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.