Sanding and more sanding..........

DAY 34

Well, I am getting down to the final touches before finishing. The first thing I did was to clean out a couple of spots around the binding where there was a tiny gap that filled with Titebond glue. The glue color is too light and really shows so I took an Xacto knife and picked the glue out. Then I sanded the side wood to get some dust, pushed it in the opening and hit it with a drop of superglue. Once that was cured, I sanded the places flat. After that was done, I spent a lot of time getting the bridge located exactly and then masking the area off for finish. Last time I finished the entire guitar and then used stripper to clean the bridge and space under the fingerboard extension. Although the stripper worked well, I had a small drop of it land on the top and I spent many days trying to fix it. I figure that if I can keep stripper away from the finished guitar I will be happy! I hammered in the frets on the fingerboard extension and then spent a lot of time sanding the entire guitar to 320 grit. I wet it with naphtha to look for scratches and sanded again. Then I hit the whole thing with a damp rag to raise the grain and sanded again. I think I am done sanding although I want to take it outside in the sunlight to look for any scratches before I call it ready for finish. The last thing I did was to drill out the tuner holes. This is where I hit a snag. The first hole I drilled out I did like I did the first guitar. I drilled through the veneer with the drill in reverse so it wouldn't tear out the wood. That worked great but when I put it in forward to finish the hole, the bit caught the rosewood and tore two pieces out. The pieces are just big enough that the washer for the tuner won't quite cover it. It is really close, but probably about 1/2mm from covering. I took come rosewood chips and glued them in and then sanded it all flush. It looks pretty good and probably won't be visible but I have to say, my heart stopped for a couple of seconds when it happened! All I could think about was me having to completely re-do the peghead and the inlay. Fortunately that won't have to happen.

So, the guitar is essentially ready for finish. I have to inspect it in the bright sunlight and tack cloth the whole thing but it is ready. I have a bit of masking to do too but that won't take too long. I ordered my finishing supplies from Stewmac this morning so I should have that in just a couple of days. I also added some black side marker material for the fingerboard. I am going to drill out the white markers and replace them with black. It should look better.

While I was online, I went ahead and placed the next kit order with LMI. I am excited but a bit nervous about building a completely unserviced guitar. Well, that is not exactly correct, I went ahead and had them thickness sand the top, back and sides. Since I don't have a thickness sander, and my planing skills are not up to par, I didn't think it would be wise for me to try and thickness them myself. At some point I will either build or buy a thickness sander, but that isn't in the cards as of now. I also ordered a pre-carved bridge but I am going to get a blank and attempt to make one myself. My plan is to use the precarved one as a template, and if my carving doesn't go well I can use it on the guitar. Other than the thickness sanding, I am expecting to get nothing more than a box of wood! This should be fun! I will keep a separate blog for that build as I think I am probably getting close to my limit on storage of pictures. I have over 200 pictures in this blog and I am waiting for the dreaded "you are over your limit" message to come up. I would post a copy of the LMI kit wizard order of my next guitar but I can't figure how to turn a web page into a picture. Speaking of pictures..........

This is one of the gaps that I was talking about. Notice how the glue is lighter than the wood and really stands out. Now it more closely matches the Granadillo color.

A picture of the top with the bridge location and fingerboard extension masked off.

Just a picture showing the last frets installed.

Sorry about the quality of this picture. I must have moved while clicking the button. You can see the bottom right hole where the rosewood chipped out. It doesn't look this bad in real life, the blurry picture makes it look a lot worse than it is. Also, almost all of it will be hidden under the tuner washer.