17" Archtop Jazz Guitar finally starting it 5 years late!

[Kevin in California]

Herman apparently you can X brace or Parallel brace. The X is supposed to provide a warmer less powerful sound, more sweet. The Parallel more power and brighter.
I hope for warm and sweet. Quiet jazzzzzzzzzz

[Kevin in California]

Well I wish I knew what I was doing.
I can't find any clear pics of what the back arching should look like.
So I've stopped here on the back. I think it's close.
I drilled holes around the inside to a depth leaving .200" wall thickness. I'll scoop that out with small finger planes and then finish off with a consistent 3/16" thickness.

That's alot of maple to remove!!

[Kevin in California]

Preparing some bindings for the fretboard and headstock.

I'm using .090" white plastic binding and gluing a B/W .040" edge purfling to it.

I just apply the glue about 2 inches at a time and attach the two together using fortified (with rubber bands) clothes pins.

When dry I scrap the purfling flush to the binding then pull the binding through the binding thicknessing jig shown clamped in my work bench vise. My goal is .070" thick for these uses.

The B/W purfling is cut from a 1/4" wide piece down the middle using a simple jig on my small 10" Craftsman bandsaw.

[John Parchem]

cool set of jigs!

[peter havriluk]

Nice innovative use for that plane's blade!

[Kevin in California]

I got the inside of the back finally hollowed out.
This took hours!!!

Since my last post I made up the .090" white PVC bindings gluing a B/W edge purfling each one one then scraping the purfling flush and the putting them through my binding thicknessing jig to do further clean up and bring them down to .085".
My binding purfling scheme for the body is this binding and a .080" B/W/B/W purfling going into a .160" channel.
I'll have about .005" of proud binding to scrape flush with the sides.

I also cut my side pieces to 2 5/8" ( + 1/16" over for later cleanup) and ran them through the thickness sander to .090".

Then I trued up one edge of my ebony fingerboard blank with a #5 Stanley plane made in the 1920's with an edge guide attached. With one edge flat and square then I could attach the blank to my LMI slotting template and cut the fret slots on my mitre box set up and a fretting saw. I'm using a 25.4 scale as I have the template.
The plans call for a 25 scale....not much difference I just had to slightly alter the F hole positions on the top to accommodate the change.
I think the box set up cost $5 to make just adding an indexing pin that works with the jig.
I've done 18 fret boards with this set up and always get great results.

Next up I think I'll be bending the sides by hand on my electric pipe. I won't bother making forms for my bending machine since I don't figure I'll make another one of these guitars.

[John Parchem]

I can imagine carving the maple. Looks like a lot of work. I carved a maple neck once and that was enough for me.