Acoustic Guitar Construction

Started work on the fingerboard - marked the centerline, and tapered
1 3/4 @ Nut
2 5/16 at the 12th

A super sharp Veritas Low Angle Jack plane made quick and easy work of tapering the ebony board.

Started doing a little of the Paua inlay - still a lot of work in refining my router work for inlay, but feeling pretty good about these first two.

Glued in the truss rod and filler strip.
Scraped down the filler strip with a regular old cabinet scraper - would still like to try one of those new Carruth scrapers.

I've also started with the finish on the back of the body. I originally thought about suing Tru-oil, as I've had great luck finishing other wood projects with that in the past, but I've long been intrigued by the French polish process.

I'm following the process Robert O'brien teaches in his French polishing video - well worth the investment for me, as he covers it in great detail. Both how it should work, and how to fix or address issues that come up.

Clearly a lot to learn about pore filling, but I'm very happy with the finish so far. This is just one polishing/spiriting cycle into it - I'll do another 2-4 polishing/spiriting-off before I rub out the finish.

That is looking very nice. It is amazing how nice the FP looks once you get a bit of build up. Robbie's method has you cleaning the finish with alcohol after each session. So the guitar is always left looking great.

I had planned to do a Paua snowflake style inlay, but it looked a little over the top. So I've come up with a pared down /modified snowflake - here is a shot of 9th, 12th and 15th.

Stewmac dremel router base with a carbide downcut spiral makes pretty easy work of it. I do need to look into getting a much smaller chisel / x-acto chisel for cleaning out the corners of the diamond inlay pockets. Some of the inlay looks almost seamless - some you can see glue lines around if looking closely. The snowflake at the 5th was the most challenging to do cleanly.

A little more progress

Bridge Setter in action: