Re: Second and Third Guitars
Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2023 8:28 pm
Of course, I had some “learning experiences” along the way. Here’s some highlights:
1. On the second guitar I had problems fitting the neck. On the first guitar I made last year, I guess I had beginner’s luck. On the first guitar I slowly and carefully made adjustments to the tenon and it ended up fitting nicely. On the second guitar I thought it was going well, but the neck ended up rocking up and down. So, I had to learn how to use shims. Took me a few tries, but I finally got the neck in place.
2. When doing binding on these two guitars, I thought I would be clever and put pieces of tape all around the sides before gluing in the binding/purfling, so that they would be easy to grab as I laid everything in. It was convenient, but without realizing it until the next day, I ended up gluing in several pieces of tape. Got a good laughed out of that, and some gaps I had to fill.
3. On the third guitar, I had more serious issues. It’s a long story of dumb mistakes, and the result was that, when radiussing the top, I sanded the neck block WAY too much. You can see in the picture that the truss rod access hole is only half there. What to do…. Well, I drilled out a new hole. The upper bout will be thinner than it should be. And, I’m going to have to remove a fair bit of wood on the neck tenon to fit it in to the too-short mortise. Good news, I guess, is that I carefully reviewed how I got there, and, hopefully, won’t make this mistake again. We’ll see.
1. On the second guitar I had problems fitting the neck. On the first guitar I made last year, I guess I had beginner’s luck. On the first guitar I slowly and carefully made adjustments to the tenon and it ended up fitting nicely. On the second guitar I thought it was going well, but the neck ended up rocking up and down. So, I had to learn how to use shims. Took me a few tries, but I finally got the neck in place.
2. When doing binding on these two guitars, I thought I would be clever and put pieces of tape all around the sides before gluing in the binding/purfling, so that they would be easy to grab as I laid everything in. It was convenient, but without realizing it until the next day, I ended up gluing in several pieces of tape. Got a good laughed out of that, and some gaps I had to fill.
3. On the third guitar, I had more serious issues. It’s a long story of dumb mistakes, and the result was that, when radiussing the top, I sanded the neck block WAY too much. You can see in the picture that the truss rod access hole is only half there. What to do…. Well, I drilled out a new hole. The upper bout will be thinner than it should be. And, I’m going to have to remove a fair bit of wood on the neck tenon to fit it in to the too-short mortise. Good news, I guess, is that I carefully reviewed how I got there, and, hopefully, won’t make this mistake again. We’ll see.