Quote:
Originally Posted by kwakatak
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.
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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
