Cuban Mahogany and Lutz Spruce 00

[Darryl Young]

Did the headstock inlay last night. I used the homemade "vise" as is described in Bill Cory's book to clamp and hold the neck while doing the inlay. Using this, the headstock was fairly level so it worked fine. Here is a pic and you can see the inlay tool I bought from John (air operated die cast grinder):

NeckClampedToInlayHeadstock.JPG

And here is a shot after routing the channel:

InlayRoutedOut.JPG

[Darryl Young]

And here is a pic of the inlay in place and flooded with thin CA (maybe you can see the black permanent marker scribbled on top of the gold mother of pearl inlay):

InlayFilledWithCA.JPG

And here is what it looked like after sanding. I can certainly improve:

HeadstockInlayDone.JPG

[Darryl Young]

On this guitar I'm using a faux bound fretboard so I have to cut the frets to length and nip the tang on either end to fit each individual slot. I got that done yesterday as well:

FretsCutToLengthAndTandNipped.JPG

[Ben-Had]

Pearl came out really nice. Did you use a 1/32 bit?

[Darryl Young]

Yes I did Tim......the ones John recommended here awhile back. Plenty of room for improvement but acceptable.

[Darryl Young]

I was going to fret today with the fretboard off the neck. I didn't as I'm now considering fretting after gluing the fretboard to the neck.

[Ben-Had]

I was going to fret today with the fretboard off the neck. I didn't as I'm now considering fretting after gluing the fretboard to the neck.

I've fretted all mine OFF the neck. I press them in.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Darryl your headstock inlay looks fabulous! Great job, and, the repair on the side looks pretty much gone too.
Great job. I love the fretboard inlays. Where did you get those?

Kevin

[Darryl Young]

Kevin, the inlays came from Andy DePaule. Its the K-5 ukulele set.

[Darryl Young]

This is the first time I've built a slot head. I'll admit I was a little intimidated to cut the ramps at the bottom of the slots for string clearance. I was afraid I might mess up the slots and they look pretty good now. It was time to give it a try, good or bad. Turns out it wasn't as difficult as I had anticipated.

I used a 3/8" rasp from Home Depot to remove most of the material. There was a little clearance between the sides of the rasp and the sides of the slot so it was easy to keep centered. I followed that up with 220g wrapped around a 7/16" dowel. That was still a bit undersized so I used 2 layers (0.480") of 220g sandpaper and it came out fine.

A question, do the strings wrap over the horizontal shaft or do they angle underneath the shaft ( from the nut)? I assume the strings run from the nut then go over the horizontal shaft of the tuner.

Here is a picture: