The Luthier Community

Hey Brian
That binding looks great. And now I get to ask you what your plans for finish are...is this the one you are using the finish from Stew Mac on?
David

I wanted to do this one with french polish; I have gotten really good with that as of late, but this one will get lots of play in country and blues bars, so it will need a harder finish. I will be using the stewmac kit on this one. My nrxt one will be a polyester uv cured finish, that one will be cool!

~b

Here are a few pics of the neck work to get the thread up to par. Please bear with all my boring pics....I am trying to get better at getting them up.


I have posted this before, but I want to mention it again. This large barrel curling iron is killer for bending small bindings and purflings....I use it a ton.


Here is the inlay getting glued up. I used a dremmel and a dental burr I got from my dentist to do it, I like those better than the ones from stewmac because they are smaller and are carbide and titanium.




Inlay sanded down a bit and it is looking goodl. The blotch around the inlay is not a huge routing cavity, it is just glue still to be removed. I got this one pretty darn tight, I though I was going to crack it while putting it in.


I drilled out the peg head and test fit the tuners to see how it will look.


Here you can kind of see how I do my truss rod. It is a two way from LMII. I taper the channel deeper towards the body, and then taper a mahogany strip to fill as the splice. It tapers from just under an 8th to nothing.


After fitting the splice, I set a very sharp plane and take the spline to perfectly smooth.


Here is the fingerboard glue up. I use two clipped staples to hold in place, and the innertube to get nice tight even pressure all around.


just about ready to finish........I gotta get my electronics from Eben as well.

~B

That is sure looking good Brian!
And thanks for the curling iron tip. I hadn't seen that before, what a great idea for bindings and purfling.

Thanks,
Joe

Great use of the innertube, Brian! That look as though you'll get nice even downward pressure, as well as self-centering.

Nice, clean logo too!

Dennis

Brian
That headstock looks great!
David

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Dennis, two staples and a tightly wrapped innertube have worked perfectly for me the last few fingerboards. Clamps, even padded, never quite cover it all well enough, and most often still leave some kind of wood dent here or there that needs to be repaired or sanded. This neck os feeling amazing. It is goint to be very fast but solid.

~B

Well, B, Looks like I gotta get me a shorter section of inner tube than the one I use to put on the backs so I can try this, too.

Looking mighty fine, my friend.

G