Whoops, skipped a step............

Okay, so there I was happily driving down the road heading from one job site to another thinking about my guitar when it hit me square between the eyes. I skipped a step in my building process. You see, I glued in the top binding and perfling but had completely forgotten to install the tail graft. So, now I had to figure out how to get the graft in without messing up the binding at the top. When I got home I scurried up to the shop to check on it...... nope, no elves came in overnight and installed a graft.

First thing I did was to remove the tapes holding the binding in place, and then scrape the top to see how my binding job was. It turned out really good. No gaps at all. Okay, down to business. First I cut the curved shape that I used on my 000 out of curly maple. Then I traced it on the tail. I then very slowly and carefully routed out the side material for the graft all the way to just shy of the binding. I used a very sharp chisel to carve out the last little bit of wood next to the binding so I had the space for the graft all cleaned out. I glued the graft in place and let out a sigh of relief. All I need to do now is to sand it level and re-route the back binding channel at the tail end so the binding will butt up to the graft. Another problem solved!

I had a little bit of a exciting experience with my practice tonight. I have been practicing chords, transitions, and arpeggio's over and over and over again for the last several weeks. I pick a few simple songs but really it has been mostly just practicing the basics. My callouses are getting thick so clean fretting isn't much of a problem any more, and my transitions from chord to chord are becoming more automatic. I still have some hesitation between chords, but it is getting smaller every day. Well tonight I decided to start with the first set of lessons in my Fingerstyle book. It is the beginning of a simple fingerstyle song. I did as instructed, and I was stunned. I actually played something that sounded like music! I have been picking songs but those just don't sound like music if you know what I mean. This was different. It sounded like real music coming out of my guitar for the first time. I was really excited and that was just the big boost I needed that let me know that with a lot of practice and patience, I will be able to learn to play. Needless to say, I am really happy!

Here is the end graft channel. You can see that I cut right up to the top binding. That was a little bit of tedious work. One little slip and the binding would be ruined.

The tail graft glued and clamped in place.

Here is a view of the top perfling. It is a very simple design but I think it ties in with all of the simple features of the guitar.