Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Guitar , countdown to completion.

The countdown is on. A date has been set for the official opening of the Guitar Workshop. The aim is to have the guitars finished in time to show them off at the opening. The party is 9 days away!


I have been working flat out on the guitar over the last few weeks, often going back in during the week to speed up progress.

I finished off the back, painted the inside of the body with a light shellac (to try to stabilise the effect of the humidity on the wood) and finally joined it all together! Very exciting!

I've inserted a metal rod in the neck as the guitar will have steel strings and will need extra strength in the neck to prevent it bending.

The next step was decorative, cutting a strip away from the body of the guitar to allow me to insert a fresh strip of wood that would finish off the joins between the top, back and body. This last step has been painfully slow and has caused serious frustration. Each strip of wood needs bending over a hot pipe and apart from burning my fingers I have had piece after piece after piece snap. AARRGGHHHHHH!

Each of the four strips have to be glued in place and bound tightly with a strip of black rubber (I had to painfully cut from an inner tube of a truck tyre!) then left to dry overnight before unwrapping and gluing the next piece. Slow progress!

I am getting close to making the fingerboard out of a piece of ebony and fret wire. The next steps will be to do the final carving of the neck and head, creating the bridge and inserting the machine heads for tuning the strings.

All this in 9 days ???

Don't hold your breath!

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