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Well, I was surfing ebay the other day and ran across a damaged Martin Dred kit, I made the guy an offer and he accepted it, Ooops! I have no idea why I did that, talking about being in over your head! Ha! Ha!

luckily I found ya'll and Bill Corey's book. I have made some progress and thought I would share some pictures.

More Pictures, I copied the carving from youtube videos of carving done in the Martin Factory. I hope I didn't mess anything up....

It sure does not look like you are over your head. Looks like a fun project.

looks great , the only thing I would add is to screw the neck block from the out side and the tail block. I stopped using inside block spreaders , in leu of the screws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcM3GErOI_A
your work looks nice. I think you used wood to cap the X brace. I use the cotton patch , in 15 years of working on guitars I have fixed many of them , but not one cloth .
you will have a good result , nice clean work

What was the damage in the kit?

Ed

This, so far, has been a very fun project! Between Bill Corey's book " and "Blues Creek Guitars, John Hall" videos, I have learned a lot! Excellent information!!!!!!

I have never used a router and I did not own one. I was "sweating" just putting the "back strip" in. I finally bought a router, played with it some and went for it this past Saturday, it turned out great. Now I am sweating routing the binding! I will need some help!

John, I did see the video on screwing the neck and tail blocks to the form, I will do that tonight. I was actually gluing the cotton patch on the cross braces while I was posting this last night so glad to know that is "the way" to do it.

Ed, the top was cracked straight down the middle from the sound hole, under where the bridge will be to the tail block. Right were if you had book matched top you would glue them together. Also the neck block had one of the support ears broken off. I bought it for basically half price so I was excited that was all that was wrong. You can see the crack in the above picture but you can not feel it and it looks like the grain in person. I believe that I am going to "sunburst" finish it, so I can cover up the crack if it shows up to bad...

Thanks for the comments and feel free to post suggestions!

Thanks,
Benjy

Here are some more pictures. I have the body glued up and I have been researching how to cut the binding and purfling channels. I built a tower to float the router and ordered the router bit and bearings. I will do a test run to see how it works. I am really sweating this part but that's what makes it exciting! I'll take some pictures of the tower after I get it worked out.

That looks really fine.

To secure the tail block, I put a 1/4" bolt through the end pin hole and the mold. The neck block got a woodscrew.

I did take John's advise and I put a screw in the neck and tail blocks. I hope I got them in the right spot before I glued and screwed them together! I guess it won't be long now before I find out!

My router bits came in today so headed out to the garage to see if my jig works...

John

I like this idea of screwing into the blocks while the rim is in the mold. I don't put a strap button in the heel block so I will have to come up with a way to hide the screw hole!!

Ed