July 2023 Update

Posted on July 31, 2023 by Scott French

July came and went in a flash. At the start of the month I spent some time building a flexible side-dot drilling jig and toward the end of the month I started roughing out the neck heel and headstock. More photos of the progress at the instrument page below.

Chambered Claro Walnut SF3 Carve Top Guitar

The side-dot jig is pretty simple... it's a carrier to mount the fingerboard and hold replaceable acrylic templates for different scale lengths. The acrylic templates are made on the laser and go pretty quick. The results were decent, but I would like to give it another go using real drill guides instead of the aluminum tube stock I had on hand. Overall it was a good experience as I am trying to streamline the process as much as possible for future instruments.

More recently I started roughing in the heel and headstock transitions. This is going well but I still need to clean up a few areas. It's been a long time since I went through this process and I am actually surprised how well it's coming together, but I do want to get the carve a little smoother before calling it done. This heel is something I really wanted to get done on the CNC, but I don't think it would have turned out this well. Not that the CNC isn't capable, I just don't have those CAD skills yet.

I'm looking forward to doing some work on the body next, including cleaning up the top carve and figuring out how I want to handle the area around the neck-to-body transition.

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