New project, a Koa and cedar 00

[John Parchem]

The wenge looks great in the wedge and the fret board. I generally radius before I bind as I radius while the fret board is still rectangle. With a pretapered fret board it makes sense to me to bind first.

I am only mentioning the following because I ran into trouble radiusing a tapered fret board.
As your fret board is already tapered you need to be careful while you radius. The block needs to remain in line with the center line of the fret board to keep the radius correct. When I have radiused tapered fret boards I have build a guide for the block that I setup in line with the fret boars center line. Also as there is less wood to sand toward the nut make sure you are not putting in an unintentional thickness taper.

[John J]

I did build a little jig that holds the tapered fretboard centered while the radius sanding block slides between rails.

[John J]

Had a little oops with the top side binding. This was the last curve and I knew I was going to have a serious gap. I cut the purfling ledge too deep at the left upper bout. I must have tilted the router in. My bad. Because of the abundance of black in the wenge binding I tried black epoxy. After a couple of coats I am pleased with the results.

[John Parchem]

Great fix!

[John J]

Any thoughts on this? Everything lines up good. I'm centered, the straightedge is about a 32nd above the bridge, the other side of the fingerboard extension lies flat on the soundboard. It's just this side has a slight gap.

[John Parchem]

Was you transverse bar radiused? I glue down the fret board on my necks that do not have a bolt on\off extension. At most with that gap it looks like you could have just a touch of fall away on the bass side of the extension. That is a good thing, not bad anyway. Even if you do not glue it down that gap might go away when you string the guitar. The 32nd over the bridge sounds good as you can have low action with a good amount of saddle showing.

[John J]

I only gave a slight taper at the very end of the transverse bar. My thoughts were to leave it alone for the time being. So far I haven't glued down any if my prior extensions. My fear is that I might make it worse trying to do anything now.