Acoustic Guitar Construction

K, it looks to me like yer old jack plane is doing fine! Using a hand plane, even though I have jointer and planer, is one of the most satisfying things a woodworker can do.

But the plane iron has to be splendidly sharp, the chip breaker back not more than 1/16" from the cutting edge, and the depth of cut set to pare off continuous full-length ribbons about .004" thick.

I used to tell my Jr. Hi Woods students I could tell all the way across the shop if they had the depth set correctly as I could tell from the sound - and then I'd show them the difference and they could do it, too. You and John Parchem know what I'm talkin' about...

I just got lucky. I have two smaller planes that I just don't seem to be able to get sharp enough. The Spanish cedar cuts like butter.

I am pretty proud of this. I got brave and tried a slot head again. This time a forstner bit and sharp chisel did the trick. I also made my own dovetail joint without all the expensive trick tools. Someday I will splurge on them but not today. It's a pretty good fit. I have a small amount of twist but I can handle it.

Pretty impressive woodworking skills. The joint and the slots look great.

This is my poor boy, AKA tight wad fret slot jig. It works OK with some care.
I was pretty happy with my slots. Then as I was planing the sides to size a nice chunk came off the end. I'm not really fealing
the love for African Blackwood at the moment. I don't think the radius will be enough to take care of it. I am open to ideas for a salvage.
Neck is coming along. I glue the neck to a block with a couple of drops of white Elmers to make for easy clamping. Heat gun gets it off. I am going for a nice volute like I saw in one of Herman's builds!

The nice things about really dark wood is fairly large repairs can be made invisibly. I think after you finish trimming and adding the radius there will be little to repair. If you have the chip or you can get a bit of the off cut and glue it in the divet. Once you clean it up, it should go away. The guitar is really coming together. I think the volute will look great.

BTW I used my official administrator privileges and reordered your pictures. Once you add your pictures as attachments you can place them in the post anywhere you want by using the inline button
Otherwise they show up by default in the reverse ordered added.

Just an update. Binding and purfling are on and scraped. I went for a simple yet elegant look. I made the maple purfling from a Hurricane Harvey flooded dresser. That was rewarding. I now have a ton of maple binding and purfling. A wash coat of shellac has been done. I toyed with pore filling with CA or epoxy but decided to go with what I know. It worked fine on test pieces and filled easier than I expected.