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Sunday, May 23, 2010

Fretting

The task for this weekend was fitting and dressing the frets. With the binding on the neck, the frets needed to be undercut. I used a special tool from Steward Macdonald - it made job much easier. I'm beginning to feel the time pressure now.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

"I see you have constructed your own fretbender, young Skywalker"

I've mostly been gardening at the weekend, but I did manage to make a fretwire bending tool. It worked fairly well (that's the bent fretwire in the picture).

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Starting to look the part

I haven't updated in a while, but I've been making steady progress when time is available. The new bandsaw has been a real boon - I think that this will be a great workhorse in the garage. The neck is now mainly complete - just the frets to fit and a truss rod cover to make. The most recent change has been the addition of the side dots.

The body shaping involved a lot of planing, scraping and sanding and I think it looks quite nice. I've fitted the binding and I still HATE this plastic stuff. I know it's more authentic, and is easy to scrape flat, but the gluing is ever so fiddly and I always seem to be left with some gaps. These have been filled with epoxy, but I'm going to 'stick' with wood bindings in future!

The pictures show the neck in place, but there's no glue involved - I will apply the sunburst and finish (nitrocellulose from an aerosol can) to the neck and body seperately.