Long time! Yes wrong ebony is not easy. Glues together nice!

Hey, KG. Yeah, but you know I have the patience of Job - and only two nerves left in my entire central nervous system. It gets me through the day but nothing gets done. Just ask my wife!

One more week of summer vacation and then I have some time to myself. I need to plan before my wife massages the honey do list. Already she's asked what I have planned - but she assumes that I'll be stepping up on the home improvements. ;)

I loved building that laminated neck the first time around that I did a couple more just in case. One didn't turn out well; the neck actually warped slightly but the other did and I glued on the headstock ears and routed out the truss rod trench. Today I leveled out the front of the headstock.

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps412995c8.jpg

The idea is to duplicate the neck of my #1 (with the exception that the central layer is Bolivian rosewood instead of walnut) which I've still been working on. I didn't like the neck profile so I've been sanding it down and it feels much more comfortable.

Even though my Larrivee got kabonged I've been moving forward on this behind the scenes collecting materials and planning the next steps. I've also been working on the neck blank down in my basement with focus on getting the headstock to its final shape and thickness.

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps9566f1e5.jpg

I plan to use ziricote for the headstock face plate and back plate. The blank has the same shape volute as the first but I plan on whittling it down to a diamond shape.

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps44f7873b.jpg

I'm going to trim away a lot of the sap wood so that the figuring in the set on the left fits on the headstock. The other set will go on the back of the headstock. As for the "scraps" I'm thinking of trying my hand at doing one of those mosaic type designs on the end wedge, rosette and maybe f.retboard markers. I'd also like to use a small bit of zip flex.

Meanwhile, I'm getting the pieces for the rims prepared. The rosewood sides are thin enough to bend. I just need to figure out the final orientation and cut out the taper on my little bandsaw.

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...psb372a155.jpg

I missed my deadline by a year. Oh well. My customer is patient. ;-)

J/K - this is only my second and I'm still learning; mostly by not making the same mistakes I made last time!

My thanks once again to Kitchen Guitars for allowing me to invade his space and helping lug the Jet 10/20 out to the driveway with me before the cold spell hit. I owe him big for all he's done for me.

The sides are a tad thin (.077) but doable IMO. Any thinner and I'd have to do double sides but I am the king of key cracks and I'll need to learn how to repair them. Good thing it's cold outside now because bending sides is hot work.

Seriously though, luthiers rave about the pliability of EIR and I can vouch for it. The sides seem to WANT to bend now. I'm hoping it goes that easily because bending mahogany was like trying to bend rice crackers.

Meanwhile, I've been whittling away at the tenon on the neck blank. A local hardware store in a ritzier part of town had EXACTLY the same type of threaded brass inserts that Tim McKnight ended up swapping out the barrel bolts on my first build with - along with some different bolts that can be finger tightened. I made it a point to drill the holes BEFORE cutting out the shape of the tenon and so far there's a nice tight fit in the mortise of the pre-cut neck block though the tenon is still a tad long. I' think I'm going to have to pull the inserts and drill a little more. Hopefully the tenon won't explode like it did on my first build.

When I get frustrated I put it aside and look at the fretboard. It's a nice piece of streaked ebony which I intend to bind with curly maple. I'm kicking around ideas for inlay though. This is the fun part. I got good feedback on how I covered up a purfling boo boo on the body binding of my first build. I'm feeling more ambitious for this one though. I have a color palette of ebony, maple, rosewood, ziricote and some leftover zig zag from the back strip (for texture) to work with. I plan to do something similar with my rosette. I bought extra double fluted bits for my Dremel to make it happen. Right now it's time to doodle out ideas.

way to go!.

personally i hate rosewood. i don't like the smell and i don't like the purple dust and the purple stains it makes. i like the color though.

re: inserts, these are things that you want to go in once and stay put. i suggest making something to contain the sides of the tenon to keep it from blowing out on you should you have to drill deeper. also clamping up to a drill press will go a long way to making sure things are steady and centered and will help with depth control as well. once installed i like to wick in some ca down the external threads to lock things in.

re: your thin sides, might wanna consider wood re-enforcing strips up the sides to help out a bit.

re: inlay, maybe you could do something that reminds the client of what they like or are interested in. leaves?, dogs?, planets?, ancient aztec runes? i dunno.. something personalized you know?

keep at it man :)

Just so you know, I was saying "my client is patient" with tongue planted firmly in cheek. There is no client. Just me. ;)

As for the sides, yeah, I'm definitely going to be installing a LOT of reinforcing strips/braces. My first build is really light. This one will probably be on the light side as well. I just need to watch it closely; my kids will not be fiddling around with this one. Maybe the next?

FINALLY bent the sides. Thanks, John. It was incredibly easy this time around. I see the allure of working with EIR; at 220 when you get that first whips of stem it bends like it's made of rubber.

I still haven't come to a decision on the rosette though.

Seeing some DIY NGD threads has inspired me to seek out this thread and give an update. A couple of weeks ago I revisited the work in progress and glued in half the kerfing. I'm hoping to get back over to Kitchen Guitars' place and flip it over so I can finish off the other side.

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps5szwngpp.jpg

Meanwhile. I have the neck and bracing here at home to work with.

Splitting the billet. This one had very little runout and I figure I can get all the back ladder braces and the upper transverse brace.
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps1itph2mh.jpg

Meanwhile, I'd previously split another billet and got enough out of it for one of the longer back braces, both X braces and the lower face braces:

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...psogsymf9j.jpg

I think I need to do the kerfing over. When I glued them on, I glued them below the edge of the rims. When I took off the clips they were all crooked and would require me to sand away too much of the rims, making the guitar less than 4" deep at the neck joint and 4-1/2" at the tail block. So, out comes the chisels a little early and scraper and an order for more kerfing and other goodies.

Meanwhile, a recent project with padauk has left my bench plane a little dull and my back plate is still .13" thick in places, so I need to sharpen my planes, chisels and scrapers.

Two steps forward for one step back but I'm trying to be patient and keep my eyes on the goal.

Do you have a band saw? You could make your own kerfing without too much difficulty.

No, I only have a 9" Ryobi bandsaw so it's too small and inaccurate to do anything with other than to work on bracing; I could only do 9" sections of kerf and it wouldn't look clean if I tried to do reverse kerfing.

Last night I chiseled all the kerfing off, which after a time became a rather easy if not repetitive task. I was worried that I would get clumsy and split the rosewood but I got off lucky. Now I'm in the midst of using a card scraper to get rid of the rest of the basswood/Titebond residueand I'll be ready to give it another go once I get replacement kerfing. That's probably not going to be for at least a week.

In the meantime, I've draw the outlines for the rosette (Stewmac herringbone rosette but with single BWB purfling rings instead of the double rings provided) on one side of the top and have begun mapping out the bracing pattern on the reverse side. I'm hoping that the circle cutting jig for the Dremel plunge router is accurate enough.

On the flip side, I'll be modying the X brace to be wider just as I did with my first build. The OLF plans call for an 87 degree angle but I went well past a right angle last time and will do so again. I am also going to make the X brace 1/4" wide as opposed to 5/16" as is standard in homage to the Martin 35s. I'm hoping that the Carpathian spruce benefits from it.

Uh oh.

Looking at my sides in the mold I see that I made even MORE boo-boos. I'm going to have to redo the blocks too. They're off-center.

What WAS I thinking? *face palm*

http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...psr5rkw2al.jpg

As the title states: I am an amateur. Clearly I need to slow down and orient my cranium before doing things. It's not as if I'm rushing here after all.

Maybe its the time of day you are working on it ;)

Nothing wrong with an asymmetric guitar. Built a few myself.