MS D-18

[Ben-Had]

Tim,

I am thoroughly enjoying your Blog. Many thanks.

Jim

You're welcome.

[Ben-Had]

Installing the tuners. They are Ping (same tuner Martin uses) Keystone shaped.

[Ben-Had]

Locating the bridge and drilling the holes for glue up. I use a backer board when drilling to reduce/eliminate tear out of the bridge plate. I hate those broken off pieces you see on other guitars.

Edit: Should mention I use a #11 bit to drill the peg holes.

[Ben-Had]

This is my bridge gluing clamp. I soap up the screw threads to keep the glue off and make dis-assembly a little easier. I use fish glue so I leave on over night to cure. Later today I rough in the nut and tomorrow I'll string it up and complete the setup and anything else I may have over looked. Almost there.

[Ben-Had]

Roughing out the bone nut. The nut slot on this guitar is 10 degrees.

[Ben-Had]

I do a lot of sanding with this 1" x 30" belt sander from Harbor Freight. Where a mask and have the vacuum hooked up when grinding away at this bone material (glasses and ear protection too, figured I better throw in some safety as well).

[Ben-Had]

OK, now that the bridge is glued on it's time to level the frets.

[Ben-Had]

I move the bar in small circular motions and left and right as I level the frets. Because the bar is flat it only touches a very small portion of the fret at the highest point. This works much better for me than using a radius block.

[Ben-Had]

On to re-crowning the frets.

[Ben-Had]

After all the frets are re-crowned I polish them up. I use 320 and 600 grit 3M gold Fre-cut, 0000 steel wool and blue and pink 3M polishing papers. I wrap the 320 around that little handle I made. It has a radius to match the fret top cut into it. The 600 I use with just my finger tip then I rock the frets and make any adjustments to the high spots I find. Re-do the frets I found with high spots with the 320 and 660 then move on to the steel wool and polishing papers to finish up.