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this is how it looks as I glue the fretboard. The truss rod is now in the channel, sitting even with the plane of the neck. If the truss rod sits deeper, I make a wood spline to fit over the top, even with the plane of the neck.

The truss rod has glue on top. I always wipe it with a damp paper towel to clean any glue spooge off of the top of the rod, before putting the fretboard in place. Titebond original actually doesn't glue plastic very well, so it doesn't interfere with functionality. It does provide a filler at the bottom to eliminate rattling.

this is how I clamp the fretboard. After placing it on the glued neck, I put it upside down on my fretboard radius bar, place a contoured piece of wood on top, then clamp the entire thing to a workbench. You don't have to have a radius beam or caul.

You can just lay the neck with the fretboard on your bench. Then clamp the neck to the bench.

I am fitting the neck to the body getting everything to line up precisely. After all of my sanding to get the neck alignment and dovetail tight, my neck dropped a bit. I have put in two index cards and it’s just about perfect. Any problem with just gluing those index cards in there as spacers? That would be pretty convenient.

By the way, kudos to John Hall’s YouTube videos on the dovetail neck. I followed his procedure pretty closely and it really helped. I’m pretty happy with the neck to body joint.

no problem at all with gluing those shims. You did a very nice job on the dovetail and neck.

Body and neck are nearly done. It took me a LONG time to get the joint to fit well, but I finally got it to where I am happy with it. The neck turned out perfectly straight and centered. The fretboard nice and flat. The fretboard to bridge turned out very well too.

Man now I want a jumbo. Looks great!!

That does look great - congrats on the progess!

I am now diligently studying the finishing process. I am reading StewMac’s guitar finishing book (Recall that I have a Rosewood guitar). In the margins of the book, they mention to use a vinyl sealer barrier coat before applying the wood filler to the Rosewood ... this is to control the bleeding of the Rosewood into lacquer or over white binding (I also have white binding). Any problem with applying the following:

• 1. Apply vinyl sealer to Rosewood only, not the spruce top.

• 2. Apply dark wood filler to Rosewood only.

• 3. Apply shellac to the whole guitar.

• 4. Apply nitrocellulose lacquer to the whole guitar.

As you ponder the above order, what would you think about applying shellac in step one instead of vinyl sealer? If I did that, would I need to tape off the binding before doing the dark wood filler? In other words, will the shellac make the binding yellow? Will it protect the binding from the dark wood filler?

Thanks for your time.

Replying not to answer but offer that i used clear shellac as a sealer and it helped keep the rosewood from dying the shellac that dries on the binding i brushed it on the binding before sealing the wood. Still needed to scrape but it was better this time. I look forward to more experienced replies.

Just read your thread, some good work over coming problems maybe you shouldn't have had to have if someone had been on the ball at the factory, but maybe the same screw up let that fantastic set of rosewood leave the factory.
Hope finish goes ok, wood that nice deserves the best. Seems like high end wood with a great finish responds to a level you don't see in a lessor set no matter how good the finish is on that set.