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

Tenor Guitar Neck

So been doing lots. the finger board is glued on and the neck is mostly carved.. I always enjoy carving the neck of an instrument.. for some reason t's relaxing.

Just some finish work to do on the neck then time to start on the bridge..

Gluing on the fingerboard

carving the neck

Still have the volute to carve

all done except for some sanding

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.

Finishing the Celtic Inlay

SO next steps were to route the cavity for the inlay, glue it in using 5 minute epoxy mixed with lamp black and sand it smooth. Sound simple and it actually is not too bad to do.. Using a 2:1 pantograph helps as the movements of the dremel tool are more controlled.

There are so many little cavities in this inlay that no matter what you end up chipping out some of them as you can see on the left in one of the photos but that is what the lamp black is there to fix :-)

Pantograph set up

All routed

Glued in

Sanded smooth

Cutting Shell

Rick's tenor guitar will have a Celtic knot inlay on the peghead. Tonight I cut that out & got ready to route the cavity in the Ebony peghead overlay.

I used a finer jeweller's blade than on previous inlays and that seemed to work better.

For routing the cavity I'll use the Pantograph I previously made and a twice life size pattern. I've done a test and it works well.. I do the real routing tomorrow.

Pattern laid out and ready to cut

And cut

Twice size pattern for the pantograph

I should say the twice life size pattern was made using the "big print" program from www.woodgears.ca, the pantograph idea also came from there.

Making Fretboards

Not many process pictures but I just finished the two fretboards for the tenor and parlour guitars.. 

One for the Parlour in Wenge with Paua shell bar fret markers and bound with the same binding as the guitar.

One for the tenor in Ebony with gold Mother of Pearl fret dots, also bound in maple like the guitar..

They still need to have the frets put in but I might wait for a bit on that as I am sort of into cutting pearl not I might cut the gold MOP celtic knot inlay for the tenor's headstock.

My little rig for cutting the slots for the bar fret markers

Yes I missed by about 1/32" the slots are 1/16"

Bound and ready for frets

Different angle

Completed Tenor Fretboard

And again the artistic Angle

The two together

Finishing the Rough Necks

Scarf Joints are done and now it's time to cut truss rod slots and glue up the heel blocks. Truss rod slots are done as stopped routes on a router table. The heel block glue up is a bit of a tedious process with a 5 piece neck, the lamination layers must line up 100% front & back otherwise things will look off when the heel is carved.

Both operations are done and next is some fingerboard work.

Truss rod slot cut, note the tape on the router table to
mark the edge of the router bit for the stopped cut

Both Tenor & Parlour necks done

gluing the last block on the heel, each block is glued on individually
so they can be exactly aligned

Two rough necks