Sorry for the long delay here, I got busy and needed to push through a few things, this got dent to the corner for a while but I hope to get everything down to finish it out. At this point the guitar is done! Lets rewind a bit though and find where I left off...
Once the body is together I want to check it and see what frequencies the top and back are in relation to each other. I want them to be very close and to end up almost exactly the same before it goes out for finish. I set up my Chladni testing unit again and run the top and back:
Attachment:
BD-Chladni-closed-box-top.jpg
For the back it needs to be elevated a bit to get a proper reading. I do not know why. I learned this from Mark Blanchard's talk from 2007.
Attachment:
BD-chladni-closed-box-back.jpg
I look for the lower ring modes on the top and back, once they are glued up they are by far the most powerful modes. In this case they came in almost exactly the same, at 205 Hz. It seems a tiny bit high but it is a small guitar and I did brace it a bit heavier then usual so I am not too worried. I do feel good that I braced the back correctly based on my last few guitars, I can trust that a bit more in the future.
With that testing out of the way and in a good spot I can move on to the binding and purfling.
The first thing I do is too apply some shellac to the top. I know from working this spruce already that it is a bit stringy. I would put the shellac on anyway but especially so when the spruce is like this as it is liable to pull up some fibers when removing the tape.
Attachment:
BD-apply-shellac-to-top.jpg
I also need to sand the sides and back clean from all the glue residue that has been on there since the sides were glued to their doubles. I want the sides to be as level as possible and if there are any bumps in the bends I want to sand those out now, before I cut the binding channels as the offset will ride along the side. I use a hard block with PSA sandpaper to sand the sides. Once done I am left with this:
Attachment:
BD-clean-prebind-back.jpg
I have been using 2 different binding jigs both based off of the same principle. The first uses a full size PC 690 router and lets me use a 1/2" shank router bit. I use this jig to hog out 90% of the channel. The jig looks like this:
Attachment:
BD-big-binding-jig.jpg
The middle piece rides up and down in rails and you can shim it using a piece of the binding to lower it that much. You can see the little piece of wood stuck in the side. I never got it perfect enough to do the whole thing this way but I can get it very close. The initial cuts looked like this off of this machine:
Attachment:
BD-initial-binding-cut.jpg
Attachment:
BD-initial-binding-cut-clos.jpg
You can see I did not cut all the way through the brace end. I will finish that bit off in my handheld jig when I enlarge the pockets slightly.