OM neck fit, OOO top braces......

Today I was able to get a few un-interuupted hours in the shop which was great. I decided that since the humidity was still low, I would go ahead and get the top of the OOO braced up. I did the rest of the parabolic rough sanding of the braces and then got them all glued up in the go-bar deck. Once that was done I grabbed the OM and went about the task of fitting the neck, and getting the bridge located. I first attached the neck, scribed around the heel and fretboard extension and then removed it. I scraped off the finish where the heel sits, and cleaned up the small amount of lacquer under the fingerboard where I left the tape back from the original scribed line. After that I re-installed the neck to check the fit. Ahhhh, much better. It fits nice and tight now. I figured that since I had it all together I would go ahead and get the final bridge location all figured out, and clean up the lacquer under there too.

If you remember, when I glued the top on, somehow it slipped during the gluing process and as a result, the top ended up with the center line being off center at the lower bout. This ended up causing the sound hole to be a bit off center and that caused the string location to be off center of the sound hole. It was snowball effect in action. When I initially located the bridge for masking prior to finish, I did a lot of fiddling around with moving the bridge down a touch towards the treble side, and sanding the sound hole up towards the bass side to make the strings look closer to center. They were still a little off, but a lot closer than the initial setup.

I was kind of dreading setting the neck and bridge today, but all in all it worked out pretty well. Once I had the neck set, I clamped the bridge to my initial masked out area and then taped on some fake strings to see how it lined up. It still looked off center to me. I fiddled around with the bridge location again and finally got it so I am happy. I moved it about 1/16" down towards the treble side and scribed the finish for cleanup. I have a small little line of unfinished wood (somehow I masked too far down) but that will be easy to fix. I haven't glued the bridge down yet but I have installed two locating pins so it will be easy to set.

I finally took the neck out, smeared it all up with glue and then installed it. I have to say, I like the bolt on necks. The dovetail is fine for the final installation, but the bolts make it nice for all the setup work. With the dovetail, I was always having to hold it together, and clamp it for any measuring. The bolt on makes it nice because the bolts hold it all together while measuring. When it was done, it all went back in the plastic bag with the damp rags to help get it re-humidified. Sigh..... I think humidity is going to be a big problem with this guitar. On the bright side though, if all goes well I should have it pretty much finished up this weekend. You know that that means don't you...... it is time to start playing with the LMI kit wizard again! hehehe!

Once that was done, I decided to clean up the back plate of my OOO and start installing the side braces. I am using bloodwood binding material (I have several small broken pieces from my bending problems earlier) for these braces. I think they look kind of cool!

The top just before the braces were glued up. They are parabolic shaped, and sanded to 80 grit. Once it is all glued up, I will try to tap tune it by sanding the braces down little by little.

The top in the go bar deck.

As you can see, the neck angle was perfect. No adjustment to the angle was needed after finishing. I had to make some fine adjustments on my dreadnought after finish so I was half way expecting to have to do it on this one too. The straight edge is around 1/64" over the bridge. Perfect!

The bridge location based on my initial masking location. I ended up moving it a hair to the treble side.

This just shows how I made sure the bridge was square. Note the two drill bits in the saddle slot. They are 1/16" bits that I use for locating pins.

The neck joint just prior to gluing. I ended up scraping the lacquer off the heel area to get a good tight joint.

The neck all glued and clamped in place. I had a bit of trouble getting the end of the fingerboard to fit perfectly tight to the top. It was only up enough for a piece of paper to fit, but I wanted it tight. This probably wasn't necessary, but it made me feel better!

One side of the heel joint. Nice and tight.

The other side, also nice and tight. I really am kind of bummed about the blotchy finishing look of the heel wood. Oh well, not much I can do about it now.

The back of the OOO after some cleanup. I still have a little to do but it is almost ready for gluing to the rim.