Right: (11/17/07) Here's a nice shot of the guitar just after the finish was applied. The tint was carefully chosen to match the color in the Abalone inlay on the neck, and the two work together extremely well. The colored tint really brought out the grain in the maple top.

There's a small strip of bare maple running around the perimeter of the body which has the effect of edge binding and looks very nice. The black limba and wenge on the back also look quite dramatic now that the resin coat has been applied.

Now we have to spend some time cleaning up overspray and re-fitting the hardware so that we can put this instrument together.

Left: (10/30/07) Here's a nice photo of the back of the guitar. That Black Limba is a nice wood and looks great with the wenge stringers through the body and neck of the guitar.

Today I sanded the enrite instrument to get it ready for tinting and the application of its Polyester Resin coating. All surfaces on the guitar had to be scratch-free and rubbed down to around 320-grit surface finish.

As always, we are planning a finish on this instrument that is slightly out of the ordinary. We are going to apply a blue/green sunburst tint to the top of the guitar, the back and sides will be a clear finish to show off the grain. The net result should not only be impressive in appearance but quite unusual as well.

Right: (10/27/07) One of the final operations we needed to do to this guitar was to glue the matching curly maple headplate to the headstock so that the head and body of the guitar will match perfectly.

I used a block of wood to evenly distribute the pressure load from four clamps. This allows the headplate to seal against the headstock evenly with a minimal glue line. I leave this overnight so that the glue can completely set.

All that will remain to do before finishing will be to clean up the headstock assembly, drill the six holes for the tuners and give the entire instrument a very intesive sanding. Before it gets the polyester resin finish it has to be sanded smooth to a 320 grit finish (or better).

Right: (10/23/07) Here is a very critical stage in the building of this instrument. The fingerboard has been inlaid and fretted and the frets have been roughly dressed. At that point we are ready to glue the completed fretboard to the rest of the neck/body assembly.

We do this in the vacuum press. I drill small holes and use pins to align the fretboard to the neck, then apply glue, and pop the whole thing into the vacuum press. I leave it in the 'clamped' condition for most of the day.

The result is a perfectly aligned fretboard, and the guitar looks a lot more complete with the fretboard attached. I can now clean up the joints and finish shaping the back of the neck.

Left: (10/20/07) We have been putting a lot of our time into this guitar in order to get it ready for finishing. The latest changes we have done is cut the veneer for the headstock and drum sand that to the correct thickness. This is a piece of the same curly maple that we used for the body top of the instrument.

After we establish a thickness, I cut the truss rod cover from the parent material and in the same process, I engrave the serial number into the truss rod cover.

I will also machine our logo into the same headplate and when that has been filled and sanded back to size I will carefully glue the headplate to the headstock of the guitar and machine the assembly to its final shape and size.

Right: (9/26/07) The pickup cavities were cut on the CNC the other day and while the instrument was squared up on the table I continued to drill out the holes for the bridge and tailpiece. We're pushing to get this instrument done as we have other ones to start for the 2008 NAMM show.

This guitar is really taking shape. Abalone shell has been prepped and glued into recesses in the fingerboard. We're allowing the adhesive to harden overnight and I will post pictures tomorrow after I have cleaned up the fingerboard surface and leveled the shell.

I have also cut cavity covers for the back of the guitar and these will be shaped, fitted and final sanded in the next couple of days.

Left: (9/14/07) Today we continued the machining of the recesses for inlay on the fingerboard. There will be ten inlay positions on the neck.

Now I have to clean up the edges of the inlay and carefully clue them into place. Once the glue has set the abalone shell will have to be filed and sanded flush to the fingerboard surface and then polished up to bring out the depth of the colors.

I also have to drill holes along the upper edge of the fingerboard so that I can inlay the fret marker dots (which will be mother-of-pearl).

All this has to be done before frets can be installed.

Right: (8/3/07) An important step in moving this guitar forward is the cutting of the socket for the Neutrix Locking jack socket. Not an easy task as it has to be machined into the body from the correct angle. I do this on the ornamental mill which is the only machine in my shop that will allow a complete guitar to be secured on its side under a cutting tool.

Also in this photo you can see that we have machined down the maple top to its correct form. We leave about 1/4 inch of thickness around the edge of the body - and at the center the thickness is around 9/16"

Next thing we need to do to this guitar is complete the inlay and get the frets into the Snakewood fingerboard.

Left: (6/9/07) This guitar had the honor of having our first fingerboard containing shell inlay. In the picture you can see the first inlay we did - it consists of two pieces of Paua Abalone with a small highlight piece of Red Abalone in thecenter.

The neck and inlay have not yet been final sanded and finished but we are quite encouraged by the successful results. I used a 1mm carbide end mill to cut the recess in the neck on our CNC machine. I then final shaped and guled the shell into the recess using aerospace grade epoxy.

We will now continue the inlay process as I have three necks to inlay in the days to come.

