Here's a Fun One--Spalted mango, bloodwood, and canarywood

[Ken C]

Made up some bloodwood purflings Friday night and installed them and some canarywood bindings on the spalted mango FB-185 yesterday. I still need to scrape them down, but I leveled the end graft area so I could check them out. This spalted wood looks cool, but it is a pain to work with. I'm not sure how many more times I will use spalted wood for a body. Took a lot to get this stabilized. I have two bottles of CA wicked into the back and sides. Even then a couple of spots along the edges wanted to crumble a bit as I was routing for the bindings. Curious to see how it will hold up over time.

Going has been slow on this one. I started it back in July. Hope to make some good progress over the next several weeks. Hard to tell in the pic, but when I cut the wood for the bindings, I bookmatched them. I'll post a few more pics when I have the body cleaned up.

Ken

DSCN3977.jpg

[darren]

WOW

[Tony_in_NYC]

That looks like another beauty Ken. I have on comment to make about it though...
ONLY ONE PIC??? Sheesh! What does the rest of it look like?

[Ken C]

Tony, the rest of the body looks pretty ratty. The bindings need to be leveled and all the tape mess cleaned up from the CA. I am always anxious to see how the miters on the end graft look, so I level that area first, and that is as far as I got on Saturday. I'll post a couple more pics when it looks a bit more respectable!

Ken

[Tony_in_NYC]

The miters look outstanding as usual! You do exceptional work sir. I really like the close up, high resolution pics. You can really see the quality of the craftsmanship, and yours is top notch.
When you do get the rest of it finished, please post a whole bunch of them. I am interested to see that spalted mango body....before she crumbles!

Did you really use CA to stabilize the entire body? I am surprised it only took two bottles. Must have stunk to high heaven!!

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Ken,
What a beautiful combination. That will be one fantastic looking guitar. So that mango had a lot of soft spots huh? I have wondered how stable it is. I use alot of spalted maple for knife handles, totally unusable until it has been stabilized.
Can't wait to see this one done.

Kevin

[tippie53]

All I can say is Puuurrrrdddieee

[Ken C]

Thanks guys!

Yeah Kevin, the back was especially bad. After all the CA, it feels like it will stay together. I also sized the back and rims a little thicker than I normally wood (pun). I glued the back panels together, the back kerfing, backstrip, and back bracing all with epoxy. That really slows down the process and even with DNA is tough to clean up completely. The bindings and purfs were glued on with CA.

I was originally going to use padauk for the purflings, but it came out so dark in my rosette, I changed my mind and went with bloodwood. The orangish purfling around the top is osage orange. This is the first time I have made my own purflings other than single pins. Kind of cool to make 'em out of whatever I want! I have slotted a crazy mad rose fingerboard to use and will probably make the bridge and headstock from some more normal looking mad rose. The neck is five piece from mahogany with a 1" center piece of flamed maple banded by padauk. Hopefully the padauk and bloodwood work together okay.

Okay Tony, here are some more pix!

IMGP0664.jpg

IMGP0667.jpg

IMGP0668.jpg

[Ken C]

One more of the end graft:

IMGP0674.jpg

[Tony_in_NYC]

Book matched bindings. Thats impressive. That mango sure is a work of art all by itself. When you turn it into something like this...well it makes you realize why we have trees.
This is a true beauty. I love canarywood the purflings on the top too. It all comes together very well. I cant wait to see the finished product.