More prep work and decisions

Today I continued to work on preparing the area where the neck meets the body.  Using a chisel, I was able to make the area where I plugged the existing hole flat, also remove material from the mahogany patch.

channel after chiseling plugged hole

removing material from mahogany patch

fitting the neck after mahogany patch

Since I have the opportunity to add custom features on the guitar, I have been looking at what others have done to get some ideas.  I'll possibly do some inlay in a few spots, but what I am most excited is adding some black walnut to the headstock.   Laura's grandfather made us some solid black walnut furniture and I was able to get some scrap wood that will fit on the headstock.  What is on the headstock now is Indian rosewood.  In order to remove it, I used a heat gun to loosen the glue and then a scraper to peel it off.  I had to be careful not to warp the headstock so I used a hand plane to thin out the rosewood that way I could use less heat for the glue.  

removing rosewood veneer with heat gun

using a plane to thin rosewood veneer 

veneer removed

using black walnut for end cap

black plastic cap will be replaced with black walnut

Up next I will be mounting the walnut onto the headstock and installing the herringbone trim and binding.

Things done...things to do

Prior to today I had completed the body of the guitar and the neck had come from Martin already cut and sanded.  What I did not understand was how the neck fit into the body.  As John and I were looking at it we decided to modify the connection to the body.  I did not take any pictures of this yet.  I do that next time.  Today I worked on filling a gap in the mahogany near the neck, how the edge binding would look, and set the body in a jig to prepare to cut the edge for the binding.

This shows the piece I cut to fill the gap that will show after setting the neck.

Around the sound hole there is herringbone inlay

Adding a herringbone perfling and black binding

Leveled in the jig and ready for the trim router

A side view of the trim router set up 

Guitar Build

Before Ben was born I received a Martin guitar kit as a gift.  Half way through the build I ran into some challenges on how some of the pieces fit together.  After reading the instructions from Martin and emailing/calling them I still didn't understand how it all fit together.  In 2010 I spoke with several guitar builders but was told they either were too busy to help me and they directed me to the library to do some more research.

As I kept looking for help I found a place called The Guitar House Workshop.  John, the owner, listened to what I was looking for and was excited to help.

I am really excited to continue the build ans as I work on the guitar I will be posting pictures and progress.

Rock On!

Jeff