Rex's OM KMG kit first build

[RexZim]

Hello Everyone,

I am a newbie getting started with my first build. I have ordered an received an OM along with the complete success kit, figuring I am going to need all the help I can get. This forum and the speedy responses I got from Ken when considering what kit to buy were the primary reasons I went with KMG, but I am now very impressed with the tools and materials I have recently received. Now if I can just keep myself patient and be sure to follow the directions!

This project will hopefully be a gift to my son who is a pretty good picker.

The specs for my kit are as follows:

Sitka Spruce Top
East Indian Rosewood back and sides
Mahogony neck
EIR headstock veneer
EIR heel cap
EIR ebony dyed bridge plate
Maple Binding
b-w-b-w-b purfling
Rosette - Holly/ebony/EIR
Fingerboard - Ebony

I look forward to the learning process and hopefully this will be the first of many guitars to come.

I have sized the sides and done the pinning and glue up of the tail block.

tail-block-glue-up.jpg (25.59 KiB) Viewed 1584 times

An error I made when gluing up the tail block was to not overlap the neck block end enough resulting in a very slight glueless gap on the outer edges of the tail block AND a slightly larger lower bout. I've checked it however and I am still ok with the top and back covering the "excess". Wish I had viewed more logs to see how much overlap is right.

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Gluing the neck block....

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Leveling in the Mega Mold....

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Shaping the kerfing...having mild dyslexia made this somewhat humorous for me but I ultimately got in right.

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Glued the top and bottom kerfing in place but failed to take any pictures at that point. In hindsight (after later sanding the kerfing to profile the back) the kerfing for the back was glued a bit too high and I could have saved myself a slight bit of work if I had it slightly lower. Note to self: don't do that next time!

Applying the side reinforcements: Even with the digital caliper and a micro saw I found myself challenged as far as getting the strips the exact length, so I ended up sanding the ends to get the precision I wanted.

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Getting the correct angle on the neck block. I had to email Ken before doing this because my feeble brain was having a hard time getting itself around the whole neck set thing. But ultimately he re-assured me that I hadn't messed things up....

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neck-block-angle-sanding-5.jpg (22.59 KiB) Viewed 1550 times

[Dave Bagwill]

Welcome to the forum, Rex, it's good to have you here!!
We're all here for you and, as you said, Ken's support is invaluable.
Enjoy!

[RexZim]

Progress update on my build.

I got to work on the bracing by doing the glue-up of the bridge plate and testing the clamping for the x braces.

X brace clamp test.jpg (44.91 KiB) Viewed 1533 times

bridge plate glue-up.jpg (46.24 KiB) Viewed 1533 times

Rough shaped all of the braces and glued them up....

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Then made a whole lot of this.....

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Having examples from all of the other construction logs and from Ken's instructions was invaluable to me when it came to setting a standard to achieve. Trying my best to do a good job (and hoping the mistakes I have made along the way aren't terminal!)

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Bracing is now completed with the exception of carving out the brace under the neck block.

completed bracing 1.jpg (51.34 KiB) Viewed 1533 times

[John Parchem]

Looks really good.

[TonyinNYC]

Very clean work! Don't worry about the gap in the sides at the tail block. You will cover that with the tail wedge. If you were not planning on doing a tail wedge, you should consider one now!

[RexZim]

Thanks for that Tony. Ken did provide a tail wedge and I plan to use it.

One of the lessons I have learned thus far is that my Shopsmith bandsaw is not the best when it comes to cutting a straight line. I will not use it to make cuts like this on my next project.

[RexZim]

This week I had an unfortunate experience while working on the binding and purfling steps I wanted to relay to everyone so you don't make the same mistake I did.

While doing the back binding I had a few tiny gaps occur between the binding and the back even though I tried to be very diligent about going back to double and triple check the application. I used blue tape to hold the bindings taught and even double taped in some cases to apply extra pressure. One mistake I made was to not leave any space between tape pieces so I could SEE if there were any gaps there. I instead relied on going back and pressing the binding to detect any give or movement of the tape. Obviously that didn't work so well. I think the gaps are tiny enough that I can recover that. However, I didn't want to make that mistake on the bindings/purfling for the top, so.......

I switched to tan tape on the front due to it's improved holding power and after seeing that Ken recommended the tan stuff, and I left spaces between strips of tape so I could see any gaps. The result was very good as far as a lack of gaps is concerned, however I did have a bit of glue residue left on the spruce top after removing the tape. I was careful when removing the tape so I did pull off any fibers and I even heated the tape slightly with a hair dryer on low heat, but unfortunately there were a couple of strips of tape that apparently had a bit more adhesive and some was left behind.

I resorted to using naptha to do a quick wipe-down to get rid of the glue residue, and that is when the heartbreak set in. Not only did the naptha not remove the adhesive, but it took the rosewood dust from the sides and made a mess of my pretty maple bindings.

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I sent Ken an email to get his sage advice on what I had done. He told me that naptha turns the rosewood dust into a dye. On the brighter side, he said that naptha flashes quickly so the staining is likely not very deep and can be rectified with some light scraping. True to his word scraping is proving to do the trick and the maple is returning to its former glory.

You can likely see from the picture that my sides were perhaps not as flat as they should have been going in to the process of doing the binding. That is also a lesson learned here on my first build that will cause me to spend more time making the sides flat earlier in the process. As it is I am now becoming a scraping expert due to the extended amount of scraping I am doing, though this is not necessarily something I wanted to become an expert at.

While I am not proud of these mistakes, I chalk them (and others) up to experience and learning. They say you learn from your mistakes, so I guess I should be a genius pretty soon.