Ready for Bridges then Fretwork & Setup

Finish is done tuners installed time to glue on the bridges then they are ready for fretwork and setup.. #3 will be back from finishers by end of next week..

Neck & Headstock Work

So I'm actually making progress on the crossover guitar..

The neck to body attachment is mostly done and the tuner slots are routed into the headstock.

This will be a completely removable neck so it has what can best be described in wood working terms as a floating tenon which is glued into a mortise in the neck and floats in a mortise in the body similar to a regular bolt on mortise & tenon neck. The reason for the floating tenon glued into the neck is to that propell nuts can be used and there is no possibility they will tear-out of neck end grain.

There will also eventually be a fingerboad support routed into the body.

Tenon with Propell Nuts

Neck Mortise

Glued in Place

Ready to Route the Slots

Done

Came out good!

Test fitting tuners

Getting There....

So the Bridge is glued on and the tuners installed. Looks good I think now just the Nut, saddle & setup to do and I can see how it sounds...

Some Peghead Work

Now that the inlay is in Rick's tenor I can continue to work on the peghead  for it and the parlour..

First the overlay gets glued to the peghead. Then the peghead shape gets cut out.. There are a number of ways to do this and in fact for these two guitars I used two different ways. For the Parlour I traced the shape of the template on to the peghead and cut close to the line with a band saw. Then I attached a template to the top of the peghead and used a template sanding drum in a drill press to sand away the excess. Works just fine.

On Rick's I used a template "router" in a drill press.. Which is in fact just a piece of tool steel with the end sharpened (filed) at about 35 degrees and run in a drill press as fast as the drill press will run. With this method the template is attached to the back of the peghead.

For the peghead shape I used on this tenor  this method is really not required, the sander method will work just fine but for more elaborate pegheads like those found on classical guitars this is a great way to do things and it is very safe. The only drawback is you need to make multiple passes around the peghead as you can only take small bites with this method..

Some people use a regular router for this as well but for me too many things can go wrong, especially routing across the end grain of the peghead.

Drill press "router" setup

and the result

After this was done I cut the slots in the Parlour's peghead for the tuners, its a slot head design, my first one. To do this I used the LMI slotting jig and it worked out perfectly.

LMI jig set up to drill tuner holes

Flipped over to route the slot

Completed, back view

And front with a tuner test fitted

The fretboard end of the slots still need a ramp filed in them, but I'll do that another day.

OM Plus Guitar Finished

Well, I don't keep track of the number of hours spent on a guitar but this one was started in September..

It is all strung up and making music, it has good sound and lots of sustain so I'm happy with the result..

Very Close Now

Almost ready to make music, tuners installed, just the bridge, nut and some fret work left.