May 28th 2016

I have the box closed and bound. I was struggling to decide between ebony and koa for my bindings. I was browsing Gurian Instruments site and found ebony binding with a koa purfling strip. The of the amber koa line between the ebony and zircote settled the question. I got both!

But first I had to bend the ebony around the Venetian cutaway. I used the fox bender for the sides so I loaded up supersoft soaked strips into the binder and bent at around 300 degrees. Unfortunately I am not sure if the bending was successful (I suspect not), when I was taking the bindings out of the bender the spring steel exploded them in to a bunch of pieces. So I took out my free form bending iron and was able to bend the ebony was no issue. I bent very hot (I have a modified version that goes to 11, 10 was not hot enough)







I started with the back set my Fleishman binding machine up for a perfect cut and routed out the back. I found that the channel was not quite deep enough. I test on a flat board but I am routing on the radiused back. So I cut the channel about 1/64" deeper on a second pass



I just used tape to apply clamp on the bindings. On the back I used LMI yellow glue. On the top I used Franklin Hide Glue.

It went OK but I had a few gaps. I successfully tried a new trick for me where I had a gap between the binding and the side. I clamped the top of the binding with a cam clamp. I had a bit of pressure but not excessive. Then I used a heat gun to heat the binding. Sure enough it slid down and closed the gap, with a bit of squeeze out as well.

I closed a few gaps between the binding and back as well using heat and tape and or clamps to pull the binding in.

All and all it came out OK and I am really excited about the Koa pufling

June 2nd 2016

I like carving the neck but I tend to be nervous about the preparation I do to get ready to start carving. I need to take the big router to make the mortise. I switched to the table saw to make the tenon.

I use a 3/8th bit and my router table to route the truss rod channel in the neck.

Before making the tenon I sliced the angle I though the neck should have on the bottom of the neck blank to and checked the it was correct. I will use the same angle to cut out the mortise.

This is my new way of making the bolt on tenon using the table saw. I used a miter gauge to set the angle of the cheeks and I have the blade tilted at 5 degrees to make it easier to fit to the body.

I have a new grizzly tenoning jig to cut the tenon out. The jig actually allowed me to turn the neck back to front without changing a setting so for once I got a perfectly centered tenon.

It came out OK.

I have a luthiers tool body clamp and template. Not shown they have a Plexiglas template that allowed me to properly center the body clamp. I use a big router with a template follower and used a half inch down cut bit. The mortise is 3/4" deep.

I used my pillar drill (or drill press) to drill a couple of 5/8 holes for the brass inserts I use. I used to use a hand drill but I got tired of crooked holes. I used hole centers to mark where the bolt holes needed to go on the neck block and then installed the brass inserts. You can see why I need to mark the holes as I was off center on one. :(



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. Before going farther I really need a fret board. The neck will be a bolt on bolt off. Before I drill the pocket for the the neck extension block I wanted the neck centered and at the correct angle. This is my forth guitar that I used the fret board radius router bits I purchased from [url]http://sje-tools.com/[/url]. They really work well and save me from a bunch of planing and sanding. THis router bit gets me 95% there. I just clean the fret board with a radius block.





While I was at it I sawed the fret slots and use a band saw and a plane to taper the fret board

I trimmed the lower portion of the neck to match the fret board with the band saw and a spoke shave. With the neck to body join properly dimension. I went through the normal procedure to correct a bit of side to side tilt and fine tuned the neck angle.

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. With the neck properly aligned and bolted on I used my jig to route out the pocket in both the neck block and the neck itself. I did not take a picture but here are a couple from my last guitar. [img]

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And this guitar

Currently I have the extension clamped into the neck while the glue cures.