Angry Gary?

Looks like Gary's not too happy with my guitar!

Drilling placement holes for the machine heads...

I used a template to mark out the position of the holes and proceeded to hand drill them with a 4mm bit. I then moved over to the pillar drill and drilled the width to 10mm to match the machine head's width. There was a slight bit of wood splintering at the back of the holes but they would be covered by the machine heads so it was fine.

Paulie's finished!

Fair play to him!

Shaping up...

With the neck and fretboard shaped, it was time to join them up in the vice and sand them flush to each other. This would mean that there would be no discomfort at moving your hand up the neck, not snagging your fingers on fret-wire. This was not a strenuous exercise.

Binding the body...

Another form of decoration, binding. Strips of timber lacing the edges of the body as well as a second layer of a different bind being applied to the top plate.
Channels first had to be routed, two for the top plate and one for the back. This was fairly simple.
Bending irons then had to be switched on and much like the sides of the guitar, precision followed. The bending was very time consuming as (like a fool) I did the 3 binds separately. This meant I had to wait for the face binding on the top plate to glue to the surface before I could apply the next one.
The binding was held down with masking tape but there were some spots which rose up from the body which I filled with a paste of wood filler and glue. Job done.
Now for the cleaning up of the body.

The neck

Shaping the neck was the most time consuming effort I have faced yet. Had we to use the rasp on its own I would have pulled my hair out. However as opposed to last year we were allowed to use the spokeshave which made the effort considerably less, but still cost two classes. I feel as though my neck may be too narrow at the headstock but we will have to see when the strings and nut are applied.
I applied a layer of maple on the headstock for decoration as well as putting my own inverted half moon design on the top of it.

Binding faced me...

Decoration and routing...

I decided, like most of the class to lay vertical strips of wood along the back plate. I cut the pieces out to measurement, applied glue to their undersides and using masking tape, held them in place.
I now had to begin shaping the neck.

I began by routing a channel through the center of the neck to place the truss rod in which would join the neck with the body, when attached. The channel went right up to the edge of the neck with just enough space to insert the nut.
The rest of the class was spent fitting the top plate to the back and sides. This was done much like the back plate - spool clamps. I had perfect connectivity along the join as the spools were tight with each other leaving no space between for gaps.

Fretting the fretboard

The fretboard shaped,slotted and dotted all that was left to do now was fret it!
Cutting pieces of fret wire off of a roll, I began fretting the board by applying dabs of glue to the slots and giving three swift strokes of the hammer. The job took almost a full class with the remainder spent snipping the edges of the fret wire off and sanding it down on the belt sander.

Inserting the dots

Next was the insertion of the abalone dots along the fret board for decoration and direction. First I drilled into the fret board with a 4mm drill bit so as the 8mm bit that would be indenting the fret board, would have a focus point and would not veer off-target slightly. The drilling finished, I placed some glue in the pockets and inserted the dots, sellotaping over them so as to put pressure on them.

Slotting the fretboard

I placed the fretboard into a slot jig with 3 pieces of double sided tape holding it in place. There was ample waste either side of the desired length so I knew that I had a bit to play with if I wanted to design the part around the sound hole. The slots took a long time to cut and even though there was only a marginal room for error I still felt very concious slotting. Next was the inserting of the abalone dots.