Official Luthiers Forum!

I've pretty much done it in all the various ways described. It depends, if it is a steel string dovetail guitar with body constructed separately from the neck the graft goes in at the rim stage before top and back and trimmed in place when routed.

If it is a classical guitar which is assembled on a solera (work board) I will put it in once the neck/top/side assembly is together but before the back is on this facilitates the alignment of the back strip which usually matches the endpiece on my guitars.

The exception is something like a style 45 which has a complex inlaid and mitered endpiece. In this case a tapered slug (usually maple) is fitted without glue at the rim stage. This provides a smooth surface for the cutter bearing to ride on to cut the binding and purfling channels. The slug is then removed and the various strips are installed and mitered to intersect with the side purflings. 

After reading this thread I'm going to re-think the way I do the end graft- I always mark my center lines on the tops and bottoms of the end and neck blocks but don't always line up the sides exactly on the line center line of the tail block as it will be covered by the end graft. I've taken the rims out of the mold, set up straight edges and saw cut the outside lines and then chiseled out the area for the graft.  All this has been described but I think in my case this leaves the chance for the graft to be slightly off of the centerline of the top and back joints, not good.  Seems like there is logic in gluing the top and back on, and before binding, cut that slot, insuring that the end plate is perfectly in line with the top and back centerlines.  I'm sure most of you guys have that covered but for me as an amateur, it's not a given!  Thanks for the good ideas.