www.KitGuitarsForum.com

1) glue in the label - this is #8

2) glue on the top - fit the braces same as the back

3) trim the edges with a flush cutting router bit

1) I've got a box! Here is the top . . .

2) And the back. All Alaskan Yellow Cedar, including the braces and some of the lining

3) All of the Yellow Cedar is very straight and fine grained, and the top has a very even pattern of silking. Hard to photograph.

Looks really nice Ed. Good work.

Very cool! I like the router picture. That's something I've got to do soon, and it makes me concerned about the router ripping out a chunk of rosewood.

Routers are about the scariest thing in woodworking. If you just follow the rules you will have no problem. Be sure to take it in a couple of bites - I would restrict the cut to 1/2 the diameter of the bit - you can do this easily by eye. Follow this pattern, which I am sure you have seen before

Just to add to the routing comments, my guitar of constant sorrow is prodding me to add 'don't use a cheap HF router'. The old adage about the only expensive tool is a cheap one applies. I've been thinking about what John says and does using an all around climbing cut. Combined with what Ed says about taking no more than a 'radius of bite' cut I might give that a try.

Ed, like Diane, I never toss out wood -- I found a section of Yellow Cedar (called Canadian Cypress when I bought it) that I built a couple of lutes with in 1980. What a glorious wood! Really looking forward to see your end result.

Dan

My first small router was the HF unit (on sale for $17) but I found the depth adjustment quite unreliable. It slipped when I was doing purfling after a successful binding session, so fortunately it could be fixed. I replaced it with the Rigid that I am more than happy with. The only thing I use from HF are their small bar clamps, 6" to 24" - we use them on the tall ship I work on, and have broken maybe 2-4 in the last 3 years, and you can bet they get heavily used. They go on sale for something like $3 for the smaller ones.

Busy time in the spring - glad to get some guitar building in:

1) Careful use of a smoothing file gets the sides close to flat

2) Then chalk and a sanding pipe to make sure they are flat. I decided to sand all the way to my final 220 grit so that I won't have to do much after the ebony binding is installed - that black dust is hard to control. A couple of coats of shellac and ready for binding

3) The ebony binding came at .25" and I am cutting it down to .21"

Has it been a month?? Spring is a terrible time to build a guitar when there is so much to do outdoors.. Since my last installment, I tried to bend some ebony binding from StewMac, but to no avail. It seemed like there was a lot of run out and I tried soaking, not soaking, water, and Windex, but eventually gave up and went with black plastic

1) Here are a couple of my bends - yuch

2) so now I narrow the plastic binding

So now the binding channels are next up.

1) Cutting the binding channel with my inexpensive but effective jig. This is much like those with the dumb bells, but simplified. You use a 1/4" bit for everything, and adjust the fence and the depth accordingly. A little fussy, but works fine

2) Here is both the binding channel and the purfling channel. After 8 guitars without a significant boo-boo, this jig is worth the minor clenching

3) Clean up the channels with a small file with a safe edge, using the cool bent riffler for the curvy sections at the waist