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Ok, as promised to Serge, here are some pictures of my first box. It's mainly a LMI unserviced kit mostly following a plan from Kinkaid's book with Sapele back & sides,spruce top and rosewood fingerboard and bridge. I added rosewood bindins and endgraft prufling. I bought some Lacewood and made my rosette. I'm in the process of fitting the neck. BOY, the neck is a pain. It almost met the shop wall but I didn't think that would help much so I walked away and posted these pics. Clinton

Looks great!

The neck joint is one of the tricky parts to get right. Take it slow and easy and you should be okay.

Josh

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
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That looks great. I am certain you would be far more impressed with
your work if you could see my first build - it was the ugliest looking thing
to ever be built by mankind - and I'm not kidding.

The necks can be tricky. A neck angle of 1.5 degree should give you
something that is close to what you will need. One tip to help with
centerline alignment is to use locating pins when you glue on your
fretboard. I also find it easier to install the frets beforehand with an arbor
press before I attach the fingerboard to the neck. If you go that route,
just be sure you have a clamping caul that will eliminate any bowing
during the gluing process.

Remember, you are doing some of the hardest woodworking on the
planet. It isn't suppossed to be easy when you first start out.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product...I'm sure it will look
great.

God bless friend,
Simon

Keep comin' Clint! Slow and steady takes the prize!    It's looking great, and don't worry...once you really get in the zone on the neck, you'll be fine!

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I second what Josh said! take it slow and double slow on the neck....specially he joint!

With that said......very NICE work!
shows the rest when you're done!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Thanks for all the encouragement! It's like the more progress I make the more I have to lose. Scary. You know how some will farm out the finishing,maybe there's someone out there that fits necks! But then there is fretting,glueing the fingerboard and bridge and...oh yeah, finishing.Maybe I'll get Robbie's DVD and try french polishing. I'm already planning number 2.
Clinton

Clinton, you should just be proud of yourself bud, not only your box is looking pretty beautiful, your first rosette is awesome and on top of that, you already have the patience of an angel for not losin' it in that trickiest part of the build which was a failure on my first!

Way to go Clinton, keep up the good work, keep it simple as much as you can and build on!

Oh and keep the pics comin' please! Serge Poirier38824.9307407407

Clinton,

That box looks so good that I think you should take all the time you need to get the neck set correctly. I think I can see part of the problem. It looks like your mortise isn't quite square to your center line, and that could easily be what's throwing off your fitting. It's something that is hard to see when you're both standing close to it, and have been looking at it for some time. Here's a trick I've learned: Look at it in a mirror--it really does give you "new eyes!" For some reason, a hand-held mirror seems to reveal the most (guitar behind you, holding mirror over your shoulder), but you may get good results by just holding the body up to a bathroom mirror. Try it, it's a great mistake-spotter!

Carlton, I thought that might be the problem also, but the offset rosette gap isn't helping with seeing the center of the mortise. Maybe a picture from directly atop the mortise will tell all.

Clinton, nice looking guitar there. Realy nice for a first, heck even a 2nd, 3rd, 10th. As the others have said, go slow, put the neck in place, stand back and look at it. Also what you can to is hold the neck in place (clamps if you can) and hold a ruler along one side of the neck overtop of the body, now draw a pencil line down the neck side of the ruler, do the same on the other side and you will have the outer edges of the fret board extended to the box. Now measure in to the line from the widest part of the lower bout, you can now see if the neck is off center and adjust the back of the heal (and maybe the tennon) till you lay it out and get equal distances on both sides of the body to the outer extension of the fret board, now your on center of the body.

As far as the set of the neck goes, 1.5 degree is a starting point, measured off the vertical perpendicular edge of the fretboard face of the neck back toward the heal.

Check out this post by Rich Altieri on a neck angle problem he had, it may help.Rod True38824.9946643518

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Looks like you are doing a fine job. Keep up the good work.

Really nice Clinton,

Mike

The mirror thing really does help. I've found that after looking at something for too long, I stop "seeing" it, especially if I'm trying to get a sense of the shape of something. With a mirror, it's like seeing it for the first time.

Great job, Clinton, be sure to keep us up to date with pics. Might help save the neck again!

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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Stick with it, Clinton! Your doing fine! Yes, that break from it makes all the difference in the world at times.
Coe

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Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

Yep, I think I got the mortise going off to one side. Thanks for all the kind words, they really do help put things into perspective. I also noticed that I uploaded the same picture twice as opposed to three different pics. I did find a way to downsize them. It's a pain to keep scrolling your screen back & forth just to read clear to the end. Thanks again! Clinton