catching up

Well, work travel and a kitchen remodel have taken the majority of my time for a long while. I have been able to work on the guitar here and there over the last few months. Unfortunately, I have not kept up the blog to show what has been going on.

Picking up where I left off, making the fingerboard went pretty smoothly. I bound it with the same curly maple that I used on the box. I was worried about glue getting into the fret slots, so I used little pieces of plastic cut from a plastic milk jug to keep the slots clear.


I like the results. I think the maple will give a nice contrast to the ebony.

In the picture, you can see the two small nails I used to keep the fingerboard in position as I glued it onto the neck. I used a tiny drill bit to drill through the 1st and 12th fret slot, into the neck about a 1/4 inch.


There are two matching holes in the clamping caul. The fingerboard is glued on using white glue instead of yellow glue. This is to simplify life in the future, in case I ever need to remove the fingerboard from the neck.


With the fingerboard glued on, I moved on to carving the neck. I have not tried to match any particular neck profile yet. I simply work on it until it feels comfortable in my hands. I use the technique Robbie O'brien shows in his "Building a Steel String Guitar" dvd. I use a rasp to get the thickness to within a couple of mm at the 4th and 12th fret, then use a spokeshave to do the general shaping.

I find carving the neck a very satisfying process. In about an hour's time I find myself ankle-deep in mahagony shavings with a guitar neck in my hands.

When the neck is near the final thickness, I switch to a cabinet scraper to fine-tune the shape and remove any lumps. The final step involves using some 100 grit sandpaper to get it just right. In the picture, you can just make out the volute where the peghead meets the neck. I didn't try anything too fancy, just a smooth curving ridge.


With the neck shaped, it was time to add some bling.
I wanted to do some inlay, but wanted to keep the shapes fairly simple. The last thing I want at this step is to screw up all that work.

I bought some pre-cut MOP shapes from Andy at DePaule Supply. The 'Diamonds and Squares' set is pretty simple shapes, and has a bit for the peghead as well as the fingerboard.

The process starts by gluing the little bits in place with some model airplane glue, then using an x-acto knife to scribe a line around each shape. You can see all the pencil lines I drew to keep all the pieces centered between the frets and straight.

A little acetone softens the glue so you can pop them off with your fingers. I routed the space for the pieces with a dremel tool and some small bits I got from Stew-Mac. The process went pretty well, although I found out I really needed better light on my workbench. Oh, and next time I think I will do the fingerboard inlay before I glue the fingerboard to the neck.



I placed all the shell into their spaces in the neck and peghead , and flooded each with a little CA glue. After drying overnight, I sanded the glue and the shell down to the surface of the fingerboard using sandpaper wrapped around a small block of wood.