The Neck part II

Next step was to glue the fingerboard to the neck. I made some locating pins from paperclips, so make sure that the fingerboard wouldn´t slide around once the glue was applied. This glue-up has to be very accurate.

Fingerboard glued and clamped.

Shaping the neck to match the fingerboards taper using a blockplane and chisels.

Shaping using a spokeshave..

Beautiful mahogany shavings. It smelled really good aswell!

Shaping the neck with a rasp. It has a pronounced V-neck taken from the plans.

Checking if my chisel is still sharp. Yep - its still sharp.

The neck pretty much done. I just need the final sanding.

Installing the frets. Since its a bound fingerboard, I had to remove the frettang from both ends of the frets. The frettang nippers you can buy a luthier supplies stores are really expensive, so I made one my self from a nibbler tool that i bought on ebay. I had to modify it slightly by cutting a grove in it with my dremel. I saved around 400 DKK on this. You can watch a tutorial on how to make a frettang nibbler here.

Neck done and looking good!

Before the neck was glued to the body, I made sure that it was set with all the correct angles.

The neck being glued to the body.

Levelling the frets.

The Fingerboard

Planing the ebony to thickness and trueing up one of the sides, so its ready to have the frets layed out.

Here i´m trying to plan how the inlays should be layed out. I really like the inlay styles of the Larson Brothers and other american luthiers from the same era, so I want to do something simliar. Most of the inlays I bought cut out, but some of them i cut myself using a jewellers saw.

Sawing the fret slot. I triple checked all the mesurements before. 

My new workshop in our new house! Please note the lamp. Winters are very dark in denmark, so I use this UV-lamp, that helps me not to get too depressed due to the lack of sunlight. And its actually a nice working light too.

Routing the inlay cavities.

All the inlays glued in and sanded flush. 

Maple bindings being glued on.

Fingerboard done. It has a 16" radius.

The Neck part I

After sawing the neck blank in 2 pieces, I planed down the headstock part down to the right thickness.

Gluing the scarf joint.

Neck block glued. After this I routed the trussrod channel. 

Tenon cut and rough shaping the heel. I be using Cumpiano´s bolt-on method for attaching the neck to the body.

Heel shaping.

Headstock veneer being glued.

The result.

Headstock rough cutted.

Holes for tuningmachines drilled.

Headstock slots drilled out and being shaped.

Cleaning up the slots.

Done and looking good.

My last name cut out in Mother of Pearl. The little curl underneat is taken from a inlay from the Larson Brothers that im very inspired from.

Routing the cavity.

Inlay being glued. I´m using thin viscosity CA glue, activator spray and a black magic marker. A trick I saw in one of John Halls youtube videos. The idea is that you lay down your inlay, put black marker on top, spray it with the activator so it removes the glue and only leaves the black paint back. Then you flood it with the CA-glue, that picks up the black color and fills up the gaps. This way your cavity dosen´t have to be 100% since the gaps are filled afterwards. This works especially good on ebony since its so dark.

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.