Top bracing, side bending, fretwire bender and 13 fretter neck

The Redwood top of Sami's guitar has now been braced and the quilted Sapele sides bent. Looking good, progressing with a nice pace.

In the bottom there are pics of my 13-fret neck-to-be with roughed out headstock, and below that is a picture of the fret wire bender I made out of old (dusty&rusty) skateboard bearings, an old birch wood bed leg and three bolts and washers. It's turned with a 10mm wrench and works like a charm for 0€ product!

Adirondack spruce only! 

LMII has kindly labeled every item they supplied, 

so I won't accidentally build an adirondack neck

 and brace the top with neck wood.

Coming together. Just add some glue here and there...

X-brace crossing notched...

…for a perfect, snug fit.

Gluing the major braces in go-bar

Shaping the first set of braces before gluing down the rest

More bracing!

Shaped and scalloped, only short of bridge plate

Adirondack spruce was a delight to carve!

Side before bending in a boiling water

my hi-tech side bending rig

the ready bent side.
 This set of Sapele was very easy to bend. 

The other side.
Enough leftover for a future head plate veneer!

Here is the headstock of a 13-fretter I've been making
 for myself for quite some time.
Waverly 3-on a plate tuning machines
with snakewood knobs look very nice! 

Headplate veneer is a merge of Madagascar
rosewood and koa, with black and white
 maple sandwiched under.

The spanish cedar neck center strip
is walnut with b/w stripes.

Here is the fret wire bender.
Looking bad, working like a charm!
If you want to learn to build it
(the pic itself is quite self-explanatory),
 contact me or just google fret wire bender.

Brace shaping and herringbone rosette

The back braces settled over night, and I got to shape them today. Rough shape with a mini plane, fine tuning with sanding paper, feathering of the brace ends with knife and chisel.

As both back and top came ready thicknessed and joined, I was able to work the rosette today as well. Some pictures of that process here as well.

Bracing the back

Here's a few photos showing my back bracing procedure.

The figured sapele back and sides look very very nice with a spit coat of shellac on.

With a little shellac, Sapele came to life!

Back braces squared out (with a pen marking in the bottom for the sanding phase), center seam reinforcement strip in place

Shaping the braces to the back radius on concave disc. I keep sanding until all of the pen marking is gone.

nice radius!

Time to notch the center seam strip for the braces

Popping out the piece-to-be-popped-out with a chisel

All ready for gluing down the bracing on the go-bar deck. Under the back is the same concave disc on which the braces were shape-sanded. 

Braces glued, glue spill out cleaned

It doesn't look bad at all, thinks I

New project starting

It's been a while…

I just got an exciting box delivered today. Sami is going to get a new guitar, a 12 fret, short scale 000. Top is redwood with adirondack bracing, and back and sides figured sapele. It was the first time I used LMII's Kit Wizard. The materials are of high quality, the plates are thicknessed and even joined and the ebony fingerboard already slotted, so it's going to be a pretty fast build, I hope. The first glue seam is already laid down, as I glued the back center seam reinforcement in place. Here we GO!!

This kit's got it all. Just add tuners and strings. And a bit of glue here and there...

A neat trick to seat the center seam properly: masking tape borders.

When the masking tape is removed, so are the glue spills as well