L-0 Guitars

Moving on to working on the necks for a bit, don't feel like doing a bunch of sanding on the boddies right now. Matching necks to bodies.

Matching Necks to Bodies

Oak, walnut & koa

Closed Up and Necks

Well things are going well both bodies are closed up and necks are well underway.

Both bodies and  progress on the necks.
Harp in the background waiting on some attention

Two Pieces Become One - temporarily....

The Tenor Uke is getting closer to completion, I joined the neck & body tonight just to verify the neck angle and alignment, pretty close but need a bit of tuning. The Fretboard is cut and bound ready for the frets as well. So once that is done I can carve the neck and then just the bridge is left to make..

The Bindings

Routing the binding channels in a guitar body has to be one of the more stressful steps in building a guitar. You have a nice closed box and now you are going to start routing out pieces of it.. A mistake can be darn near unfixable if  you mess up big time.. Besides the channels need to be precisely sized and consistent for the bindings to look good once installed..

I've tried several methods to do this all with varying degrees of success.. I am partly limited by a small work space so some of the bigger parallel arm jigs for this are out of the question size wise.. My current jig is a variation on a Charles Fox design and ones I've seen in some production guitar factory videos.. The key to all binding jigs is that they reference off the sides of the guitar NOT the top which is arched, only a small part of the to top or back is in contact with the jig so the arch does not effect the accuracy of the routed channel..

This new jig worked very well and this was by far the least stress I have had routing binding channels so that coupled with the relatively small size of this jig makes it a keeper.. I'm sure some of the bigger jigs are even easier to use (from what I've seen) but they just are not an option for me due to space.

The jig, the side of the guitar references on
the guide that sticks out, depth is set by moving
the guide up and down and  by adjusting the
router bit's depth, the only place the top or back contacts
the jig is the small piece of wood with two screws in it.

Completed channels, nice smooth and even

Another view

Bindings installed and taped in place while the glue dries.
I use fish glue for this as it allows time to get the bindings set in correctly

And from the top

The completed bindings

From the back

and from the side, I'm happy with how the ebony looks with the Koa wood.

Finished French Polish

So the finishing is finished ... A good amber shellac, lots of thin coats and lots of rubbing.. It has the overall darker tone I was looking for now to install the tuners as fit the bridge.

Starting to look like a guitar

Well the neck is pretty much finished, just some more sanding to do. it is now attached to the guitar and the whole thing looks like a musical instrument.. I really like this point, you can really see what you envisioned when you started planning down rough wood.. Over Christmas and the holidays I'll probably finalize the design of the bridge so I can get this finished in January.