A good week

Sometimes you look back at the past week and there seems to have been little progress made, and sometimes you look back and can feel quietly satisfied. ......

This week saw Roland’s mandolin come together, set-up and playing in the white.

And Roland's guitar’s neck and body were joined together. As you’ll know, my preference is a tapered dovetail for guitar neck joints. The female section is routed; and my rule is that once routed, this part of the joint isn’t touched.

The neck has it’s half of the joint carefully marked out and then the waste is sawn off.

 Next; sharpen my favourite chisels. You may have noticed my recent interest in “vintage” tools, it occurred to me whilst sharpening these, that I’ve used them for almost 40 years!

Anyway, with sharp tools, the sawn dovetail is slowly fitted. As you’re working blind, feel gauges help you to "gauge" where wood needs to be removed.

 You also have to constantly check the alignment in two planes. It can be a good day’s work to get the joint perfect. Once it’s ready, glue is applied and the neck pushed home into the body- no shims, no clamps, the taper does it all.

Then the fretboard….

 The silver steel pins ensure correct alignment of the board.

 And here we have it, looking more like a guitar now! I must say that I’m very pleased with the way the guitar looks; it has the 19^th century vibe that I was after!