The diary page will now be updated twice weekly.. doing it daily has proved to be too much of a drain on my time, and I really need to spend more time building the guitars..  The updates will be up on Wednesday's and Fridays from now on.. without fail!

Tuesday/Wednesday 15th/16th April '08

early in the morning... this cat is the real boss in the household!

this guitar was left last night just after having the frets glued in place.. now fully cured the fret ends are filed flush with the fingerboard

and then profiled with this small customised file

a piece of figured maple is glued on the headstock.. this adds a lot of extra strength to the headstock, both the glue and the fact that the grain of the maple is horizontal to the grain of the neck.. (not that any extra strength is really needed when you're talking about a multi-laminate neck!!)

more layers of finish are applied through the day to Archies PAF

and then several hours are spent sharpening various chisels and knives..

necessary for cutting the final inlay cavities for the Mother of Pearl birds

which are glued in place and left to dry..

the excess headstock material is removed with a coping saw

and side dot inlays are installed.. 2mm wide white plastic rod is the easiest option here..

and then every last mm of the guitar is stripped and fine sanded through the grits

the first version of the new logo.. the r looks a bit wrong.. what do you think?  .. I'm going for the whole nevoue cool Banksie-esque arty style stuff...

the only real problem is the totally excessive amount of time it takes to cut the recess.. still, it will come right with practice..

:)

next up, after the final bout of sanding, she is stained blue..

and then coats of red, green and yellow are layed on top..

and then various areas are sanded through to come up with the camo finish..

front and back..

here we start adding up the layers of finish..

pretty soon she will be a complete guitar!

and will have a finish as cool as this!!

...smug...

Wednesday starts with a rainbow of shavings as the cavities are pre-drilled

on both the RF Slim and the left-handed PRS-ish lovely..

here they are..

next up I carefully route the binding channel.. I don't normally like router tables, when cutting anything bigger than this you run the risk of chipping out sections that you don't really want to lose.. It took screwing up three expensive maple tops to make my mind up on this..

once the channel has been routed the top is roughly carved down to the height of the binding..

the tricky bit is to decide where to start.. and how many seperate sections to try to glue simultaneously..

the curve here is the trickiest bit.. especially when using timber binding like this..

both guitars are trussed up and left to dry..

the headstock veneers are cut out.. to match the top timbers of course

the bobbin sander is used to bring them to shape

and then more glue goes all over my fingers..

the boys come for a visit.. Jasper still insists on falling asleep on top of Bud..

once dry the excess glue is removed and we start to see what these ugly ducklings will grow into

on this one I did not carve the top prior to glueing in the binding, it's all about experimentation and learning on the job..

anyway, here we are.. by Friday's update these two will be ready for finishing..

till then have a great couple of days..  Ben

Crimson Guitars HQ