@robin well I found a junior hacksaw blade, what I also found was a piercing saw i forgot I had so can easily get it out with that 🙂

@tej

There's always a way.

Looks great @tej!

The piercing saw worked a treat to clear the glue in the fret slots, no where near as much in as I’d thought which was good. Anyway, the fret board is on, irritatingly not perfectly aligned but we’re talking about .45mm deviation over the length of the board so not worth redoing to correct that. No idea how that happened as the dry clamp was perfect, possibly didn’t have the nails in deep enough.

Next to get the front headstock laminate on…

looking good

Routed the truss rod slot on the front headstock veneer and glued it on. It’s really thick and I want it at about half a mm so I’ll surface route it to thickness on the neck angle jig when it’s dry. Getting there slowly!

Lookin great, more pics please @tej!

@mattbeels will take a few more, tend to get carried away with the practical but so pictures take a back seat!

Front laminate done, no slipping during clamping so the truss rod slot is nicely aligned 🙂 Now to trim and thin it down, a lot!!!!

A couple of my clamps are leaving marks on the wood, not an issue here as the top will be coming off this piece, anyone else had this happen? I’m presuming it’s the budget nature of the rubber used, plan is to get a few more G-clamps when I next see some for a good price.

@tej looks like you have put the clamps directly onto the headstock. Putting a solid block in between would be needed if you start with a thinner veneer. Moisture in the glue can cause a thin piece to curl up also, so some builders damp the non gluing area with water when applying glue to even the tension.

Took it down a little thinner than planned,  as the tape slipped and I didn’t notice until it was too late, thankfully didn’t go through the veneer but it was pretty close!!!

Looks great to me @tej. 👍🙂 

🙏🎸🎶🙂

@russ cheers, it’s good from that angle, on the left though it’s literally paper thin, now with a small chip too so I’ll need to reprofile the edge and wrap the headstock with something to protect while I carve the neck.

now with a small chip too so I’ll need to reprofile the edge and wrap the headstock with something to protect while I carve the neck.

I gave up caring about tear out and small dings and chips, cause in the end, I always manage to screw something up, even a day or two later :-/

I gave up caring about tear out and small dings and chips,

@koendb I can’t let this one go, it’s way too obvious! Should be able to clean it up ok though, in theory 😬

Slow progress after more illness! At some point I’m not going to need a new tool to do the next step, the carving is going well but the rasp I have is way to big for the heel and volute(?) so waiting on delivery of a round rasp to get that sorted.

Getting there with the neck, heal needs a lot more work still but the rest is pretty much there. I got a real issue though with the thickness. As I screwed up the initial root for the truss Rod I can’t actually make the neck as thin as I wanted as I’ll end up with a hole in the back of the neck!! Really isn’t a workaround that would look nice for this so just going to have to have a little extra depth. One though I did have was to rout a channel and have kind of skunk stripe in the back but I don’t fancy trying to route a channel in the back of the now curved neck and also don’t want to risk going so deep I catch the truss rod with the router.

As I screwed up the initial root for the truss Rod I can’t actually make the neck as thin as I wanted as I’ll end up with a hole in the back of the neck!

@Tej How deep is the trussrod channel and what is the thickness of your neck now?

@koendb Don’t have it to hand, off the top of my head it’s going to end up 23mm at the headstock end. There’s a sizeable step from where I didn’t lock the depth stop in which means there’s now only about 1 mm of wood from the back of that part of the neck to the bottom of the channel. Thankfully the channel tapers down and I did fill up what I could with an addition filler under the truss Rod so it should be strong enough. Going to be very apprehensive when using the truss rod though, pretty sure the parts where it’ll stress the wood have enough to push on without wrecking anything though. Well, fairly, sort of sure, ish 😬

Neck nearly done now, angle of the heal is a little steeper than I’d like so might take that down a little more. Also need to sand back the top laminate so the nut will fit snugly in place. Then onto the fretboard. Current plan is dot’s along the top with double dots for the 12th the dots along the bottom to the 24th again with double on that too. Need to figure out what space I have, I think 3 or 4 mm dots will be needed to be able to get 2 on the 24th unless I put them vertically. Still undecided 🤷‍♂️ 

 I’ve been doing a couple of tests with dye for the body, have an intense water based blue dye I want to use. Any suggestions of a top coat that’s applicable without spraying that doesn’t take weeks to properly cure would be very welcome. I’ve used finishes from Wudtone previously which were great but the dry time between coats and final cure time really drag on!