Thanksgiving pictures

Every year at Thanksgiving, my family takes pictures of what each individual is thankful for this year and puts them in a book so we can reflect from year to year. Of course I am infinitely more thankful of my family than the guitar that I am building. As challenging as it has been to build my guitar, would you believe it is a thousand times more difficult to get 4 kids and 2 adults to smile and look at the camera at the same time!!!


Anyway, I took a few minutes to assemble my guitar as it is and snap a few photos. Still a lot of work to do, but it's getting closer each day.














While the neck was on the body, I put a straight edge across the frets and measured the height above the bridge. It was about 5/64"... maybe somewhere inbetween 80-90 mils. This will come down some as the frets are leveled. It seems to be in the ball park.

No more ebony dust

A friend of mine (David of upstate NY) suggested I use Black CA glue to fill in under the frets instead of mixing the killer ebony dust that I had been doing. This was a brilliant, if not obvious suggestion that escaped me. Black CA glue is sold almost exclusively by StewMac... but since I'm not ordering anything from them in the near future, I decided on black epoxy. I found some black epoxy at the hardware store, but after sampling this it turned out to be a milky, dark grey color that didn't match the dark black and medium brown streaks of the macassar ebony very well. I also had another friend of mine (what a coincidence, his name is DAVE too!) loan me some black pigment to mix with clear epoxy. After sampling the pigment epoxy, it looked jet black and should work nice. The photo above is the tupperware container full of macassar ebony dust that now resides in the trash, never again to be opened in my shop!

Side dots in

I still have some frets to fill in under, but given my problem with Macassar Ebony dust, I decided to skip that for now and work on the side dots. I marked and carefully drilled the holes for the side dots on my drill press with a 2mm brad point bit. A single dot at the 5th, 9th and 15th fret, double dots at the 7th and 12th. Then I epoxied them in.


After the epoxy set up, I used a double cut bastard file to sand down the epoxy and dots. Once it was close, I scraped it flush. I think I want to add one on the 3rd fret.

You're so insensitive...

Well, not anymore. Last night I awoke at 3am to an extreme itchy-ness around my eyes and eye-lids. My right eye was almost swollen shut, some of the swollen-ness could be from the rubbing that I did to stop the itch. This happened Monday night too, but not nearly as bad. In fact, I have had a little of this for a few weeks... ever since I created some Macassar Ebony sanding dust on the spindle sander. I did this on purpose, to collect and ultimately mix with epoxy to fill in the fret slots. This worked great, problem is that I have sensitized myself to Macassar Ebony by touching the dust with my hands... and probably my hands to my face and eyes at various times.

A search on the internet shows that Macassar Ebony contains macassar II, a ß-naphthol "derivative that may become oxidised in vivo to macassar quinone. This compound has been shown to have sensitizing properties... Cross-sensitivity to other naphthoquinones" (three found in zericote, pao ferro, cocobolo, becote, and padauk) are possible. "Later testing confirmed sensitivity to R-3,4-dimethoxydalbergione (found in pao ferro), obtusaquinone (found in cocobolo), and macassar quinone (found in macassar ebony)."

It is the dust, I'm sure. But I wonder if I will react to simply touching the wood/fretboard after the guitar is done. Ebony is generally not oiled/sealed because it doens't need to be. I may have to regardless.

Trimming the fret edges

To clip the ends of the fretboard requires end cutters with a flush cutting edge... not beveled like most end cutters that are sold. These generally sell for $25-30. Not wanting to part with that much money for 15 minutes worth of work, I decided to make my own. I bought a pair of cheapo's at HF for $5, then ground down the surface until the cutting edge was flush. I then used a diamond file to file the inside. It looked kind of ugly, but it worked great.

The only problem with this method is that the grinding caused the steel to heat up and lose it's temper. I know, anger management is always a problem with soft steels. So even though this method worked, it left the edge rather mangled up after using it.

A good pair of end cutters would be machined with a flush edge and then tempered. Maybe I can re-sharpen them and then temper it myself. The simplest thing would be to heat up the cutting part with a torch and then quench it in either oil or water.

No need to fret, just epoxy it!

I decided to remove the 21st fret. To do this, the hyde glue needs to be warmed up. I used a soldering iron directly on the fret. After a few minutes, I began to feel the fret move. So I slowly began to work the fret loose with a variety of tools... a small pair of end nippers worked the best. Once the fret was out, I used a wet paper towel to clean up the hyde glue... and a 10 mil finger gauge with a paper towel around it to clean out the slot. Once this was dry, I took a new fret and epoxied it in.

I clamped it down for about 90 minutes. This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Now the fret is seated properly AND with the epoxy in the bottom of the 21st fret slot I don't have to worry about that crack getting worse.

Something to fret about...

I cut and installed all the frets yesterday. Prior to installing each one, I used a triangular file to bevel each side of the fret slot. Then I dabbed a bit of Titebond hyde glue in the slot prior to inserting each fret, this helped to lubricate the fret as it went in.

All frets went well except the very last one... not because it was the last one chronologically, but because it was the last fret on the end. I cut the end of the fretboard about 1/4" past the 21st fret... leaving it long enough to cover up the inner rosette on the top, yet short enough not to infringe on the sound hole. In hind site, I wish I had specified only 20 frets to be slotted. Anyway, this small amount of material past the 21st fret left it weak. When I pounded the slot in, it split a little bit in the horizontal direction at the bottom of the fret slot. I poured a bit more hyde glue in and tried to clamp the fret down... but it didn't hold.

This picture isn't the best, but you may be able to see the left end is sticking up. I think it may have to be removed and fixed in a more permanent fashion.