I’m jumping ahead a little bit in the story line this morning to share a quick shot of the lacquer finish.  It is a bad photo from my phone, but you get the idea.  This is after three finishing sessions.  Each session has three coats of lacquer thinned 50% with lacquer thinner.  Another session or two and I’ll level sand, […]

Disaster struck as I was working out some final bumps in the abalone inlay!  Ahhhh!!!! Hmm.  Opportunity to try something else.  Luckily, the pieces all fit together nicely.  So I started by super gluing them to a thin piece of Indian rosewood that was leftover from the back of the guitar.  This created a nice stable base to work off. […]

I’ll let pictures tell most of the story.  I’m using a piece of abalone for my standard Mountain Whimsy logo on the headstock.  I start by mounting the blank to a thin piece of modeling plywood to add some strength.  Then the pattern is attached to the face of the abalone blank. Holes are drilled to provide access to the […]

I’ll start this out with the final product – a nice, tight joint where the heel meets the body.  It is not perfect, but it is close enough for me. It all starts out with the neck blank.  I am using a scarf joint for the headstock and a stacked heel block.  This is an economical and strong way to […]

On to the binding. Following in my path of building what I can to save money, I came up with my own binding routing jig. Watch out StewMac! These things are actually pretty easy to build. I made mine with a bunch of scrap MDF, a pair of under-drawer slides, a nylon washer and a piece of bungee cord. The […]