Yesterday, we got things ready for today's final touches. First thing up was installing the last fret and doing the final fret dressing. We're a little jealous of all the work into finishing the body, so we have a protector over the top.
Next, I got to make a saddle from some Mammoth tusk that was sent to us. This stuff is way cool, but it smells like it's 10,000 years old.
Here I am trying to save as much of the tusk section as possible by just cutting off the edge. One cool thing I learned about, is if you can see the grains in the tusk (look upper left hand edge), you can measure the angle of those grains. If you can see them, they are
acute angles. This is a virtually definitive test that this tusk is Mammoth. All elephant ivory has those same grains, but they make
obtuse (greater than 90 degrees) angles. Pretty cool. I felt like I needed to check to make sure we were on the up and up.
Sanding the saddle blank to thickness. The coloration at the end of the saddle goes all the way through. Kinda neat.
From another much darker piece of Mastodon, we made this nut blank. Ready for test fitting strings and setting action.
Marking the radius for the saddle blank. Thanks Stew-Mac for the easy guide.
And why not something like taking a power drill to your top to end the day. Exciting! Chamfering the bridge pin holes and making the bridge nice.
Well, might as well go put some strings on...