Right, decided to get on with the levelling, crowning and polishing of the frets before attaching the wings, loads easier.   Levelled and crowned

  Then onto polishing, went up through a few grits of paper, 320, 400, 500…   Read more»

Today was good, got the fret markers done, then frets in and finally side dots. The new tools are helping a lot, hardly any levelling required after fretting due to getting everything so straight and flat in the first place….   Read more»

@tv101 Use the tubing, cut teeth in, drill it in then cut it off and file flush. Then start again, cut teeth, drill etc. That might work

@tv101 yeh alumium tubing off ebay, 6mm with 4mm internal diameter. I also got smaller stuff for the side dots, had to sand a 2.5mm drill bit down to about 2.4mm seeing I could only find imperial but it works….   Read more»

@tv101 oh yeh, pesky neck, who put that there?
 
Didn’t think that in the small hours lying in the dark lol

Trying out something different for fret markers and side dots, although I’ll need a 3/32 dril bit for the side dots as they’re imperial. Just used a 2.5mm to try out.
 

@swepri oh god yeh, I know exactly what you mean! Lol   I find my big stanley no 7 really haleps with that, I find that difficult with smaller planes unless it’s a big flat board. Like a guitar top,…   Read more»

@swepri I bought a fairly cheap set of diamond stones off amazon, now I can plane highly figured wood and all sorts with no tear out. I seem to be able to get them really sharp which makes a big…   Read more»

@tv101 had an idea last night, you could do a shallow carve so there’s like 1mm of top around the egde then add binding, that would hide the fact the top was thin!

@koendb I must admit, with the new long beam I bought it’s a lot quicker and I get really nice results, I think ideally I would plane first then use the beam. Best of both.

@koendb I mean for the inital flattening, getting the board nice, level and straight. I’ve never tried planing the radius in yet but do fancy trying it, need to get some radius gauges first.

@tv101 6mm carve? Or, 5mm carve and leave a little edge all the way round lol

@tv101 I put mine through the planer thicknesser but obviously sanding is even smoother.
 
But yeh, lots of people use that set up on various small pieces with good success, me, think I’ll just use the no7 handplane lol