Headstock and frets

So here you can see some shots of the mostly finished headstock with the tuning machines installed. Everything is sanded nicely, I do need to wipe off the dust though. The nut is installed, but not slotted to the correct depth yet. About 1/3 of the frets are installed and I am now obsessing on which fret files to get....... way too many choices.

Inlay

I added a nice shape to the headstock. This can be seen in the photo below. A attached 80 grit sand paper to the outside of my PVA glue botle and used this to sand the profile after rough cutting on my band saw. I also made the inside part of a circle using a hole saw and attached 80 grit to that as well to use to help sand the profile. See the profile below.

So I bought some inlay from www.luthiersupply.com. It is a 1" circle made of mother of pearl, with an abalone circle and the letter S.





I started by crazy gluing the inlay on the headstock. I then used and exacto knife to trace the outline of the 1" circle. I routed this out using my Dremel in the Dremel router-base using a 1/8" spiral downcut bit.

After checking out the depth of the routed circle I dry fit the inlay. looks great. I then used 90 min black 2 part epoxy to adhere the inlay. This helped hide any imperfections in the routed circle. I used 80 grit, then 120, and so on attached to a sanding block to remove the epoxy and make everything flush.

Laminating headstock

So, the headstock came pre-laminated, but there was a chip in the lamination that looked pretty bad.




So I bought some rosewood from Stewmac.com and glued it up using PVA type glue.



I used some Oak as a hardwood Caul.



Here is what it looks like all gued up. I need to drill the holes for the tuners and create a slot for the truss rod.


Next I rough cut at the band saw and then routed flush at the router table.








I also had to clear the area where the nut goes.


I also shaped the headstock to look cooler than the square shape it came in. Those pictures will be posted next time.

Fretboard

This weekend I glued in the Abalone dots and 12th fret marker.

I sanded the fretboard starting with 80 grit on a 20" radius sanding block, then progressing through 120, 150, 220, 400, 500, 800, 1200, 1500.

Before I cleaned the dust off:


I also did the side markers.



Next I started hammering in the frets. I just did 2 to try it out. As you can tell from the photo, I started from the outsides and worked my way to the middle. I am going to have to trim these and round them off, as well as recrown.

Neck glueup

Tonight I glued-up the guitar's fret-board to the neck, being careful not to get any glue on the truss-rod. I had a caul made of oak on the fret-board so it did not get ruined due to the clamping pressure. I clamped using 6 clamps spread evenly across the neck. Before I glued and clamped I put 2 small brads into the neck and used these to locate the fret-board. worked well.
I also wiped the back of the rosewood fret-board with acetone to reduce the amount of oil for better glue adhesion.

These are the recently glued bindings and perfling on the top.