August 12, 2020
Glued the heel cap to the bottom of the heel section of the neck. Traditionally the heel cap is made from the same material as the back. Since I had the neck and the binding matching as blonde wood, I decided to lean into that contrast, go a little off tradition and use scrap from the fingerboard as the heel cap material. This way the fingerboard and heel cap were “negatives'“ of the binding on the body. Something about it just looked right to me.
August 21, 2020
Carved the rounded shape into the back of the neck between the headstock and the heel, which up to now had been left with its original rectangular cross section. This is the final procedure requiring mass removal of wood from the instrument. It’s all final shaping and sanding and finishing from here on out.
September 10, 2020
Started preparing the guitar for the French polish finish to the entire guitar except for the soundboard. First the entire guitar was sanded smooth, then I applied a grain filler to the open grain woods (sides back and headstock veneer) consisting of shellac cut with alcohol and sprinkled with a bit of pumice. After one or two rounds of filling the grain, I sanded those areas again, and started “building” the shellac body by rubbing sections of the guitar with a cloth rubber loaded with the shellac / alcohol mixture.
September 16, 2020
Prior to applying the finish to the soundboard, I glued on the bridge with three specialty clamps that have just the right arm length to clamp through the sound hole. They have an intermediate support to keep the clamps from excessively torquing the soundboard under the weight of the clamp. I used cork-lined blocks of wood or cauls to transfer the clamping force and to receive the intermediate clamp supports. I named the big one Corky the Caul and gave him a face.
September 28, 2020
After building the shellac finish to about 8 or 10 coats, and letting it harden for about a week, the next thing to do was to sand with 800 and 1000 grit sandpaper and then use a plastic polish and rag to remove swirls. I used Nexus brand plastic polish.
Here is a photo of the guitar after I decided I had enough coats of shellac but before polishing:
Then: the guitar was ready for setup and stringing. This is a fairly delicate and slow procedure but the idea is simple. In essence, you need to create six little round slots in the nut (the strip of bone or plastic at the headstock that the strings are pulled against), which will hold the strings at the correct spacing from each other and at the correct height above the frets. To do this you use round files with diameters matching the thickness of the strings.
The photo below is the guitar after setup and stringing up. Ta-da!
I must say I am pleased with how this instrument looks and sounds.
