MEANGEN E
So You Want to Build a Guitar? Pt. 8
Sanding the edges
Day Five – Final Details
From here on, it’s mainly handwork and
detailing. Let’s take a look at some of
the tools you can choose to work with to
perform what is the most time consuming detail in guitar building – sanding.
These include a stout bench mount or floor
pedestal vise, a nice set of files, router,
assorted power and pneumatic air sanders
and several custom blocks for hand sanding. You can easily spend up to 70 percent
of the entire project sanding. It is the final
step in the visual quality of your work and
an art in its own right.
I like to have the body sides sanded before
routing the edge radius to help minimize
subsequent sanding. I sand the side of the
body on an edge and/or spindle sander to
a nice, rough finish to remove any fuzz or
cutter tool marks.
Routing the Radius
With our sides detailed, we can route our
radius. Since these are neck-thru designs,
the rear of the body can be easily routed
using a table mount or handheld router. The
top is more difficult because the fretboard
gets in the way of using power tools. You
could use a smaller laminate trim router on
the face, but you can only get as close as
the diameter of the router base (although
you can use files to shape in the rest). A pin
router is ideal for routing the face radius,
as it allows the radius to get close to the
fretboard. We use a 1/2” round over bit for
those big, comfy edge contours.
Final Shaping
I find this step to be a lot of fun. A CNC
machine will only cut as well as you can
draw, and since a guitar is a three-dimensional object all the blend areas like
the neck transition into the body or the
headstock to neck transition are rather
software intensive – certain tasks happen
very quickly in CAD, where finer details can
become extremely time consuming. This is
when doing particular operations yourself
becomes more efficient and rewarding,
allowing you to put your thumbprint on the
instrument.
The Stew Mac bench vise is integral here,
due to the padded jaws’ ability to swivel
to accommodate any unparallel items. I
use angle grinders with carbide burr bits
as well as a bladder sander that is like a
two-handed pneumatic rolling pin spindle
sander – great for getting into tight spots
and detailing body horn areas. For certain
details, a variety of rasps, files or custom-shaped sanding blocks may work best –
power tools in unskilled hands can often be
too aggressive. I will continue on the body
using a hand orbital sander and assorted
sanding blocks to completely detail the
guitar up to 120 grit.
The Fretboard
It’s time to get the fretboard ready for the
frets. The most important detail at this
point is to ensure you have adequate relief
in the neck – this is where truing the fretboard can become a make or break point
for some guitars. But before we get too
carried away, we need to glue in our inlays
and drill for our side dots. I suggest not
drilling your side dots until your fretboard
has been trued. The inlays you use – typically thin shell materials or thicker clay or
plastic dots – often dictate how careful you
Jigged up for fret dressing
need to be. Shell inlays require more attention. Glue them in too deeply and you’ll
have to sand more, potentially causing fret
slot depth problems; not deep enough
and you may sand through one when truing or lose its vibrant color. You can use
wood glue, epoxy or Krazy glues for the
inlay, each offering its own advantages and
disadvantages. You can tint epoxy with
powder pigments to hide wood voids, plus
get fast drying time with 10 to 30 minute
glues; wood glues clean up easily but take
a little longer to dry.
Once the inlays are in we can get on with
truing our fretboard. I wrote an article for
the August 2005 issue of Musician’s Hotline
[now Premier Guitar] showing various jigs
designed to hold a Fender or Gibson-style
guitar for fret dressing. The same jigs are
used here. The process for truing a fretboard and dressing frets are similar, but
prior to fretting is where you finalize the
range of rod adjustment you will ultimately
have. The main thing to remember here is
to avoid over-sanding.
Join us next month when we wrap this
baby up!
Gene Baker
Any questions or comments visit
finetunedinstruments.com
meangene.org
b3gene@verizon.net
Fine Tuned Instruments LLC,
home of his “b3” instruments.
