Build your own custom guitar- day 5

…Only two more days to go! Can you see what it is yet?

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4

Day 5

10am till 8pm

Yesterday was a well earned day off. We all get tired and I find that’s when people make avoidable mistakes, which can set us back hours. I have often wished I had stopped half an hour earlier, just after I do something stupid. This is why we schedule in a day off in the middle of the custom build course, everyone agreed it was a good idea and we were all raring to get going again today.

Back down to three again as none of the long term builders could get in, so it was a little more sedate than usual until Kevin got the router out!

Kevin put the side dots and the frets by first break, and by dinner time he had made a good start on the body. He routed both pick ups and the control cavity, drilled the control holes and then took a break. After dinner he cut out his body shape – the cap was already cut from yesterday so we could use that as a pattern to copy the shape into the back of the body with a router after first roughly cutting it out with the band saw. He also routed the f-hole and spent some time cleaning up the edges with sandpaper. Things must be going well because he has plumped for a gloss finish- either wine red or deep blue, he is yet to decide. That means, like Dave he will leave it with us for spraying- you will be able to follow this on the blog.

Dave carved his neck before lunch and then started work on his crown inlays…You can’t rush a good job, these are going to be spectacular! He temporarily glued them in place for marking out with a sharp scribe. After carefully removing them a mini router was used to make holes for the inlays fit into. He spent the whole rest of the day working on these and got over half way so he will have to get a move on tomorrow or he may have to come back for another day. Dave is a little behind but as he is having a gloss finish he effectively has an extra day while the others are assembling their guitars so it should be OK. It is just as well because he has more plans for inlays on the headstock!

Nicks inlays have caused a bit of a stir this course- he has his own method of making them which is not the normal procedure so I had warned him that it may not work and when Nick was rubbing them flat after gluing them into his fretboard yesterday he sanded through one of them. It’s a real shame because the rest of them look fantastic, in fact they are worth a post of their own so I will get round to that in a few days and leave it at that, except to say that today an emergency repair job left him with a ‘world’ instead of a ‘sun’ on the first fret. Nick then spent the afternoon putting in his side dots and frets before starting the laborious sanding process. Billy helped out with the final sanding as he will be spraying it for Nick tonight while I write this and we are all meeting later in the pub! It is Acoustic Bliss tonight so Nick better not drink too much as he has to get his neck and bridge glued on tomorrow so he can string it up and play it on Saturday!