Coming Togther

Ian’s model 2 guitar is now coming together. As with all my guitars, the neck is joined to the body with a tapered dovetail joint; the female section in the body is routed using a jig, whilst the male section is cut and fitted entirely by hand. 

The alignment of the neck is, of course, critical and on a cutaway even more so, as one edge of the fingerboard has to line-up perfectly with the edge of the cutaway.

Once the neck has been glued in place (no clamps, just a good joint and gravity!), I continue the slot for the carbon-fibre rods into the body to make the joint even more rigid.

I often have a bit of a debate with myself about the end shape of the fingerboard; here it seemed natural to echo the curve of the sound hole. 

And after some more careful alignment, the fingerboard goes on.

 Don’t forget the two-way truss rod! Here you can see it installed before the ‘board is glued on; I like to protect it with PTFE tape.

 And then we glue it on……………

Inlays tomorrow!

In the meantime, Alan’s bubinga mandolin is coming together nicely too! You can see that the rim is complete, with my double thickness solid linings and the back has just been fitted to it.