Some fingerboard attention....

Today was a busy day. We had a big work day at our church to get a house for our new youth minister ready for him to move in. Lots of painting, cleaning, and misc. work to be done. Because of that, I didn't get a lot of time to work on the guitar, however I did some of the inlay work. First I needed to narrow the fingerboard by .2", .1" on each side to accommodate the binding. I used my router jig to narrow the board on each side. After that was done, I noticed that I had a bit of a dip in the fingerboard down around the 15 - 20th fret area. I spent some time with a straight edge with sandpaper on it to get it all leveled out. It still will need some work, but I will do that once I have it glued to the neck. I have decided to try fretting after the fretboard has been installed. This will allow me to get the fingerboard leveled better then I have been able to do previously. I am a little nervous about doing it this way, but a lot of builders go this way for the exact reason I mentioned.

I then decided to work on the markers. I am using some curved shapes I cut out of abalone so it isn't as simple as drilling holes for dots. I made copies of the pieces on my copier, taped them to the fingerboard and cut them out to make scribe lines. I then routed them out using my dremel and router base. It went pretty well. The relief cuts aren't perfect by any means, but I am getting better. Since the fingerboard is ebony (I picked ebony for this exact reason!) it should be easy to fill any gaps almost invisibly.

My practicing is getting better. I have been drilling myself working chords and trying to transition between chords smoothly. I really don't have any problems fretting the chords cleanly, but I still have to 'think' about the chords which slows me down. When I say think, I don't mean I have to try and remember the chord, I mean I have to purposely set my fingers instead of having them automatically find the strings. I have been assured that with practice, this muscle memory WILL come, it just takes time. It is slow going, but I am seeing progress. So far the chords I have memorized and can switch between fairly smoothly are Am, A, A7, B7, C, C7, Dm, D, D7, Em, E, E7, F, G, and G7. I am just starting to work with a finger style book as that is how I want to play. Like I said, it is slow going, but I feel progress happening. It is a lot of fun.

Whoops, I forgot to mention that I bent the bindings and perfling strips. I taped them all together and wrapped them in kraft paper all spritzed with water.

I put them in the bender and it went smoothly. I checked them and there were no cracks or breaks.

This is how I narrow the fingerboard to the exact size of the bindings. I use my stewmac binding bit with the bearing on the bottom. I line the edge of the fingerboard flush to the jig. As you can see the cutter edge overhangs the jig by the exact amount of the binding. Again, this is a ton faster and cleaner than using a shooting board to do the job. It is dead on accurate too.

This is what it looks like after the cut. You can see that the edge of the fingerboard is now .1" inside of the edge of the jig....

...and that is exactly how thick the bindings are! Once one side is done, I just flip it and do the other edge. Simple as pie.

The fingerboard sitting on the neck blank.

I marked the marker locations. Notice the single and double lines on the top of the board. Those are there so I can remember which space gets single and which space gets double markers. I have a terrible memory for things like that!

These are the copies of the markers taped to the board. I cut them out and that gave me scribe lines. I know they look crooked, but the actual marker pictures are straight, it is just the paper that isn't cut straight to the image. It really causes an optical illusion!

These are what the scribe marks look like after cutting out the paper images.

I routed out the inlay pockets and tack glued the pieces in. I still need to fill the gaps with ebony dust and glue but so far I am happy with the look.