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What is your top thickness ? Just curious.
As for getting the rosette and purfling flat a good sharp block plane always gets it close enough to sand for me


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My top is currently .095. I plan to take a little off of the perimeter after it is a box. Probably .005. Maybe .010.

I was worried about taking off too much with a plane. I started pretty thin so I don't want to remove any more material than I have to. I barely touched the top with the scraper. Just a little Primavera dust, no shavings. I'm waiting until I'm close to completion to start leveling things. I'll leave more thickness to work with on the next guitar I build.

Now, how should I fill the cracks between the soundboard and purfling?

I'd like to use a black filler of some kind. I have black CA but I believe that will discolor the lighter top over time.

So I think I'm ready to close up the box.

Does anyone have a checklist they run through before closing it up?

What am I forgetting?

Thanks.

I'd put a big triangular bevel on each side of that neck block.
T/R hole/slot?
What is 2nd photo above? I sure would cover that joint...make a really wide butt wedge.

Make a fitted bridge gluing caul now while you can see what you are doing.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Yeah, I screwed up the bending. I have a plan for the butt joint.

Why bevel the neck block?

Oops, forgot about the truss rod. Thanks!

Nice. Good thinking!

You will have a radiused back glued to a block with two sharp points. Any shrinkage of the top due to humidity or string tension may telegraph the points of the neck block.

Cool. So I took your guys' advice and beveled the edges of the neck block and made a bridge caul.

No pics of the caul but here's the neck block:





And here it is all closed up:





I think I may have an issue though. The sides are not flat. They are wavy around the bottom and one side of the lower bout. It looks like it expanded while in the form. The sides are flat and straight all the way around in the middle of the sides but closer to the top and back there is a hump. Mostly near the back on the lower bout.

I noticed that every time I put the form on the guitar it got harder and harder to close. When gluing on the back I almost wasn't able to close it.

The relative humidity in my shop has been climbing steadily since I started building the guitar. I started out with an average temp of about 73 F and 35% RH. Now it is an average temp of 85 F and 43% RH.

The Chechen is really dense so maybe that's causing the waviness. Should I take it inside and let it acclimate a little before trying to level the sides? Inside the house it is usually 74 F and 30% RH.

Made some progress. Looks like binding is going to be the area where I need the most improvement.










Top binding turned out pretty good but I have learned just how brittle ebony can be. I took a significant chip out of both the front and back bindings while scraping them flush.

Any ideas how to repair chipped ebony binding?









Here's a couple shots of the carrier I made up to route the binding channels:





Thanks for looking. All comments appreciated.

Your guitar is looking good. That sucks about the chip out on the binding. You are at least lucky in the sense that it happened on the side that hardly ever gets looked at. For me, it always seems that things like that happen right where they will be most obvious.

One nice thing about ebony is that mistakes or flaws can be repaired to be almost invisible to completely invisible. From what I can see in the photo, my first thought would be to sand the surface of chipped section just until it's flat so that you can graft on a small piece of ebony made from a section of your leftover binding that matches the color and grain of the chipped area. The grafted on piece would need to have a flat surface that matches the flat surface of the sanded chipped area, the grain should be in the same orientation, and the piece would need to be a little proud of the adjacent good binding. After the glue has dried, sand the grafted piece to match the overall shape of the binding. It should blend in nicely.

I did something like this to fix an error on an ebony fretboard and the repair was completely invisible. In your case you have the added advantage that you will putting finish over the binding which will turn the ebony very black which will make it even harder to see that a repair was done.

Others here may have other ideas.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I didn't even consider that. I was thinking more along the lines of making up a paste from ebony dust and black CA glue.

Thanks for the suggestion. That sounds like a good option.

The CA and ebony dust approach could work if the chip outs are shallow. I've found that filling something more than about 1/32" deep and 1/4" or more across was a problem later because the CA shrank back a bit over time leaving a slight depression in the surface.

If you do decide to try grafting a piece of ebony onto the binding, you may want to do a trial run or two. You could bend a short piece of ebony binding to a curve similar to that in your photo, purposely make a chip out in it, and then fill it in to get a feel for what works best for doing the actual repair on the guitar.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I went with the graft idea, I think it turned out pretty good.

Nicely done! that looks great and it looks like the repair is invisible.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thanks. Yes, my wife and son couldn't find the repair when I asked them.

I'm pretty proud of it.

Thanks everyone for their suggestions and responses.

Neck Blank:




Fret bender using drill press (Danger Will Robinson! Use at own peril!):




Frets ready:




Frets on:



Neck Carving:






Headstock Plate:




Neck Joint:

Started the bridge:




Initially setting the saddle position:





Couldn't resist putting a few strings on and having a listen:

Working the bridge:












Simple saddle slotting jig for palm router:








Gluing the bridge:





Nothing left but install strap buttons and string it up:

Here's some sound clips. The sound quality isn't that great but you get the idea. I threw in some pics in a slideshow it's not a really produced video It's more of a way to post the sound than anything else.:

[youtube]https://youtu.be/y9MDOPaKVog[/youtube]

https://youtu.be/y9MDOPaKVog

Any feedback on the sound? The recordings are basically untouched. Some mild compression to try to tame the wildly varying volumes due to mic placement but other than that I wanted to try to capture the sound as honestly as possible so I can get feedback on any issues or things that need attention on my next build.

Any particular recordings that might help you tone gurus give feedback.

It sounds great to my friends family and myself but there is obviously some bias there. The only guitar I have played that played as well and sounded as good was a $5K Taylor. I even went back to Guitar Center to try it again to make sure I wasn't suffering from some sort of builders bias.

My ear is generally pretty good so I am confident it sounds good but I want to know what the more experienced guys think. For instance, there is definitely a hump in the 420-440Hz range that stands out to me but I haven't scoped it yet to try and measure the response.

So, in a nutshell, any feedback appreciated.

I had checked in on your thread a few times but hadn't seen any updates since August. So I happened to check today an lo and behold, it's completed! Congratulations! It's good to see it hadn't stalled out. It looks nice and it sounds good to me in your recording.

I like your distinctive bridge design. I like the look of the top. That came out nice. What's the idea behind the extension of the fretboard past the nut? Is that an aesthetic thing? I haven't seen something like that done before.

What are the metal things in the bridge pin holes you used to do string it up for a trial run?

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thanks! Nope, the build didn't stall out, just posting on the forum stalled. Plus forty days of that was finishing.



Yes, it's aesthetic. Eventually there will be little trenches that follow the string path out from the nut but I haven't gotten to that yet. Not sure that I will now because I am having so much fun playing it and I am busy planning the second one. lol.



Bridge bolts from StewMac. They are pretty cool. I was able to actually string and play the guitar before the bridge was glued on.

Here's a link:

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Tools_by_Job/Tools_for_Bridges/Acoustic_Bridge_Bolts_Package_of_4.html