Four Part Harmony

I’ve been down in the shop a bit less as of late. We’ve been pretty busy I guess, both with work and just general stuff around the house. Also the weather’s been pretty nice.

Still, I’ve found a bit of time to get some work done, and I’ve mostly been continuing to refine the neck. I had assumed that this part would take some work, but I have still been somewhat amazed at how long it has taken me to get it to a “finished” state. It seems most nights I’ll work and work at it, and when I finish at the end of the night I’ll think “Well, it’s not quite done, but it’s pretty much there.” Then I come back the next night, do just as much work and think “Well, it’s not quite done, but it’s pretty much there.” Still, each time it does seem to get a little bit better.

Here’s some photos.

This picture is over a week old. At this point, I’ve just started carving the neck volute, and made the first passes at getting the neck to it’s final dimensions. It took several hours to get to this point, and I’m pretty sure that when I went to bed I thought “Well, it’s not quite done, but it’s pretty much there.”

Here’s a shot after a few more sessions of carving. I say carving, but I actually use a file and a scraper for most of it. I did use a chisel to carve the volute near the headstock, which is starting to take shape in this picture. The neck heel is still way too thick, and the actual neck itself is far too thick. More scraping is in order.

Here’s the neck as it looks today. It’s close, but still needs a bit more work. The heel is much better. It’s nearly symmetrical, and much thinner. I’ve also got the overall neck thickness almost down to where it needs to be. I’d say maybe just one more session of working at it, but of course it’ll end up being 3 or 4.

One cool thing I did manage to do is get the fingerboard mostly completed. I neglected to get any pictures as I worked on this, which is too bad. I had been anxious to try my hand at some inlay, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off.

I really wanted to do all the inlay work myself. The little squares and diamonds can be bought very cheaply pre-made, but I wanted to try my hand at hand cutting them. I figured I needed the practice, especially if I am going to end up trying to do any inlay on the headstock. I ordered some small pieces of mother of pearl and hand cut the little squares and diamonds, which turned out to be a total pain, but worth it. The first few were really bad, but once I got going I got the hang of it. I even got confident enough by the end to throw in an abalone diamond at the 12th fret.

I routed the channels for each of the inlays, doing my best to keep a tight fit, which proved to be a tall order. When I dry fit the first inlay into the first channel, the fit was close, but far from perfect and I was worried that it might not look very good. But following the instructions that I have read in various places, I tacked the inlay into the channel with super glue, pressed a bunch of the ebony dust from routing into the channel all around the inlay, and then flooded the inlay and dust with superglue.

The resulting blob looked pretty bad before cleanup, but the next morning (of course I finished this job about 1:30 am) I got the sandpaper out and…Everything worked out really nicely! I was amazed actually. The lines are nearly invisible, and everything seated well.

And here’s a shot of the finished fingerboard, ready to be installed onto the neck (once it’s ready). I’m actually at a critical point where I will be able to permanently seat the neck to the body, along with the fingerboard and truss rod. Along with the overall shape of the neck this will really effect the action and playability of the guitar. This is part of the reason that I am making slow progress again, and spending so much time working on the neck. Well, that and the weather’s been nice.

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We’ve been pretty busy around here…here’s a quick batch of photos.

Well, actually here’s a little video of Anna and I playing the 3 card monte/shell game, except with a pinecone and some play-doh cans. Watch closely, she moves those cans pretty fast.

[flashvideo filename=wp-content/videos/anna-shell-game.flv /]

Anna and I went down to the Rhododendron Garden last week. We went all the time this past spring and summer to see the ducks, but haven’t been in months. Nothing really blooming yet but, as you can see, lots of geese. Lots of ducks and other waterfowl too, actually. Spring is in the air.

Here’s Anna listening to headphones for the first time. Well, I’ve tried to get her to listen to them in the past, but she hasn’t really been interested. But I put on her most recent favorite song (‘Jambalaya’) and she sat in her chair and listened to it all the way through twice.

This past Sunday the weather was beautiful, and we went up to the arboretum and Japanese garden.

Anna spent the first part of the walk putting together a little pine cone collection.

Here’s Anna, pretty happy about her pine cone collection.

And here’s another shot.

