An old friend returns......

I spent some time today after church working on the neck of the OOO. I decided that it was time to tackle one of the things I have been a little worried about doing, carving the heal. I looked at several sources of instructions of a logical method to do this but finally decided that the best way for me to do this was to just do it freehand by eye. I did use a little template to mark the heal to get the angle and curve on the edge, but other than that I just started cutting away anything that didn't look like a heal! I am quite happy with the outcome. It is only rough shaped to just a bit larger than I want the final size to be, but it looks good to me. It really wasn't all that difficult to do.

After that was done I decided it was time to dig out my old friend, the OM and start the finish sanding. I spent about 4 hours sanding, and sanding, and sanding some more using Micromesh sanding sheets that start at 1500 grit and progress all the way to 12,000 grit. It is quite a workout but this is the third time I have used them and I am always stunned at the final outcome. I still can't get my head around the fact that sanding something actually polishes it, but it does. I was able to get the body done but I didn't do anything with the neck because my arms were getting tired. I will do that one day next week.

Oh, before I started doing anything, I wanted to see how close my fingerboard cuts were to the actual measurements on the plans using my calipers. I am pleased to say that every fret position is within 5/1000" of their specified locations. Of course, it is actually pretty hard to get that precise but I tried to get the points of the calipers in the centers of the slots as best I could. I am very happy with this!

Here you can see the little template I used to mark the heal edge I wanted.

I used a coping saw to cut away a couple of pieces of wood up to the widest point of the heal end. It is a lot easier to cut it away than file and sand it away.

Here is the rough heal shape. It is a touch oversized right now but I will sand it to the final size once I get the rest of the neck shaped.

The heal from the side. I wanted the end of the heal to curve back towards the peghead just a bit. I have seen it on other guitars and I really like the look. It is just a tad too long so I will need to cut it off but I am going to put a piece of bloodwood for the cap and I will shape it back to this 'point'.

Here it is side by side with my OM neck. As you can see, it is pretty close to the same size but a little different shape.

Remember me?

Here is the back before I started final sanding. If you open up the larger image, you can see the rough surface caused my my sprayer. I don't know how to keep this from happening. It sure makes for a lot more sanding to get it all leveled out!

About 4 hours later. This is a micromesh finish only. I still will polish it after the neck and bridge are installed. Not bad for sandpaper huh?

Another picture of the back. I really like how the wood grain turned out.

Here you can see how good the finish is. Those lights are about 6' above the guitar surface. I can literally read the wattage of the bulbs.