As I mentioned in my post before the holidays, one thing I want to do on this build is make myself a new "logo log" that I can cut a slice off of and inlay on the 12th fret. Well, it took a better part of a week and was probably the pickiest bit of woodworking I've done yet, but I think it was a success! I didn't get pictures of all the steps but hopefully enough to give you all a rough idea of how I pieced it together.
First, I glued up four layers of alternating white/black (maple and rocklite) and cut 45 degree angles along the length. I then glued maple along both of those bevels...
It was a bit of a trick to get good even clamping pressure so I had to make a funky little jig to hold everything but it seemed to work out great. I
really wanted to get clean maple joints, so as an extra precaution I used hot hide glue for everything. The idea being that once I cut off a slice to inlay, with a little heat and warm water I could probably tighten up any joints if something looked off...
One of the big challenges was trying to ensure that everything stayed even from end to end. It wouldn't be worth much if one end of the log was good and the other was out of alignment. At this stage I could flip pieces around to check that no matter which direction, everything lined up...
Getting ready to hide glue the two main pieces...
The little outside pieces actually caused me way more grief than I expected. Being so small, any tiny error had a relatively larger effect and flushing up the maple after gluing it around the edges (not done yet in the pic below) without touching/affecting any of the existing maple was a challenge. Knives, chisels, and patience!
The final clamping...
And done!
Once I start to radius the fingerboard I'll see how all the maple joints look and if I need to tighten anything up or sharpen some corners, but overall I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out! Both ends seem identical so I should have enough to last me at least 4 or 5 years -- a tricky and time consuming bit of work but hopefully worth it in the end!