Guitar Making

When I pulled the back off of the side assembly, there were a few spots where it took decent size chunks of the lining out. The rest of the linings are pretty good, so instead of sanding down to the lowest common point, I'll just replace a section of lining and sand that back down even with the rest.


This little razor saw is used to mark the ends of the section I'll be removing.


Then I carefully chisel away the bulk of the lining...


...till there's just a thin sliver of the lining material left.



Then I finish up with a bit of sanding with 120. I'm using a white Staeder eraser as a sanding block, being careful not to round over the edge of the side.


Now it's all clean.


And I cut a new piece of lining to fit in the empty spot, glued it and clamped it.


You can see a spot where a little chunk of the mahogany neck block broke off when I removed the back. Note to self: Always keep the little splintered pieces if something breaks. So I superglued the little splintered chunk back in and sanded it back even.

Cliffs Note version: I messed up and now I'm going to undo and redo some stuff.



This is what I get for working too late when I have my mind on too much other stuff. At lunch today, I took all the tape off and had a look at the inside of the box. I think I must have accidentally shifted the top when I was tracing the perimeter of it, my braces were off center, and one end of the middle brace was even tucked under the lining a little bit. They're supposed to taper to nothing right before the lining. Anyway, I got home from work and removed the back. I used a paint scraper that I've ground thin, and sat next to my gas stove and heated the scraper in the flame. I'd put the scraper into the glue joint and slowly move around the back, separating it from the sides. I ended up separating the seam down the center of the back just a little bit because of the heat, I don't think that'll be too hard to fix. I'll likely end up removing all three braces and installing new ones. It's good practice anyway.

I likely won't have time to return to this till after Christmas.

This is an old mahogany table top section my friend Chris gave me to use for this buildoff guitar. I may use this wood for the neck. I need to do some scraping and sanding to really get a good look at what's there.

I used a flush trim bit in my laminate trimmer to trim off the excess of the back that's hanging over the sides.

Here are the two new tops with soundhole rings inlaid... I've already described my method and tools for that in earlier posts. The only difference is that I put them in the right place this time. It's hard to see in this pic, but they're the same black/white/black rings as I put in the other two tops. I need to get better lighting in my shop for taking pictures at night.