Patience...

Still waiting for the frets to arrive. Put up the drywall in the spare bedroom this morning. I'm going to Nick Pellegrini's promotional dinner tonight in Van Nuys. Busy day. Good day to rest from guitar building.

Fret cutting problem

Today I was to fret the guitar, but had a problem with the fret nipper I bought. I hadn't done a fret-over-binding guitar before. I went through four feet of wire and couldn't get it right. The nipper came apart when a "c" clip came off. Maybe that was a factor in the frets getting cut way too short. The tang was getting removed along with part of the fret crown. I need to wait for new fret wire from LMI (lots this time) and an exchange of the nipper from Stew-Mac. I only ever did fretting where you filed the frets along the fingerboard edge and used binding along the edge, then scraped the binding to follow the fret contour. I'll get the mahogany Tele going some more as I wait for the parts to arrive. Be back in about a week.

Neck trimming.

Just an update. I opted to take the neck sides down a bit. Instead of using the shim in the repair, I just took the neck down and made it parralel with the center line. It looks good now, just no taper. I removed the repair and all is well. After fretting, I will route the slot for the neck tenon and glue it in with Titebond.

Fretboard binding and neck repair.

Got the binding cleaned up and it looked good. A bit strange with the styles of inlay, but I used it all up like I said I would. As I was sanding the neck sides, I got too excited and sanded a bit more than I had planned. Even though I like the new sander, I should have been a bit more careful. As you see, I am using a piece of wood sawn from the neck side as a little repair piece. It'll look great when it's done. No worries! That's what makes it a challenge. I want to show all the problems and design quirks that go with this project. I don't like seeing the before and after, where someone starts with a piece of wood.. then the finished item with no in-between. And you seldom see the mistakes, because we know there are some. If I had all the fancy machinery big builders had, maybe it wouldn't be so challenging. Hey, I worked for a company, and they too messed up on occasion.

Inlays...whatever I had, I used

I did the inlay last night and sanded it today. I tried to make sure the transition from the short to the long inlay was smooth so I arranged them according to where the tip would lay. I didn't realize that the edge against the fingerboard edge was actually the most critical. Now the inlays are a bit off-edge. That's what you get when you use the left-over stuff. With this guitar I'm trying to use all the left-over stuff I got. The 12th-fret inlays are just a tad off, as I had to use a different inlay because one broke. They're not the same size, but close enough for who it's for...ME! I tried to figure a way to attach the binding. I was going to use a piece of wood clamped just about 1/2" off the fingerboard edge and use the handle-side of clothes pins, but that was not reliable as the pins were different sizes. It would've worked beautifully if they were a little more reliable. I opted to band saw the neck up to the edge and sand it as close to the line as possible. I still have all the wood behind the neck. That'll be cut after fretting.

One in the works...

This is one that I started a while back. It's next after the one I'm documenting. I wish I had documented this Tele, as it had lots of steps to make.

Turquoise inlay

I routed out the cavity with the Dremel tool and sanded the inlay enough to get it smooth. I wasn't worried about getting the inlay perfect. The roundness gives it a cartoony feel. That's OK, because this guitar is a bit casual. I haven't decide if I should go with an epoxy and wood dust glue-in or superglue with wood dust in the cavity edge type of glue-in.