The heel

I picked up a small job today which is gluing the heel to the neck. The neck will be anchored to the body at the 14th fret. So I used the fretboard to find the point where the heel should be glued to the neck.

With a square I drew the position out all around the neck

Glue is applied to both parts. A problem with larger gluing services is that the two parts go drifting when they are clamped firmly. What I did to prevent for this phenomena is placing the heel onto the body and leave to tag for a good 5 minutes. Then gently put the clamps on and tighten them slowly. That worked very well.

The end result:

Headstock, heel and sound hole

I made good progress on the guitar last week working on three different parts: The headstock, sound hole and heel. To get stated on the first two I made two paper templates to help draw the out line on the top and the headstock:

With those drawing out the outlines was a piece of cake:

I started on the sound hole. With a fretsaw I gently made the cut:

The downside of cutting a hole in the top is that you are actually weaken it. To counter that you have to add small strips of wood around the hole. The best way is to cut these strips in a way that the grain is right-angled in respect to the grain of the top. Since my sound hole is not really a traditional one I also have to cut non traditional strips:

When satisfied I glued them to the top and put a weight on top of them to clamp them down while drying:

Second up was the headstock. It is a very narrow headstock which introduces danger of snapping it of when the strings are under tension. I already put the headstock at a 13 degree angle earlier on but we also have to cope with forces working outwards. To withstand those we will put in a graphite pen. So another channel had to be routed in. As a guide I first cut the headstock parallel to the channel outline. After that the channel was routed as deep as the pen needed.

Last job was putting the heel for the neck together. I made it out off a stack of maple, then rosewood, maple veneer, rosewood and maple:

Glue between every piece, clamps on and then waiting again for it to dry.

When completely dry I used a disc-sander to get all the sides nice and straight:

To close this episode the end result pictures:

The top is on

Yes the top is on! Usually you use special clamps to do that but since most of them where in use for another guitar I had to use normal clamps to do the job:

You can see the "special" clamps (homemade) in between the normal clamps.
While the glue was drying I focused on the neck. Or better, the finger board. First it had to be brought in shape. It will be 4.7 cm and the nut and 5.5 cm at fret 14. With the band saw and after that the circular sander it was shaped. After that it has to be sanded into a bit of an arch. I stick it to a bench with double sided tape.

To sand it you use a block which has a small curve.

When finished sanding I used the finger board to draw out the outline of the neck:

With a jig saw I trimmed of the excess wood:

In the mean time the glue had dried and the clamps could be removed. So to finish some result pictures:

And to put it all together... starts to look like a guitar right?