David's Guitar Building: Lots of stuff to report.......

I love the weekend! I got to spend a lot of time working on my OOO today. The first thing I decided to do was to get the back braces glued up and in the go-bar deck. I spent a pretty good amount of time making sure all of the braces were perfectly square to the center line by using a square as well as measuring between braces at both ends. The braces are straight this time. After the OM, this was a big concern for me. One thing I have noticed, although I like the LMI instrument makers glue, I wish it weren't white. I know it drys clear, but the thin film you get when cleaning up the squeeze out stays white and it is a real pain in the neck to clean up. It would be nice if they were able to get rid of whatever it is that they use to turn the glue white.

After that was done, I decided it was time to design and install the rosette. I have a solid koa rosette as well as several different thin strips of maple, ebony, and bloodwood. After playing around with it, I decided to go with a simple but elegent look. I went with an ebony strip, the koa, and an ebony strip on the outside. This outlines the koa with a thin black line and once the sound hole is cut out, there will be a very thin line of spruce. I picked a small rosette (4" diam) because I wanted it to be close to the sound hole. If my math is correct, I should have about 1/16" of spruce around the sound hole which I think will look nice. I hope so anyways. I am still debating on possibly doing a thin outer rosette of either a black/bloodwood/black or bloodwood/black/bloodwood about 1/16"from the outer edge of the main rosette. I am not totally convinced yet but I am thinking about doing it.

Anyways, after that was done, I decided to cut out my two abalone inlays. First up was the deer head. This time it went quite a bit faster as I knew how to cut it out. I decided to cut out the inside of the head part to make it a bit more stylized looking. That is how I did my drawing but I didn't cut out the pearl one that way. I really like how it looks. I then went about cutting out my "D", this time trying to cut it out in one piece. It went pretty well until my blade got hung up and snapped the top from the bottom. It really isn't a big deal and I was able to finish it up and glue it back together. It was kind of interesting doing it though. I had to drill out two sections and feed my saw blade through the holes to cut out the closed loops. I am pretty happy with the results. Now if I can route out the channels so they look good.......

Once I finished that I cut the taper in my fingerboard and narrowed the neck to the shape of the fingerboard. I need to get a draw knife to shape the rest of the neck so I stopped there. With tomorrow being Easter Sunday, I won't be working in the shop at all so I probably won't get back at it until early next week.

Have a blessed Easter everyone!

Here is the back braced up and in the go-bar deck. Note the square and ruler. Rest assured, they got used!

Here is the soundboard clamped down to the workbench and the peg for the circle cutting jig installed.

Before cutting the channel, I cut a small slot under the fingerboard location to measure the depth. I started and finished all my cutting passes in the same spot. This way if I messed up, the fingerboard would hide the mistake.

Here is the rosette channel just before installation of the rosette. When I routed the channel, I started with a cut about center of the rosette width. Then I slowly eased my way inward and outward until I had the exact sized circle cut. I went about 1/10mm each time so it took me a lot of passes to get it right.

The rosette installed and glued up. Sorry about the darkness of the picture but if you look carefully you can see the black outline.

Here is the abalone deer inlay. The one on the left is the one I did today, and the one on the right is the one I did a few weeks ago.

The inlay sitting on the peghead.

Here is the "D" inlay sitting on the heal. If you look really closely, you can see the line where it broke on the right side of the piece. This was before I glued it back together. It looks a lot better after gluing. The line is not nearly as visible.