David's Guitar Building: Frets and fingerboards.....

Wow it's hot! I mean HOT and humid around here. My shop is over 100 degrees and the humidity outside is hovering around 100%. That makes for one uncomfortable sticky day. Needless to say, I didn't spend a lot of time in the shop as my little AC unit could barely blow cold air on me, let alone cool the shop off. I took the clamp off of the heel cap and sanded it to the shape of the heel end then bolted the neck to the guitar to see how it looks with the back inlay. It looks pretty cool! I wish I had a way to get the pink wood where the maple binding runs through it, but there isn't much I can do about that. I also wish I would have turned the piece on the neck 90 degrees so the curling was going in the same direction as the inlay. I was looking more at the color and didn't realize the curling was going in different directions when I glued it up. Oh well, something to note for the next build.

After a lot of thought, I decided to go ahead and install the frets now instead of later. My main reason behind that decision is that I am just not comfortable with the idea of hammering in frets on a finished guitar neck and top. I don't have a nice stable jig to hold everything secure to do it properly so I think the safest method is to do it the same way I have done my other guitars. So, I installed the frets and was just about to glue the fingerboard to the neck when I realized I forgot to install the side markers. So, off the the drill press I went to drill the holes and glue in the abalone dots. I had one small error where the drill bit skated to the edge and elongated the hole but I think I can fix that with some dust and glue. Once that was done, I installed the truss rod, clamped the neck to my worktable and put pressure on it to create a little bit of a relief bow. That is to counteract the back bow that fretting the fingerboard creates in the ebony. I always hate doing this part. Every time I do it, I am afraid that I am going to crack the neck. I guess they are probably a lot stronger than I think, but it just seems like an awful lot of pressure on the headstock to neck joint! Anyways, I glued the fretboard down and then wrapped it down with a big rubber band to clamp it in place.

This is the heel cap and back inlay together. I think it looks pretty nice. I just wish the binding was the same pink color as the box elder where it goes through the center. Hmmmm, I wonder if there is something I can do about that.......

The fingerboard fretted to the 14th fret. I wetted the fingerboard slots before installation as has been recommended on several forums. It is supposed to make the fret installation easier. I'm not sure it made any difference.

The side markers installed. If you blow up the picture, you can see the one on the right is the one that the bit wandered.

The neck clamped down and under pressure. I really hate doing this! I cringe when I am putting the pressure on it for the first time.

Here you can see the neck relief and the fingerboard back bow. Okay, you can also see my little shameful secret in this picture. That's right, I can't remember which string is which note so I have a cheat sheet written on the side of my bench tray. Yeah, pretty lame, I'll admit. It must be some kind of mental block. I played the trumpet in school for 7 years, and I never was able to remember notes nor could I tell you what note someone was playing. I could read and play the music, but ask me to write what note each one was on the paper and I got a solid 'F'! Since learning the guitar, I can assure you, my lack of skill in this area is as strong as ever!