Woolson Jig

Here is a picture of the Woolson jig that I made to route the tenon on the neck....

Here are a couple of quick shots of the new Neck. Five piece lamination from Mahogany, Black fiber and Maple. It's still pretty chunky but the volute is starting to come along and it shouldn't be that much longer before I have it down to size.



Still need to look for something for the head plate and I am thinking about binding the finger board. I'll try to post more of the pictures of the glue up and my new jig that I used for routing the tenon in a later post.

Well the new band saw blade arrived and it's new neck time. Thanks to JJ Donahue from www.luthiercom.org for the excellent tutorial and pictures on his process. I should be back in business soon.

Back in the beginning I had trouble with the threaded insert for this neck.... It kept popping loose, I really made matters worse over the weekend when I attempted to replace the old one with a new slightly larger insert. The picture says it all. Oh well it really is the journey I have resigned myself to the fact that I need start over.

While I get new material for the next neck, I started working out the details for making the bridge so many processes for one small piece of wood. First I started by making a template in plastic for shaping the bridge.

The next step was to mock up jigs to hold the material for shaping and slotting




The final jig is to line up the holes for the strings.

As I said these are working mock ups if you will for the jigs to make this part. Not only do I have the ability to make the bridge - I have worked out the details to making functional jigs.

Thanks for looking.

No I have not stopped building - I am working on the bridge and the jigs needed to complete the task. (I will have pictures soon). One other note worthy event is that many of the Florida guitar builders have been talking about getting together. That actually happened last weekend. It was a fun day with 10 or so builders showing up. Lots of exchange of ideas with good demonstrations and many fine examples of their current work. I'll try to post more in that as well later.

Moving along

Okay this is starting to get interesting...... I have found a new forum of mostly guitar builders that are talented and willing to help out in immeasurable ways. www.luthiercom.org very cool.... I am also documenting this build on the forum under the heading of "Here's where I am at so far".

Meanwhile - I really like the additions to the neck one of the members at the Luthier's community was nice enough to send me a generous sample of fiber material for purfling and headstock material. I used it in the heal plate lamination - black, walnut, black, spalted maple..

I really do like the look. The fiber seems to be the same material that I bought for the headstock on the Archtop.
I didn't like the maple binding with walnut purfling. I also had an issue with the results of my attempts to fill the gaps in the purfling and binding... So I decided to start from scratch - routed everything off and repalce it with maple binding and black fiber.... I like this look much better also I found a tutorial on gap filling that worked much better.... The end result isn't perfect but I am on my way and know what to watch for next time....

A little more fitting on the neck joint and I'll be on to the fingerboard and neck.

Neck 2.0

Here is version 2.0 after carving and fitting to the body. Again thanks to Ken Hodges for his expert instruction on fitting necks. Also not a bad shot of the guitar vise I built after my last trip to his shop

Next I will need to get the cap on the back still need to come up with something special..... Might try something in Walnut and Spalted Maple..