Preliminary neck set, fingerboard end binding, more inlay....

Yesterday I decided to check to see how my necks fit on the guitars, and how they line up. Well, it was a 50/50 deal. The red guitar net was almost perfect from right to left but the green one was way out of line. The only thing I can think happened is that the neck block must have tilted a little when I glued it up which caused the neck to tilt way off. A straight edge down the center of the neck ended up over an inch off of center at the tail of the guitar. After a lot of trimming on the tenon and mortise, as well as sanding one side of the heel, I was able to get it lined up. I will need to make some thin shims to glue to one side of the mortise and the opposite side of the tenon to tighten up the joint as it is very loose now. The other guitar was right on and needed no adjustment. I still have to do the actual neck set but at least they are straight up and down now. I drilled out the bolt holes in the neck blocks too.

Today I cut the fingerboards to length and curved the bottoms to the same radius as the sound hole. I then bent some bindings and glued them to the bottoms of the fingerboards. After that, I went to work cutting the inlay pockets in the peg heads for the deer head inlay. I am definitely getting better at this inlay stuff. The pockets are much closer to the actual inlay shape than I have previously had. There are still some gaps, but they are quite small. I glued the inlays in and then filled them with epoxy with wood dust mixed in.

Both guitars with the necks installed. They are starting to shape up!

The two inlays glued in ready for epoxy fill.

This is my inlay setup. I have this scroll saw which makes a perfect base for doing this. That is about the only thing I ever use the scroll saw for lol.

These are the bent binding pieces ready to be glued to the fingerboard ends.

Bindings glued and taped down.

This is my hot pipe bender. Nothing fancy but it works.

The two peg head inlays covered in epoxy and sanding dust. I made two separate batches using different colored wood dust. I saved scraps from these two peg head veneers to use for this.