Beginning the finishing

Here's a few shots of the beginning of the finishing of Jyrki's guitar. I love the point when the fine sanded woods start to come alive and get their finished colours under the first shellac coats. This is the point when faith is starting to turn into seeing...

Tung oil and french polishing are the ways to go in this shop. No spray guns allowed. Or needed.

The neck is finished with Tru Oil, a famous brand of gunstock oil. It'll give a nice, satin, woody feel to the neck. A thin layer is wiped on, the excess wiped off after a while, using a paper towel. I let each layer dry 24 hours after which I buff lightly with 0000 steel wool before adding the next coat. A week or so'll build up the thickness I need.

I prefer my necks with no tinting. The beauty of the wood itself something I don't want to shade with colors.
Age and natural UV rays will  darken the wood gradually.

The first step of french polishing is to seal the rosette, binding and purfling, so that no purple color from rosewood is traveling to contaminate the koa binding, white purfling strip or the spruce top. This is done a few times, using just a folded piece of cloth. Then the whole guitar is spit coated with shellac using cloth, before the actual polishing/building up action takes place.
I LOVE the tone and lustre of the koa binding against rosewood!

This time I'm trying Ubeaut Hard Shellac that is rumored to be harder and more durable than the ordinary shellac. We'll see that later.
The rosewood is pore filled with Timbermate filler from stewmac. It seems easier than the pumicing or epoxy methods that I've tried before. 

Bound headstock and heel cap

I decided to try out two new things with the neck. Binding the headstock and laminating the heel cap of several layers. Both seemed to come out pretty nicely.
The koa wood binding with black/white/black purfling comes from stewmac and looks awesome!

Both the ebony fingerboard and the headstock are now
bound with koa, with black/white/black purfling at the bottom.
It does give the neck a pretty finished look!

The heel cap is walnut/koa/walnut/flame maple sandwich

The neck-to-headstock transition is not the smoothest possible yet.
Anyway, the binding has to be cut down to accommodate the bone saddle.
The side dots I made out of black shielded solid copper wire.
It looks a bit messy right now due to cyanoacrylate. Hope it cleans out later.

Some detail issues here. Fortunately out of sight of the right handed player

The fretboard position dots are classic 4mm abalone.

Neck with a slotted headstock

Once the box is put together, it's come time to focus on the neck.
I'm making a scarf-jointed heel-stacked 12-fret spanish cedar neck with slotted headstock. The fine scent of Cedrala Odorata is just wonderful - worth working with!

I made the slotting by hand, drilling, sawing, chiseling and filing. Still some sanding is required, but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

The tuning machines are Golden Age Restoration tuners from Stewmac. A fitting choice for an old-timey job like this 

Rosewood overlay with a 0,5mm walnut veneer in between

Umm, I think I might need to shape the neck a little more