2nd Guitar – 9th installment
This is the final installment concerning this guitar – I think.
Building it has been fun, but now the finished guitar is close, and I’m anxious to actually hold it in my hands and hear a good sound coming out of it. But a few details are left to go.
On Tuesday, May 31, 2011, I installed the tuners on the headstock. The neck looks falulous. We also sanded / feathered the lacquer on the neck binding as it was “catching” on my fingers. The string notches on the nut were also filed. Then the neck was fitted to the guitar. Dave used a chisel to do the rough shaping and then taped sandpaper to the notch in the guitar body to do the final smoothing – see the photos. This is where the angles get critical and sanding smoothly becomes critical. It’s harder than it looks. When it was finally “right”, glue was applied, the bolt was inserted and tightened from the inside of the body, and the fretboard was clamped onto the guitar top. We left it overnight to dry.
On Wednesday I inlaid the bridge with pieces of pearl and abalone that had been previously cut. Dave then glued the bridge to the guitar body. A L.R.Baggs “Anthem” pickup was then installed – thank goodness that Dave had some extra two sided tape because the tape that was supplied with the pickup didn’t work very well and had to be replaced. Lots of pieces….
Finally the strings was added, the frets were leveled and smoothed, and we started to get some sound. Unfortunately, because the glue holding the bridge to the body was barely dry and certainly not cured, tuning up to concert C was better left to the next day.
So off I went that night, with the guitar in an old case that I had brought from home, and wondering what would happen at the border. Fortunately for me, the guard at the Canadian border couldn’t have been nicer. He took the receipt I had for the time spent at Custom Pearl Inlay, allowed me my $400 deduction because I had stayed in the US for two nights, and applied a sticker to the inside of the guitar to identify it. Then I paid the tax (13%) on the remainder of the amount of the receipt – not a huge amount – and received a “Y38” form. This is an important form because it allows me to bring the guitar back and forth accross the border without a hassle. Couldn’t have worked out better.
So here are some photos of the last two days of the build – just click on a thumbnail and then on the arrows at the bottom of the pictures to view all the photos:
And here are the pictures of the finished guitar.
