Been Some Time

It's been some time since my last post, but life in Academe heats up over the latter part of April, first part of May -- all the celebrations leading to graduation.   I did fit the back and soundboard of the guitar, and glued it up.  You can see it in the photo at left. 

There are a couple of things I would do differently.  First, there is order of precedence.  I would glue up the back first.  It seems a well-duh! moment, but it's difficult to clean up squeeze out through the sound hole.  Second, I took the guitar out of the mold when I installed the end graft, and didn't put it back in.  I have had an idea for some time now to leave the guitar in the mold, and use violin clamps to glue up the back.  Once the shape has been determined, it can be removed from the mold to glue up the soundboard.  Third, I need to make a bevy of violin clamps.  It's possible to use various and sundry clamps, as I did, but the violin clamps would make it so much easier.

I did do some work on the binding channel.  I have pictured the binding jig in a previous post, but you can see it above, ready to use.  The guitar sits in the cradle, and the jig rides along the side as you cut the binding slot.  Some additional pictures are below to give some idea of the construction of the cradle and the jig.  Pretty simple stuff really.  The jig is essentially a drawer riding on metal full extension slides, which allows for up and down movement.  The hole at the top of the drawer is the "grip" for setting it down on the guitar.  NOTE:  do this carefully, particularly, on the soundboard.  Don't want to mar good work.

The router is attached to a plexiglass base that is inserted in the slot that you can see in the drawer toward the bottom.  It fits snugly for the moment, so I didn't put in a planned locking mechanism, but it would just be a set screw through a hardwood block above or below the slot.

In the photo at left, you can see the plexiglass base.  It is shaped to avoid touching the guitar except at very specific locations on the top and sides.  I use a rabbet bit, with a set of replaceable bearings.  There are other ways to do it, but I had the bit, so might as well use it.  I can get pretty close to the right depth, and I always make the binding a bit proud regardless, then scrape it down to final thickness after I've glued it up to the guitar.

The cradle is pretty straight forward as well.  It's just cut to the shape of the guitar, with the rests that you can see pictured below.

 As I said, I've cut the binding slots, and I did it by setting the guitar in the cradle, leveling it, and then running it around the edges of the guitar.  I'll talk a bit more about installing the purfling and binding in the next post, but I am running into some difficulties.