Fitting the back

Just quick update on what I have been doing Monday on the guitar. Since it was 32 degrees Celsius I decided not to do a lot of scraping and sanding on the neck but instead I worked on fitting the back to the body. With the back laid correctly on the body I figured out where the braces meet the body sides. With that drawn out I could remove the pieces of the kerflings with saw and chisel:

After that the braces had to be cut to the correct length so they just fit into the body surrounded by the gaps I just made in the kerflings. First I had to draw out where to cut them, then cut it in with a saw and last remove the excess timber with a chisel:

When all braces where cut to length I fitted the back to the body and dry clamped it to see if there are any gaps between the back and the sides to determine where the sides need shaping:

Braces

It was a beautiful day today so I decided to do some work on the lather braces on the back in the back garden. A few day ago I already glued on the remaining three braces with some inventive clamping methods:
One:

Two:

Three:

Back to today. The braces are on to the back now but need to loose some weight. So I went to work with a block plane. First I taped on a protective layer of low tack masking tape and then I stared planing down the sides of the braces at a very steep angle:

I also trimmed of the ends of the braces. The overall results looks pretty good:

Tailpiece!!

Remember the tailpiece I wanted to build for the guitar? Well it is finished! Not that I did a bit on it, my father made it himself. And I am glad he did cause otherwise I think it never would have become as beautiful as it is now. It is even far better than I ever hoped for. So here it is:

The screw to the right of the tailpiece will be screwed into the tailblock. The bolt on top of the screw will stick-out over the body about a centimeter. The knob where the tailpiece is attached to will screw on this bolt. This will look something like this:

It is just an example, it is not attached yet.
I also went to the course again yesterday. Did some more shaping on the neck. Nothing to show you there though. Also started work on the tone bars on the back. I already did some work on them some months ago. So they only needed to be shaped into a slight radius. I used an example tone bar to draw out the shape and then did the shaping with a sanding block:

When all four where shaped I drew out where they should come on the back.

I only had time left for gluing one of them to the back. The best way to do this is first calmp it to the back without any glue to see if there are no slits between the bar and the back. When satisfied put glue on the tone bar and clamp it again:

Next job will be gluing the other three to the back

Rewarding work

The neck is still a continuing work in progress. But more and more the shape becomes visible. Very rewarding work. I started of with the portion between the headstock and the neck. First I removed as much of the excess timber with a saw:

 As you can see the result looks already promising. After that I got to work with a half round rasp starting at the headstock. The heel part was next up and the middle of the neck closed it.

 To check whether the neck is shaped symmetrically I used a profile gauge. When you push it against the the neck the gauges will shift and show you the silhouette of the neck. This way you can check where it needs work.

And of course some closeups to show off the results: