Now for the finishing steps. The fingerboard and bridge need to be made and the body bound. Then the body has the finish applied, the bridge and fingerboard glued on, nut and saddle made, tuners attached and the guitar set-up.
The fingerboard is a salvaged ebony board that had a couple of mis-cut slots. This has been flipped over and can be used as the frets are going to be inlays rather than metal frets. The frets are going to be some "rope" purfling I have left over from a baritone guitar build. The fret slots need to be 2.5mm wide and I have made up this jig with the laminate trimmer to cut them.
Here a piece of the purfling is tried for fit in a routed slot.
With all of the fret slots cut, the fingerboard is tapered to fit the neck - allowing for the ebony binding that will be used. The end of the fingerboard is cut to a circle to match the soundhole. This is done with my circle cutter and laminate trimmer.
Here's the result.
The purfling frets are cut to length, pressed in the slots and some ca glue wicked in. The ebony binding is glued on and the fretboard sanded clean.
The fingerboard is marked out for the 5mm MoP position markers. Normally I like to keep the fingerboard without markers but on I lap slide I would get easily lost.
The holes for the MoP markers are then drilled and the markers glued in with ca glue. The third and 12 fret markers are left out as I will use these o drill dowels to position the neck for gluing on. After this these markers will be glued in.
The part of the body where the fingerboard goes is sanded flat and the fingerboard checked for fit.
Now for the bridge. I am using Brazilian rosewood as the bridge needs to be tall and this will give me my ideal bridge weight. First the saddle slot is routed.
Then the pin holes are drilled and countersunk.
The bridge is then shaped on the belt sander.
And then tested for fit/looks on the top.
Now it's time to rout the boby for the bindings. I'm using some Lutz spruce bindings with a bwb side trime made up for me by Shane Neifer in Canada. Here's a picture of him gluing them up.
I use my laminate trimmer in my binding jig to cut the binding slots on top and bottom. The bindings are taped in dry to check fit and are cut to the correct lengths.
Next the end graft slot is cut with a hand-saw and chisel. and the end graft glued in. This is spruce like the binding with bwb purfling on each side.
Here's the end graft after it has been sanded flush with the sides.
The purfling channels are routed and checked for correct fit. Then the bindings and purflings are glued in using Titebond glue.
When dry the top bindings are scraped flush.
Then the back bindings are scraped flush. The whole guitar is then checked and sanded ready for the finish to be applied.
The bottom of the bridge is sanded to match the top's radius.
The bridge is placed on the top in the correct position and the outer two bridge-pin holes marked on the top.
The top is then drilled with a 5mm brad point bit through these holes. A caul is clamped to the bridge-plate while this is done.
The fretboard and bridge area are masked off and Z-Poxy is applied as a pore filler.
The guitar is now sprayed with thin coats of pre-catalysed lacquer (around 5-6) and when cured, carefully rubbed back to a sub-gloss finish. Next the fingerboard is glued on. As this acts as a sort of "bridge" on the hollow neck, I am using hot hide glue as this gives the best acoustic coupling.
The bridge is put in it's correct position and the outline carefully scribed. The lacquer is then carefully removed where the bridge will be.
The bridge is then glued on using hot hide glue.
Now the final set up is done. The bridge pin holes are drilled, reamed and slotted; the tuners are put on and the nut and saddle put in.
Finally the nut slots are cut and the sadlle shaped when the strings are on. Here's a front view.
A back view.
A side view.
And a close-up of the fretboard and rope fret markers. All that remains is to play it. Here's a sound clip - excuse my poor playing! Thanks for looking at the build, I hope you have enjoyed it.
