so I have a lot of work around here to get done. We also have family coming in from two states for the graduation so it is going to be a bit crazy around here for the next week.

Did I mention this wood is PURPLE! I think my shop will look like Barney exploded in there by the time I get this one finished. Here is one side marked for trimming.

This is a little trick I picked up to shape the blocks. I put a piece of PSA sandpaper on the edge of the mold and then used it as a shaping caul. It worked great.

Here you can see me sanding it to shape. It fit like a glove.

The tail block all glued up. One bit of an issue I need to work out is the staining of the sapwood. If you look on the left you can see where I wiped the wood down with acetone before gluing and that stained the sapwood purple. I am not sure how I am going to build this guitar without ruining the sapwood if this happens every time I wipe the wood down. Naphtha does the same thing. Once I get this out of the clamps, I will try and sand it out. Hopefully it will turn white/tan again.

The neck with the extra length of wood cut off.

The truss rod routed out and checked for fit.

Here is the neck block glued to the neck. You might be wondering, how does David keep the glue squeeze out from gluing the neck to my work bench? Well, it is simple, when I built the table (it is a torsion box made of MDF) I waxed the top with floor wax. This keeps glue from sticking to it so I can glue things together directly on the table without any worry of it sticking.