Building a Guitar from a Kit

Here you see the back attached to the rim with notches in the binding feet where the back braces meet the sides.

Moments later, the assembly is turned over and you can see the rear view of the back and rim.

The day after I clamped the back onto the rim assembly, I removed all of the clamping gizmos and found that there was a small crack in the back plate near the heel bout. Serious Bummer!

I cut a couple of small scraps of the back joint brace material (Never throw anything away!) and used my industrial-grade C-clamps to bring the back plate back into alignment.

After the glue cured, the crack was nearly invisible and was hard to detect on the back. I hope that it will not have a huge impact on the sound quality of the final guitar.

Here you see one side of the rim having the missing binding feet clamped over the back braces where they had been removed for the gluing process.

Here the opposite side has been prepared and clamped in the same fashion. You can see the crack patch under the leftmost cam clamp.

This is the last view of the inside before the top plate is attached to the rim/sides. All of the binding feet are in place and the crack patch will be soon hidden from casual view.

The top has been attached and the glue has cured. (That process was NOT pretty and I did not take any photos. Trust me on this one!) You can see that I have already routed the two-level channel on the side of the top. This channel will accept the herringbone trim and the plastic binding.

Here is a closer view of the same channels prepared for the detail strip and binding. You also can see the neck block and the dove tail that will soon get a neck installed into it.

The view is, perhaps, too far to see, but there is a channel routed into the back for the white, plastic binding that will be glued in place.

From this view you can hardly see all of the things that I have botched so far!!!

To cut the binding channels I used a small bench-top router table. It's NOT up to the task but I was able to get it to do what I needed. Before I do this again I will have a new router and a professional table.

Here is a detail of the fixture I made to act as a back stop to control the depth of the cut. Crude. But it worked. Earlier I thought that I might be able to use my Dremmel Tool for this task. WRONG!!! It was sorely under powered and chattered like a nervous schoolgirl.

There are a couple of pieces of plastic that serve as a detail on the heel of the body. This is where you would drill a hole for the strap button. The masking tape is simply holding the detail pieces in place until the glue cures.

I used this old war-horse, Craftsman router to trim the top and bottom plates to final size---after they were glued onto the sides.

Trust me on this one---You can NEVER have enough clamps. Clamps of all types and sizes. And do NOT buy cheap ones. They just don't do the job.

It's not a great shot but this is a shot of the heel detail piece in place. I have not made any efforts to smooth the heights yet. That will come very soon as I begin to finish the body itself.

For the first time in months, it is actually starting to look like I may be able to get a real guitar out of this effort.

But there are MANY steps yet to accomplish...