Clamping bridge to top

First coats of sealer

Tail binding strip

One of the last things I do to finish off the binding scheme, is to fit the back tail inlay. This will be from the same wood as the rest of the binding. The guitar is held between two 1″ dowels protruding out from the workbench.The waist cradles the dowels while you work on routing out the area of the endstrip. An amount equal to the depth of the sides is removed, and the wood inlay is glued and clamped in place with a long klempsia clamp.Once dry, the inlay can be scraped flush with the sides. The instrument is given a thorough sanding through the different grades of paper, and lacquering can begin.

The lacquering process can quite long and tedious, especially if you are wanting to fill the grain without using grain filler.I find that grain filler, once applied and sanded off, changes the overall colour of the wood. I prefer to use lots of sanding sealer and keep sanding until there are no sparkly bits (where the pores are deepest), and then apply the finish coats. I hand sand everything. I never use electric palm sanders. I suffer from all sorts of strain injury from using one side of my body for too long. I try to use my left arm as much as I can, and rest often. Being tall and lanky doesn’t help either. Breathing in the dust from sanding the lacquer sets off  nose and throat irritations, and one can become quite ill. I would apply at least 10 coats of sealer, and 5 coats of high gloss lacquer. Allow to dry at least a week before sanding and polishing to a high gloss.

Once the soundboard is finished being polished, the bridge can be glued on, but not before the lacquer is scraped away where the bridge will sit. You have to carefully place the bridge in its correct location, and with one hand hold it in place while the other hand scribes around the perimeter with a sharp knife. Use a 1″ wide chisel to scrape away the lacquer. Put a burr on its cutting edge to speed up the removal. The bridge can now be glued and clamped in place.

The machine heads and nut and saddle can now be fitted. String up the guitar and adjust the nut slot depths and saddle height.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 3:43 pm and is filed under tenor guitar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.