Right: (5/9/07) This photo shows the early stages of carving the convex top of this guitar. I want to carve the shape carefully as I don't want to end up with uneven or flat spots on the resulting curved surface.

The rough shaping is done with a miniature angle grinder. I use this to remove material down to a pre-determined level. I then switch to various sanding options for the finer finishing until the final shape looks right.

A slow process but I hope to have a CNC program written for this sometime soon. With luck the next one will be completely machined on the CNC and only sanded to remove the machining marks.

Left: (4/25/07) We have been shaping the neck close to finished size and have alos cut out the headstock shape. You can also see the two carbon fiber rods installed in the neck in this photo.

We are currently carving and shaping the rest of the body and the maple top. Next step will probably be cutting the snakewood fingerboard and establishing the fret slots. We aqre also almost ready to cut the pickup cavities in the top of the body.

Right: (4/7/07) Today we glued the carbon fiber reinforcing rods into the neck. This is done using aerospace grade epoxy. As you can see from the photo, the rods are clamped down while the epoxy cures to keep them well seated in their respective slots.

The assembly will be left like this overnight to allow the curing process to complete. I will then have to spend some time removing the squeezed out adhesive and cleaning up the neck joint surface so that it is ready for assembly with the snakewood fingerboard.

Left: (3/31/07) We cut the control cavity and the recess for the cavity cover on this guitar today, complete with bosses for the magnets that will hold the cavity cover onto the body.

While we were at it - I decided to cut a mirror image of the same cavity on the opposite side. I did this for three reasons. Although the black limba wood is light - I felt the guitar should be a little bit lighter, so the material removed will achieve that. Also - it will result in a better balance between the upper and lower sectione of the guitar.

Thirdly, this second cavity will be a cool and useful place to store picks, a capo, bottleneck, or any other guitarist necessities!

Right: Latest on this guitar is that we have received the Nordstrand Humbucking NVH pickups. This will allow us to proceed with the pickup cavities on the guitar itself.

The Nordstrand pickups are very well constructed and we are very impressed with the attention to detail.

Our next setup for this instrument will be the control cavity. We also plan to route out a second cavity since the space exists in the body and it will decrease the weight of the instrument.

We'll add more information on this unconventional feature later.

Above Left: Here, the upper half of the body is being glued onto the top plate and the body core. The trick here is to apply clamping force equally in two opposite directions so that we end up with clean glue lines on both joint faces. I normally leave glue-ups like this to sit overnight so that I am sure everything is 100% set.

Above Right: I used our CNC router to cut a channel in the lower half of the body so that when we need to thread pickup wires to the control cavities, the channels for the wires will already be there. This is a lot easier than trying to drill connecting holes from the pickup cavities to the control cavity after the instrument is completely assembled!

This second half of the body will now be glued onto the guitar and it will be ready to be shaped by hand into something that will hopefully look more like the finished product.

Left: This is a photo of the Curly Maple top plate being glued and clamped onto the laminated body core. Care must be take here to make sure the centerline of the bookmatched top plate assembly is accurately lined up with the centerline of the laminated body core.
I realized at this stage that this guitar is going to be remarkably light!

Right: The top is ready to be glued on to the body center.
I will invent some elaborate clamping setup to do that successfully. Also the angle of the head had been machined flat and some of the extra material behind the neck has been removed with the band saw.

I will post better photos in the days to follow, it was a paticularly busy day and I was lucky to find the time to snap this shot!

My apologies for the messy bench :-)

Left: The two halves of the curly maple top are being glued together. First the joint faces are cut square and flat to ensure a good tight joint.

The gluing is done on a flat surface and the pieces are held down while they are clamped together across the glue line.

This curly maple top will be cut carefully so that it fits tightly to the center body core. After assembly it will be carved to achieve the correct profile for the curved instrument top.

Top plates are 5/8" thick when glued together - they will ultimately be 1/2" thick on the finished instrument.

Right: This photo shows the neck through portion of the guitar in the CNC. This operation involved cutting the slot in the neck for the double-acting truss rod, also two slots for the carbon fiber neck inserts.

All three of these slots have to be just the right size to yield a nice tight fit with the parts that are inserted into them. Finally, the CNC cut the outer profile of the neck, from the nut end to the end that intersects with the maple top piece.

It's really helpful to incorporate all three of these operations on one CNC setup because everything cut in that operation is on centerline and guaranteed accurate within a couple of thousandths of an inch. The CNC cuts the outer edge of the neck so that all features are parallel to the centerline of the body.

Now we can proceed to assembling the maple top pieces and fitting the top to the neck joint. After that we will glue on the Black Limba body halves and we will have something that actually looks like a guitar!

Above: Here's a rough idea of the basic shape of the guitar. The center neck-through section is made of laminates of Black Limba and Wenge. Body halves are also Black Limba and the top of the body and matching headstock are Curly Maple.

Here's a photo of the first three laminates of the neck section being glued together.

To the right is a photo of the neck laminates and the body pieces waiting to be sawn to size.