I love it when a plan comes together.......

DAY 21

I was very anxious to get to the shop after I got home from church to take the tape off of the back binding to see how it went. I am thrilled with the results. After a bit of scraping to get the glue off and to get the binding leveled up to the back/sides I was amazed to find that there are no gaps at all to deal with. It is tight completely around the guitar, even in the waist which is where I was worried about. I decided that I would go ahead and do the top binding and perfling. One thing I found was that with the back I had a lot of glue to scrape off. It wasn't a big deal, but it took a bit of scraping and sanding to get it off. I decided to mask the area directly next to the channels on the top and side this time. Hopefully it will minimize the amount of glue that will need to be scraped off. The binding and perfling went on pretty easily. It was a bit more awkward because of having two separate pieces to put in at the same time, but it really wasn't much more difficult than the plastic binding and wood perfling I used on my dreadnaught. One other thing I did a little differently on the top was to use strapping tape for the waist areas. Because of trying to bend two pieces of wood into that tight angle, it was just too much for masking tape. The strapping tape worked well as I could pull as hard as I wanted with no chance of breaking the tape. Once I had it all taped up, I wrapped the waist with a long rubber band to help clamp it tight in place.

Am I crazy? Seriously...... I spent some time last night on LMI's site playing around with the kit wizard thinking about my next project. I think I am going to take the next big step and go with an unserviced kit for the next one. It should be a big challenge getting nothing more than a box of lumber to start with! I would go with a a complete scratch built, buying wood from different sources but I think it just makes sense using the kit wizard. You end up with a scratch build, but I would get the savings of buying everything together as a kit and still get to pick and choose everything like a scratch builder. I think once you get into the unserviced kits, you pretty much have gotten out of the "kit" status and into scratch building mode.

Anyways on to the pictures:

Here is the back after some scraping and sanding. I am very happy with the way the binding turned out.

Here is a closer look at the binding. (Those white spots that look like gaps aren't gaps. It is something the digital camera did to the picture edge.)

Here is the butt splice at the neck end. I know this will be covered, but I still wanted to make sure it fit tightly for nothing more than practice.

The tail end splice. It is centered on the graft, the grain line in the graft is not center which makes the splice look off centered. If I had it to do over again, I would have probably shifted the splice over to the right a tad so it lined up with the grain line.

The top all masked off ready for the binding and perfling.

All glued up and taped in place. I hope the top turns out as well as the back did. I guess I will find out tomorrow!