Acoustic Guitar Construction

John, you have no idea how interesting it's got for me. I need some advice from folks here about what to do about that rosette. Right now, I have put in the 2nd set of purfling strips, and was going to rout out for the 3 pieces I made and framed.
But here's what I'm looking at.



It seems no matter what I sand with, I end up getting the dark residue all over the top. As you can see, it loads up outside the boundary of the 3 pieces I was to inlay. Also, on the left side, you can see some chip out of the spruce top that looks pretty bad.

The top is almost to final thickness now, and I'm hesitant to sand anymore for this.
What comes to mind right now is to abort this side of the top, and do this on the other side.

When you have dark purfling strips inlaid in the top, how do you avoid this?
Is this a case where I should have put some sealer on first?
All help much appreciated.
Bob

Use a sealer on the top. I use a blond shellac, but you can use the big box Zinsser Bullseye Shellac Seal Coat as it is wax free. Depending on the final finish there may be better sealers to use. But in any case stop sanding and sharpen and use a scraper or carefully use a block plan to lower the purflings.

Ditto -- use a scraper blade

Whew! I finally got the rosette installed. It's not anywhere near what I wanted to do, but I'll have to practice on some scrap and learn more. Also, I need to get a few more bits for the Dremel.
Even though I wanted to try something different than I ended up with, I'm happy with it. I don't recall seeing one like it, so it does have some unique-ness.
While working on the rosette, I broke a very good 1/32" bit that left hardly any trace of itself except the hole. The 1/16" bit isn't as good.
At any rate, here's the rosette. The small circle is b/w/b and is about 1/32" wide. Won't be making more of these anytime soon :(.
Outside of that, flanking the sound hole are 2 pieces of cocobolo, with an ebony piece at the bottom. Prior to routing for those, I put down some of the purfling that I'll use along the top and back (maybe the back). It's black/white/bloodwood/white/black. All totaled, it's about .01" wide.
This wasn't the easiest thing I've ever done. Matter of fact, the initial top bit the dust when I tried installing this work on the reverse side. I guess 3rd time is the charm!
I put the pieces - all of them - just below the surface of the top. Since I don't have a thickness sander, I'm sanding down with a palm sander to get to where the rosette is flush. By the way, it's not done yet. I have a lot more sanding to do. Then, I'll use a plane on the reverse side to bring it down a bit faster.



In addition to the top, I started work on the finger board. The neck I'm using is semi-carved, but is 1 3/4" wide at the nut. I am using ebony to bind the board along with some white fiber from LMI. I like the way a bound fretboard looks, and have seen Steve Kinnaird's fretboards enough to try mimicking what he sometimes does. When you do one of these, be sure, absolutely sure, of your measurements. After I measured the thickness of the binding strips and the fiber, I found that I had to make the fretboard just about .18" thinner than intended - at both ends. It wore me out trying to convert from decimal to fraction and vice versa. I made all the conversions, marked the board, then walked away. The next day, I did the same math, and checked it against what I had marked. It all lined up correctly. Another WHEW! moment.

Here's the board and pieces that I'll put together either tonite or tomorrow.



Thanks for looking,
Bob

Wow, I think the rosette turned out very nice. I start buying the 1/32" end mills by the 5 or 6 pack. They are easy to brake.

John, thanks. I'll probably do the same if this keeps up. I do have some of the cheap ones that I got from one of the big vendors, and they came in sets of 5 or 6. But they burn the edges, even in spruce. That one I did have was really nice and left hardly any tear out. Not sure I can afford 6 at a time on them. :)

Having a really good night tonight. The binding of the fretboard went particularly well (knock on wood).
I first cut the long strips of ebony, and miter cut them with miters at the end nearest the sound hole. I used 45 deg miters on the two long ones, and increased the miter for the piece going onto the end. Since the board is slanted from headstock to soundhole, another 45 wouldn't mate up as well. These came out ok.

To start, I taped the end piece onto the fretboard and let it set for 30 min or more. I then put down some tape under the fretboard to hold the long pieces once I glued the two parts together. Placed them in position, and secured one side with tape.



A couple of minutes later, the other side got glued in.



After letting that set for about an hour, I removed the tape, and shaved down some of the white fiber. It was standing proud of the outside strips of ebony. I am very, very, very proud of the shaving I did on those parts. You can see one very long strip that went from one end to the other on the fretboard. I should frame that, as it's the best work of chiseling in my short history of chiseling. I know that chiseling something like this is stupid easy, but I've not yet become a good chiseler. Working on it!!




Since both the fiber and ebony bindings are taller than the fretboard, I went after it with 60 grit paper to bring them down to level. I have a wooden 8" block from StewMac that has a 16 deg radius, so I used that to bring them down. I then cut off the excess at the nut end, and sanded it all flush. Tomorrow, I'll do the bottom surface.



Earlier today I ordered some block gold mother of pearl from Andy DePaule to put in the frets at the usual locations. Should be here by the week's end.

Part of me says I should have left the bindings tall and used my Dremel with the StewMac base to cut the inlay. But the other side of me says that I probably didn't have the two bindings perfectly placed, and that there would be some tilt to the inlay pockets.

An alternative would be to place a couple of pieces of wood right next to the fretboard and have the Dremel ride on them. The last time I did a bound fretboard, I used white MOP and just rode on the surface of the fretboard. It came out well. Does anyone have any thoughts either way on this?
Thanks,
Bob

If the pieces are not that big I have had no issues at all. I am not sure the best way to deal with large inlays on the radiused fret board. I still cut the channel with the radius. On big pieces of pearl that stretch across the fret board you almost want them to bend a bit and follow the radius or you sand too much pearl off the edges. Call Andy and see what he thinks. In any case I always routed to the pearl depth on the radiused fret boards and have gotten away with it. Although it has never felt right to me.

I like the white purfling on the fret board. The miters look great.