Portland Guitar Co.

( 137 ) 18-Dec-2012

The case arrived and the guitar fits.

( 138 ) 18-Dec-2012

A few small details get taken care of, here I am putting a small bevel on the control knob holes.

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The fretboard, tail piece, and head stock are all going to be made from Indian Rosewood. I want the wood for each piece to match the otheres. I used my bandsaw to cut out a set of blanks for the fretboard and tail piece from a single piece of rosewood.

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I lay the blanks out to make sure I am happy with the look of each piece.

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The fretboard will have a 16 inch compound radius. I use my universal radiusator to shape the fretboard. This tool is essentially a pendulum with two arms that are different lengths that cause the supporting bar to sweep out a cone. By judiciously setting the length of each arm I can control the degree of radius. Here I have attach the fretboard blank to the bottom of the support bar.

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As I swing the support bar back and forth above the router bit I push the sled forward with each swing. The radius of the arc slowly changes from the short arm length to the long arm length.

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Here is a picture of the end of the fretboard blank.

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I use a very flat sanding bar to remove the tooling marks from the fretboard blank.

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And I use my straight edge and a feeler gauge to make sure the surface is as straight as I can make it. This will help insure the frets line up so there won't be any buzzing.

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With the top surface set, I use my drum sander to reduce the thickness to 1/4 of an inch.

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Now I am ready to set up the fret slotting tool. I use a small circular saw attachment to cut the fret slots. This tool allows me to easily index the saw to the correct position.

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Here you can see the slotted fretboard.

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Using my magnifying glass and centering tool I mark the center of the fretboard. and the position of the fretboard dots.

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I then drill a 1/4 inch hole for each dot.

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A little cyanoacrylate glue secures the dots in place.

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And then I sand the dots flush with the surface.

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The width and depth of the slots are fine tuned with a handsaw.

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I use a small tool to make sure the slots are deep enough. I want to make sure the fret wire will fully seat against the surface of the fretboard.

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And finally I sand the surface very smooth with progressively finer sanding blocks.

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After marking the outline of the fretboard I trim away the excess.

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Here are the set of tools I use to install the fretwire.

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I use a small wood block and a hammer to drive the fretwire into the slots.

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When I am happy that the fretwire is fully seated I put a small drop of glue on the overhang where it will wick into the slot and secure the fretwire in place.

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I use my belt sander to trim off the excess wire.

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And then carefully trim the fretboard blank to its final dimensions.

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A long view look at the fretboard.

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The nut end of the fretboard gets trimmed on the disk sander.

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And the saddle end gets marked and trimmed.

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Once again I lay out the guitar to make sure I am happy with the fit of everything.

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Before I glue the fretboard to the neck blank I have to route out the channel for the truss rod. The truss rod will help control the shape of the fretboard while it is under tension from the strings. .

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The truss rod in its slot.

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The edge of the headstock veneer gets trimmed to the 15 deg angle of the head stock.

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With the nut in place there will be no gaps.

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I use a set of fiducial buttons to hold the fretboard in place when it gets glued to the neck blank. I drill a 1/4 inch hole into the neck blank and then glue a small bit of doweling to the bottom of the fretboard.

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I use bone nut blanks to position the fretboard as the buttons get glued in place.

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After the buttons are glued to the bottom of the fretboard I trim them down to size.

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Now, I can accurately place the fretboard on the neck blank. When gluing the fretboard in place I won't have to make any adjustment to its position.

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A small detail is to install this small plug over the end of the truss rod.

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I use my milling machine to route out an access slot for the truss rod in the head plate.

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Now, every thing lines up nicely.

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And finally, before gluing the fretboard in place I use my straight edge and feeler gauge to make sure the surface is flat.

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And one more small detail is a plug at the end of the truss rod.

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I use a carefully positioned strip of tape to cover the truss rod. This will keep glue from getting into the works.

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I use epoxy to glue the fretboard to the neck blank.

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Got clamps!

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After the glue sets up over night everything is glued in place.

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I heat up the glue squeeze out to soften it up so it can easily be removed.

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Here I am using my milling machine to trim the neck blank to its final thickness.

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I am leaving a bit at the headstock break so I can create a volute.

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My oscillating sander helps to shape the volute. The volute is a purely decorative element on this neck. On a spliced neck it adds a bit of strength to the joint.

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Now, I use my bandsaw to trim the neck to shape.

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Nice.

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I use a router table to do the final trimming.

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Now I turn my attention to installing the binding.

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I use this tool I built I call a Universal Bindalator to hold the router parallel to the sides of the guitar while it allows me to move the router around the perimeter of the guitar.

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I can adjust the depth of the channels by changing the exposure of the router bit below the convex platen and the position of the guide wheel.

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Here is the channel cut for the bottom binding.

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The top gets an extra channel for the pinstriping.

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After cleaning up the channels I start to install the purfling and binding. Here I am starting with the black/white/black pinstriping.

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I work my way around the perimeter.

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And then before installing the binding I clean up the channels once again.

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Here I am installing the white binding.

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When I cut the channels for the binding I set them up so the binding and purfling would stand slightly proud of the surface. Here I am using a palm sander to trim the binding flush to the surface of the top. .

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The back gets the same treatment as the top, and a drum sander is used to trim the sides.

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A look at the peak of the cutaway with all of the surfaces sanded flush.

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And a look at the side near the F hole.