Early Arrival . . .
I wandered over to ‘work’ at around 9:45am to hear some lovely guitar coming from the workshop and I paused at the bottom of the stairs to have a listen. Phil was having his daily therapy session ‘plunking’ on a guitar – and he plays beautifully. I got on with a few things like working on my bling and finishing off the back of the neck brace that I routed last night. As I started ‘work’ I was pondering how it is that I have ‘lost’ one sock (or maybe three!) already – it is a closed system of wearing, washing and drying. Those who know me well won’t be surprised by this revelation . . . and the good news is that it is very likely that another one will go missing to even things up again.
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| Plunking Phil |
Major Milestone . . .
My first main task of the day was a ‘seminal moment’ . . . revealing the glued on back. Everything looked fine after I had taken all the clamps off and inspected everything closely. And I am especially pleased that the inside of bottom of the guitar looks very neat and clean.
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| Back exposed |
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| Inside of back |
On with the Top . . .
The first step in getting everything ready to glue on the top is to ensure there is a perfectly straight line between the sides of the guitar and the neck brace. You will recall that I previously cut and planed this brace so that it has a 3 degree slope towards the top – and now is the time for some fine tuning. Once that was done I gave the top of the sides a quick rub in the sanding dish once again – and then checked to see the top still went down properly all around the sides. I had to make a few adjustments to one of the grooves in the kerfing as the smallest amount of sanding closed one of the gaps between the brace and kerfing groove. Then it was a thorough ‘Hoover’ and final check before I said goodbye to the inside of the guitar forever – and then on with the clamps!
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| Levelling the neck block |
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| Precisely |
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| More sanding |
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| Down goes the lid forever! |
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| All clamped up |
Today’s Talk . . .
Today’s technical chat was about the relative health (!) benefits of the various types of pastries that Richard and Patrick popped out and purchased. I managed to capture a relatively benign cinnamon roll but Phil and Richard had some kind of almond roll super saturated in sugar with double dipped chocolate swirls. Phil said he will never need to eat again after such a high calorific intake in one hit! And right on cue, Nick popped into the workshop as he was passing . . . that man works very long hours!!
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| More health food of a nation |
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| Morning coffee |
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| Nick arriving right on cue! |
Trimming the Fretboard . . .
My next major task involved cutting and planing the fretboard to exactly the right shape. I am glad I double checked measurements from last night . . . it needs to be 44mm at the nut (head stock) end and 56mm at the 14th fret. I didn’t hear (or more likely forgot) the last instruction and measured 56mm at the end of the rough cut fretboard. Once all that was sorted and I had measured another couple of times I cut it using the bandsaw and planed it down to the line with a plane set up on the shooting board – and then made quite a few minute trims while constantly measuring to ensure it was exactly to size and perfectly straight along both entire edges. This is one area that a guitarist constantly touches while playing and the slightest imperfection can be felt. Of course there is a lot more work to be done on this component –but it is best to start with something as smooth and flat as possible.
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| On the OUTSIDE of the line |
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| On the shooting board |
Another ‘Seminal’ Moment . . .
Bending the Binding . . .
My next job was to set up the side bending machine and bend my binding to the right shape. Patrick did his this morning (using a different mould) and a small problem seemed to appear as the bindings that I made the other day partially delaminated. Richard thinks they will be OK once they are in place – but we decided to turn the heat down a little on my bindings and bend them even slower.
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| Bending the binding |
Routing the Top and Back . . .
Now for the really scary part . . . after having spent all this time and effort getting this guitar body looking good I now needed to use the very brutal and unforgiving router to trim the edges off the top and back! It is a very simple process– set up the router correctly and trim around the edges. However, the consequences of a measuring error or slip of the hand would be catastrophic! So it was off to the sanding room for the moment of truth and with great care and trepidation I carefully trimmed off the excess. Some extra wide sections needed a couple of passes with the router so as to reduce the risk of ripping the wood. I am pleased to say that it all went perfectly and I now have a much neater guitar body!
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| Trimmed top |
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| Routing the edge |
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| Trimmed bottom |
Cleaning Up . . .
After looking adoringly at my newly completed and trimmed guitar body for a few moments, I set out to clean up the edges. The first task involved sanding all the way around the edges and then checking to see how level the sides are. It is quite normal for natural materials like wood to buckle slightly during the manufacturing process and we need to get all bumps and dips out as best we can. Luckily mine turned out nearly perfectly flat nearly all the way around – but I do have a couple of dips at the waist which need to be addressed when we return on Monday morning . . . when the second half of the course starts.
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| It's a beautiful thing! |
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| Sanding the sides |
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| So that's the half way mark! |
The Others . . .
From what I saw, Patrick spent quite a lot of time sanding and ‘flattening’ his guitar body, working on his fretboard and bending his binding.
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| No Phil - the neck goes here! |
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| Exacting work |
Continuing Research . . .
Purely in the interests of research, I set out to have a ‘pint’ at the Meridian pub. My desk investigations had revealed this public house is named after the Greenwich line which passes through Lewes and I was hopeful of having a beer sitting in ‘two hemispheres’.
The Greenwich line marks zero degrees of longitude around the globe and is quite useful for navigation. I am reasonably interested in this subject and a couple of weeks ago I went to look at Harrison’s clocks at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich – he was the clockmaker who beat the establishment astronomers and mathematicians in eventually winning the reluctant Board of Longitude £20,000 prize in 1773. His invention told navigators the exact time at Greenwich which enabled them to accurately determine longitude. James Cook used a Harrison clock (H4) in some of his voyages to the antipodes and other places.
A Harrison clock might have been useful when I was trying to find the Meridian pub as it just wasn’t where I thought it was! No trace of the pub could be found even after several passes of the ‘target area’ and I clearly needed expert help. The next pedestrian was quizzed about the subject – apparently it had been demolished for some apartments (now there’s another global phenomenon) but he showed me a marker on the footpath. And of course I did the obvious thing by standing in both hemispheres at once!
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| Where the Meridian pub was |
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| Standing in two worlds |
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