The fingerboard is now ready to be clamped and glued to the neck. Leave to dry for several hours.The neck can now be shaped to the proper round while held in the vise.I find a surform is a great tool for shaping necks, as well as the usual spokeshave.
neck shaping
side dots
half of binding taped in place
Friends have asked me why I picked this particular photo for my blog page. Well, I took it myself with one hand, and it had a piece of wood in it, relating to instrument making, but unbeknown to me, the instrument part was excised, and there you have it.
Top overhang trimmed
Back edges trimmed
Back being clamped to sides
Top and bottom lining in place
The shape of the body is drawn on the workboard, and the vertical posts are placed around the perimeter at strategic spots.The bent sides are placed in the makeshift mold and spreader clamps can be placed across the sides to hold them in place while they dry. Remember that a few minutes before all this, they were immersed in a water trough before the bending started.Leave overnight before gluing in the end blocks.Careful alignment of the blocks is needed before the blocks are clamped.Do not get glue on the workboard, as we want to be able to get the side assembly out.
Back braces being planed to shape
After all the back braces have been glued to the back, use a small hand plane to shape them. If the braces have been precurved, be careful that you plane from the center of the back to the outer edge.The braces can then be fine sanded to 280 grit.
There seems to be a little too much glue spread around here, but a couple of passes through the drum sander with 240 grit paper will level this ring nicely and remove the excess glue.I just love the wavy figure on this redwood top. It is time to cut out the soundhole with the circle cutter. I can use a hand held circle cutter, or the dremel tool with the router bit doing the cutting, or the circle cutter held in the vertical drill press. The latter is by far the quickest way, but a little daunting. Once the cutout is complete, hand sand the edges of the hole smooth. Cut out the bridge reinforcement plate and thickness to 3mm, draw the cross braces onto the underside of the top, position the bridge plate over the location of the saddle and bridge pins, glue the plate down to the top with the rods of the go-bar deck. The floor of the deck has a 28′ radius scouped into it. Leave to dry for several hours.
Gluing the centreseam brace
Once the back has been thicknessed, the spruce centreseam, salvaged from offcuts from the soundboard, are glued inline down the centre of the back. The locations of the back cross braces will be marked later on, and small sections are chiselled out to take the braces.Try to precut the spruce so it ends at the tail block and neck block.
Gluing done on the bridge patch
Bandsawing out the shape
There has been a slight delay since my last post, but here I am again, continuing with my tenor guitar soundboard preparation. This is a redwood top, and it has been thicknessed down to about 2.5mm on the 16 inch drum sander.The 4″ soundhole is positioned at the end of the fingerboard. The rings are made up of thin plastic sandwiched together. A dremel tool is used with a soundhole jig attached. A 3mm hole is drilled in the soundboard to take the guide post, and the tool is swivilled around this post, cutting the recess. Careful placement of the cutter is needed to ensure an accurate fit of the rings in the recess. If the recess is wider than the cutting bit, then you will need to adjust the diameter of the cutter each time you go around.Clean out any sawdust from the recess, then fit and glue the rings in place. A wide board is needed to clamp these rings down. Allow to dry for several hours. The rings can be sanded flush under the drum sander once dry. The dremel can be used again to cut out the soundhole.Hand sand away the sharp edges of the soundhole.
We have been talking about acoustic guitar shapes and the variety there is. Now I am about to embark on drawing yet another guitar shape-that of a 4 string tenor .I have nothing to copy from this time, so I used my smallest parlour guitar template, drew an outline from it and then downsized from there. I knew the body length I need from the customer, and he actually stood and watched while I drew the new outline. The scale length is 21″, 14 frets to the body. The sound hole size is going to be a full 4″, so that a standard size soundhole pickup can be used for amplification.
The neck has been drawn on this form as well, so now we can see the whole length of the guitar. It is only 34″ long. As this is only a 4 string guitar, I am not utilizing an adjustable truss rod. I will use ebony as a stiffener up the middle. There will be no dovetail joint, but a biscuit joint will join the neck to the body. This is the way I join my ukelele necks to their bodies. This is really an oversized baritone uke.
The first step to get this instrument started was to select the top wood, back and side wood, neck wood, fingerboard wood, bridge wood and edge binding. I have bandsawn the thick redwood topwood into thinner pieces, drum sanded them to the same thickness (oversize), edge sanded the 2 gluing edges, glued and clamped them in the floor clamps. Leave to dry overnight, and it will be ready to sand to thickness.
gluing neck to body 
Biscuit joint