Unfortunately the camera battery died on us, shortly after this, so we didn’t get many pictures from the Japanese gardens. On the way in we saw a really interesting interaction between two hummingbirds. Presumably it was some sort of courtship behavior. One had a bright pink iridescence on its chest, the other was green and they were sitting on a branch just a few feet away from us chattering away at each other for a minute or so before they suddenly went zipping off. We also spent some time finding our reflections in the water.

So long for now.

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As I was mentioning, I spent the good majority of the past weekend working on the guitar, while Nicki and Anna were in Cincinnati. Nicki brought the camera along, so I had dug up our old one to try to get some photos while I worked. I had forgotten, though, that our old camera is kind of on the fritz, and really isn’t all that interested in taking pictures any more. Still, I managed to get a few pictures taken as I did a bunch of work finishing up the box of the guitar and continuing to work on the neck.

For starters, I made this jig to rout the mortise for the neck to bolt into.It all looks so simple and straightforward as I look back on these pictures, but you wouldn’t believe how nervous I was with that router cranking full blast into my nice clean guitar top. It turned out pretty good, but it may need some cleaning up.

I finished sawing the tenon and drilling the holes for the bolts. It fits fairly well in the mortise, with possibly just a little bit too much side to side play. I’ve still got a lot of fitting to do, as this is one of the more critical pieces of joinery in the guitar.

I set up my router table again, and routed out the headstock shape. It looks pretty nice, though I did get a few small chips that tore out. I’m not too worried, I think I’ll be able to smooth everything out.

I had my bending machine back out, as I bent the bindings and the herringbone purflings. I had been sort of simultaneously dreading and looking forward to doing the binding. The prospect of routing multiple channels, measured in hundredths of inches, into the top, back, and sides of the guitar just seemed like a tragedy waiting to happen.

Here’s a (pretty bad) shot of how the binding channels came out on the top. The back was a bit trickier, due to the 20-foot radius which makes it so that the router can’t cut a perpendicular channel to the proper depth. I struggled for a while, but eventually figured out a way of making it work.

With the channels cut, and after much fussing to make sure that they were uniform etc, I was able to glue and tape the bindings into place. Here’s how it looked on the back.

The top was even trickier, as I had to glue the binding in simultaneously with the herringbone purfling along the top.

Once the glue dried, I took the tape off and set about scraping all the dried glue off. This took forever. Actually it’s still not even quite done, but I’ve had to move on to other things for now. I go back and work on it in short bursts.

Here’s the top looking mostly done.

And here’s a view that shows the back and sides, as well as the end wedge which was tricky. I actually mitered the narrow side purflings to meet and not cross the end wedge, but it’s not really all that noticeable for all the effort I put into it. Still I think it looks better this way. You can also still see some of the glue that still needs to be cleaned up in this photo.

Another view of the top and sides.

I also managed to get the fretboard mostly put together. Here I’ve got the fret locations all laid out and ready to cut. I managed to cut all the fret slots, cut the taper into it, and glue on the bindings. I still need to sand it to radius and do whatever inlay I am going to do on it, which is what I’ve mostly been working on recently.

This picture shows the fretboard and the guitar body as it looks today. It’s really coming along. I’ve also been working on the neck the last couple days, and it is coming along pretty nicely.

More pictures probably coming soon.

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I haven’t had much opportunity to update the blog lately it seems.

Nicki and Anna spent 5 days in Cincinnati last weekend, visiting her family and giving Anna a chance to hang out with her cousins. They just got back earlier this week. Fortunately for me, Nicki’s sister Jenny put a bunch of pictures up on her blog over here, so you can go get the full scoop on what they did.

Nicki got some good pictures too, so I’ll post a few of ‘em here. There’s also some more in our photo album. From what I heard, Anna had a lot of fun with her cousins, and with her Grandma and Grandpa Newman.

Getting a group photo appears to have been a challenge.

At the Cincinnati conservatory with Grandma.

Anna at the conservatory with her trusty measuring tape.

More photos from the conservatory.

Making cookies with Grandma and Grandpa and cousin Emily.

Eating cookies (Anna’s specialty).

A nice picture with Grandma and Grandpa Newman.

Anna sitting on a cool butterfly bench.

As for me, I spent a few days with more free time than I knew what to do with. Did some stuff around the house and spent a whole lot of time working on the guitar. I’ll post some photos of the progress in a little while.

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