Bindings and Purflings.

Routing the purfling channel using my dremel knockoff with the StewMac routerbase and edgeguide. Worked really good! It took a lot of courage to make the first cut though.

Routing the binding channel.

Binding the back using lots of tape.

Scraping bindings flush with the sides and back. Next time I will cut the channels deeper..

Back done.

Binding the soundboard.

Tape off. Ready to scrape off excess.

Soundboard with bindings and purflings ready to be scraped down.

Closing the box

The Soundboard, Back and Rim ready to be joined together.

Gluing the soundboard to the rim using bungee rope and clamps. The rim is secured in the mold with screws in the 2 blocks. I also added shims in the bottom of the of the mold to keep the rim from popping out from the pressure of the rope.

The soundboard glued to the rim. It´s starting to look like a guitar now.

Sanding the rim the accomodate the radius of the back. 

Signing the Soundboard.

Label glued in the back.

Gluing the back.

The box is closed and looking good.

The Rim

Planing down the sides to the right thickness. About 2 - 2,5 mm. Note that this is done in our kitchen.. my wife is really patient! But she didn´t find it very funny, when she found rosewood dust in her morning cereal... ups.

Shavings.

Scraping. In the kitchen. Leaving lots of dust..

My homemade bending iron. It consists of a aluminium tube with a 100W lightbulb inside. It take about 10-15 minutes before its hot enough to bend on. I soaked the sides in water for 30 minutes before bending them.

Sides bent and in the mould. Next build i´m going to spend more time making sure that I bend a more accurate shape than i did here. I rushed it too much and the shaped was very far from accurate. I will have to buy a commercial bending iron, to replace my homemade one. I had alot of trouble bending the tight waist curve.. I think the radius on my homemade iron is too big. The commercial irons are teardrop-shaped giving you a variety of curves that you can bend.

Shaping up the neck and heel block . On the kitchen floor...

Gluing blocks. In our living room..

Gluing kerfing.

The Soundboard

Joining the 2 plates using the tape metod. You can also make a plate joining jig, but i really like the simple solutions!

Planing down to the right thickness. The plates came in around 5mm thick and I planed them down to around 2,5 mm thick. My plans didn´t say anything about thickness, so I researched a bit and found out that the standard thickness is about 2,5 mm. Here is my new vintage Record #4. I bought this to replace my other cheap stanley... This one is so much better quality.

Routing the rosette channels using my dremel knockoff and the StewMac guides.

Channels routed for the main part of the rosette. I justed a twin flute router bit, instead of a spiral bit which cause the woodfibers to be torn instead for being pressed down. Lesson learned!

Rossette ready to be glued in.

Rosette glued in scraped flush with the soundboard.

The rosette done and soundhole done.

On my plans, the soundboard was braced with a ladderbracing, but since i wanted to have steel strings on the guitar, I figured that it was best to use a more stabile x-bracing. I found a photo of the bracing of a old Washburn parlor and used this as guidelines for my x-bracing.

Laying out the bracing pattern on the soundboard.

Cutting the braces to size.

Gluing braces.

Carving braces.

The finished soundboard ready to be glued on the rims. I used a 25´ radius for the x-braces to make the soundboard dome-shaped. 

The Back

Using a shootingboard to true up the sides of the 2 back plates prior to joining them. I´m doing this on the kitchen floor in our old apartment. Luckily i have a proper workshop now.

I joined the plates and planed them down the the correct thickness - about 2,5 mm. This was hell, therefore i didn´t care to take any pictures. I had a cheap Stanley plane that I didn´t know how to sharpen properly and my woodworking skills was in general very bad.. I spend hours and hours scraping down the rosewood, since the handplane tore out the grain everywhere.

Finally i got the back down in the desired thickness (almost) and the result was the thumb. A cabinet scraper can get very hot apparently! Well, you live and learn.. Nex time I will be using a toothed blade for my new and better Record plane. This will minimize the tearout. I´ve read that it should be possible to cut groves in the blade with a grinding wheel in the dremel, so that will be the solution i will be going for, since I already have a replacement blade. My sharpening skills have also approved alot since this time, so im pretty sure that next time will be a piece of cake. Hopefully.

Ready to route the channel for the decorative centertstrip.

Remember to check that the routerbit is tightned and secured completely - otherwise this might happen. God dammit!! I filled the gap with rosewood and tightbond and you almost can´t see it.

Gluing the centerstrip.

The result.

Laying out the braces and the center reinforcement strip.

Glueing braces.

Braces glued. The braces were radiuses with a 15´ radius to dome the back. Here i´m shaping the braces on our balcony in the sun.

The Materials

So i finally recieved the materials for the guitar after waiting for about 2 months. Long story...

 - Sitka spruce for the soundboard

-  Indian Rosewood for the back and sides

- Mahogany for the neck and blocks

- Ebony for the fingerboard, bridge and headstock overlay

The kit included kerfing, wood for braces and bone for the nut and saddle.

Since I had no experience in woodworking what so ever, it was pretty intimidating to look at all this raw wood and think that I would have to plane, sand and shape all of this into a guitar.