Second and Third Guitars

[John Reid]

Thought I start showing some pictures from my current projects.

I’m trying two guitars pretty much at the same time. Both OMs. One with Engelmann spruce the other with western spruce. Rosewood backs. So far it’s been fun and worthwhile doing them together.

The one picture is of the tops and backs.

The second picture is a close up of one of the backs. I’m looking for some help with this. This back has these little white spots mostly in the middle. They’re about 1-2 mm in size. I first tried sanding with 80 grit. Then I took off about 0.02-0.03” with a plane and sanded again, and they’re still there.

Any thoughts as to what these are and if I should do anything about them?

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Wipe down those white spots with mineral spirit. I had the. In EIR once and that took care of them

[John Reid]

Thanks for the suggestion of mineral spirits.

I just tried it. In each picture the left side was rubbed with mineral spirits and the right side was not. Hard to take good pictures, but I can’t say I see a big difference.

Maybe the spots as a just feature of the wood.

[John Reid]

Could use a little advice.

I just closed the box on a guitar and discovered a hairline crack in the rosewood back. I have no idea what caused it (was there all along? was it a humidity change?) It doesn’t appear to go all the way through and seems mechanically sound.

I was thinking of either 1) just filling it with CA or 2) filling it with CA/rosewood sanding dust.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

Hmm John
It may have been hiding there all along.
At this point I would wick in CA which should stabilize the crack and it should disappear. Then see what it's like when it's time for the finish. I bet it will be fine.

[John Reid]

After trying it out on some scrap pieces, I rubbed in some rosewood dust and then wicked in CA.

One can still see a line, but it’s not so obvious, and, I don’t think, noticeable from a few feet away. Now at least the crack is filled and hopefully stable.

Here’s an “after” close-up photo.

Thanks for the input.

[Kevin Sjostrand]

I imagine it will eventually be lost in the grain lines and only you will know it's there.

[John Reid]

I just closed the box on two guitars. So, far I’m enjoying doing two together. I didn’t know if that would be a good idea or not.

Here’s a couple of photos.

[jread]

beautiful. especially love the back inlay! I've done multiple guitars and usually have 2-3 going in various stages. It definitely can help in some phases but I do not enjoy trying to "complete" two together. Those final steps for fit and finish are a real time consumer for me and having two near completion tends to make me feel rushed. I prefer to have them in different phases. Start, assembly, finishing, setup.

[John Reid]

Another update on my second and third guitars I’m working on.

Finished the purfling and binding on them, along with the end wedges. I learned that maple binding was much easer to glue snugly to the binding channel than the ebony. The gaps I had in the ebony were easy to fill with CA/ebony dust. For gaps in the maple, I played with various sanding dust colors mixed with CA and found a combination that worked pretty well to blend in.