Rosettes and pegheads...

Sorry I haven't updated for a couple of days. It has been pretty busy around here. I managed to get the peg heads cut on the two necks, and I also got the rosettes made and glued in. I did have a couple of issues to deal with however. First, when I was shaping the second peg head using my router and a template, I found out that sapele is very splintery wood. The bit wanted to chip the edges of the peg head like crazy as I was cutting it. I was able to go slowly and carefully however just as I was finishing up, the bit caught the corner of one of the top cutouts and chipped a fairly large chunk out of the edge. The piece flew across the shop and I had no luck finding it. So, I ended up having to reshape the top of one peg head to accommodate the chip. I wasn't too happy with it, but there really isn't much I can do about it. Stuff happens. Today when I was thickness sanding my tops, one top had a hidden knot right in the middle of the board. Fortunately both sides were nice so I will just use the good side, and put the knot inside. If this had been an expensive top however, I would not have been very happy about it. I have both tops sanded down to .115" and once I have the rosettes sanded flush, I will take them down to .105". My rosettes turned out fairly nice. One is spalted maple with a black and green trim around both the inside and outside, and the other is curly bubinga with black and red trim. Both pieces of wood are very nice looking but they were pretty difficult to cut. I sanded the maple one flush with the top and the edges have some gaps because of the rough edges I got. I sanded them, but the maple in particular has a lot of gaps and pores which gives the edges a rough look. I am not sure if I want to attempt to re-route around the edges to try and clean them up or not. I will sleep on it before deciding what to do.

The two peg heads. The one on the left is the one that had a chip blow out. I ended up sanding the edges and rounding the top a bit to fix the problem. They look close but they are different.

The two tops after thickness sanding. You can see the dark spot in the middle of the right top. That is a knot that was hidden until I sanded into it.

A close up of the knot.

Here is the spalted maple rosette.

Here is the curly bubinga rosette. The curl doesn't show very well in pictures, but it really has a very deep 3D appearance in person. Oh, that is a pencil line down the center of the top, not the joint line.