Sanding & Pore Filling & Deja Vu

So I have been doing stuff.. I had "issues" with the neck angle on the parlour guitar once everything was glued up so had to remove the fretboard and remake it as well as sort of the neck angle. The neck angle is now perfect and the fretboard almost remade, it just needs frets. I also took the opportunity to do a bit of headstock inlay on the parlour and that worked out well.

This should look familiar

First try inlaying in anything other than ebony

I also did the finish sanding on Rick's tenor and did the first coats of pore fill on the back & sides, they will probably need two more coats.. I'm using z-poxy as a pore fill I like it as it is pretty forgiving..

Nice clean & simple looking

and the back

Side Bending

The next step in Rick's Tenor is to bend the sides, actually you could to several things next but I chose to bend the sides. It's my first time bending Walnut but it is suppose to bend easy and it did.. I also bent the Maple bindings. The process went well with no surprises.

I use a Fox style bender with a heating blanket and controller

After bending the sides are cut to length and placed in the form to help them hold shape until the end blocks and linings are installed.

Wrapping the sides for bending, parchment & foil

Sandwiched in the bender, spring steel - side - blanket - spring steel

Temp going up, max set to 290 which I did not even get to bending

Bend complete

Sides all trimmed and in the mould..

Next step will be routing the mortise in the neck block and gluing the blocks to the sides

Finishing the Rosette and Jointing the Back

The rosette is now finished and the top is planed and sanded to thickness, in this case looks like 2.6mm is it.. or at least as far as I have the guts to go..

Rosette installed in the guitar top

The inner & outer purfling lines added.

I've also got the back jointed tonight, and maybe I can get it down to thickness tomorrow..

Using a shooting board to get the joint smooth

I can never quite get it as smooth as I want with the hand plane
but a couple of passes with some 220 grit paper
on a framing square does the trick.

All clamped up the simple old fashioned way

So once the back is to thickness things can start coming together to look like a guitar....

Another Rosette

OK for Rick's tenor I thought I would get away from the random rosette and go with an 8 piece with black purfling between the pieces and around the rosette..

Since the back and sides are Black Walnut and I have a couple of chunks of that laying around, that's what got used..

First cut some thin strips on the table saw. then cut those strips into pieces with a 22.5 deg angle on each side..

Then glue the pieces together with a 1mm strip of black purfling between each..

Glued up (fish glue)

all cleaned up

Then secure the whole thing a route out the rosette shape

Turned out pretty good, one piece came apart during the routing, but re-glued and that gets to be the part under the fingerboard extension :-)

Next Step is to route the channel into the top..

Rick's Tenor

My friend Rick asked for a tenor guitar for GDAE tuning.. I think we have come up with a design that works for that.. Basically a Martin Size 5/Terz with a 21.375" scale but of course only 4 strings :-)

Walnut back & Sides with a nice Bearclaw Sitka top..

Just jointed & started to thickness the top.. Probably the stiffest top I've worked with but that should make for a good guitar in the long run (I hope)

The Top

And rubbed down a bit to show the figure...