Binding the fret board

The Success Kit from KMG does not include instructions, or materials for binding the fretboard. However, I happen to really like the look of a bound fretboard, so when I ordered the kit, I spoke to Ken and he included plenty of extra maple strips so I could bind my fret board. The strips are the same maple that the guitar body is bound with so everything will have a nice continuity. Binding the fretboard (FB from here on out) is not terribly difficult.
The set up you see here is as follows:
The black board is T shaped. The white board is pushed into the FB and binding which is in turn pushed into the T of the black board holding everything nice and snug while the glue dries.
Gluing the binding on.

This was the easy part.

Well...not terribly difficult ifyou know what you are doing and you have tools and experience with said tools. I have no experience, no workshop, and really had no clue how to cut off the minute amount of material from each side of the FB in order to accommodate the strips of maple I was adding. You see, the FB should have a certain width when its finished. If I add approximately 1/8th of an inch to each side with the binding, the FB will be too wide. Thus, I have to shave off about the same 1/8th of an inch from each side and then install the binding. This is a simple task for a person who knows what they are doing, but for me, not so much. I fashioned a routing set up with a fence and a base for the router to ride on and thought I was A second look at the gluing set up.

good to go. My fence slipped, which meant I took off a little extra material on one spot. Oops. Not good. I panicked and e-mailed Ken. He made me panic more since he had not seen my mistake and my description of the boo-boo was bad. After a day at work, I came home to take a fresh look at the FB. I decided to measure it against my other guitars to see how it stacked up. Turned out, I had not taken off as much as I Giancarlo checked out my set
up. He approved and
told the glue it was
OK to dry.

originally thought. In fact, I still had a bit to go in order to get the binding strips on. I decided to sand the rest of the material off instead of using the router. It ended up coming out pretty good!

Nothing doing here

I took a break from building to travel to Dubai with my wife. Thus nothing at all has gotten done on the build for the last 11 days or so...aside from me traveling. Dubai is really nice by the way. I recommend visiting it if you get a chance.....if the 12 hour flight from the east coast does not deter you...or the 14.5 hour return flight. There are lots of people from England there on "Holiday" as they call it. That's because it is a much less sucky 6 hour flight from England to Dubai. In any event, if you like to travel, Dubai is a really nice place. Do not let its geographical location in the middle east scare you off. The people are very nice and English is spoken by everyone. I did not meet one person who did not speak English.
I went snow boarding in Dubai....yes, really. I went here: SkiDubai. Pretty much went just to say I did, but it turned out being cool too. I could write tons about my trip, but I wont, for two reasons.
1) This is a blog about building a guitar.
2) I am really tired since Dubai is 9 hours ahead of NY and I got back yesterday and I am still not adjusted to the time change.
So good night.

Fret board update!

I bought these really cool 3-D looking pearl stars for the fret board and I was planning on inlaying them myself. However, I realized very quickly when I was practicing, that my desire to do the job seriously outweighed my ability. Upon this realization, I began hunting for a skilled professional to do the inlay for me. I was directed to www.CustomPearlInlay.com by a member of the kitguitarforum.

Nice! Its a non-traditional

inlay pattern for an acoustic

but its mine dammit!!

Dave Nichols, the owner of Custom Pearl Inlay has been doing inlay work for many years. In fact when the CF Martin guitar company wanted to do their 1,000,000th guitar with all sorts of intricate inlay, Dave did it. But even before that, Dave did all of the custom inlay work for Martin during the '60's when Martin reintroduced the heavily inlayed D-45. He is that good. He has a guy working for him named Keif who is also extremely talented. I e-mailed Dave pictures of my stars and asked for a quote. He sent me a very reasonable quote and I mailed out the fretboard. A few days later, Keif called me to verify my instructions. An hour or so later, my fretboard was on a UPS truck heading back to me. All in all, it took about a week from when I mailed it until I got it back. It looks amazing as you can see. I highly recommend Custom Pearl Inlay if you need any of this type of work done.

Looking good!

Binding the top

I put the binding and purfling on the top last night. Well...on half of the top anyway. It takes a little time to do, and then you have to wait for the glue to dry, so I only did half. But today, I glued the remaining binding and purfling. Now I have the whole guitar body bound and purfled. The next step is to scrape/ sand/ coerce the binding and purlfing flush with the rest of the guitar body. The binding has to be perfectly level along the sides and the top as well as the purfling so that when I put the finish on this thing, it will look good. If my prep for the finish is half assed, I will wind up with a poor finish. It wont be flat and I will have a hard time getting it to look good. Here I have one half
of my binding and
purfling glued and
taped down. Lots of tape.

Making the bindings flush is done with a tool called a cabinet scraper. Its basically a flat piece of steel that you sharpen on the edges in such a way that it scrapes off little fluffy curls of wood as you scrape it along the body of the guitar. Its a cool little tool that I still don't use very well. I would sand everything, but it would imbed the dark wood dust in the light maple. That would not look good.

Here my kitten is
inspecting my work.
She approves. At least I
think she does.

I sent out my fret board for custom inlay work and it will be back on Monday. So I have to get some things done before I can put the fret board on the neck, and then put that on the body. Please enjoy my pictures.

The tape is off and
its looking pretty good!
Notice the matching rosette
and purfling. Nice!

I have gotten a lot of work done since I last posted. I did not make any updtaes here because my choices were to do the work on my guitar that I got done, or get half as much done and blog about it. I chose the former.
Let me bring you up to speed.

In my last post I had fitted the neck ahead of schedule but it all worked out. Before that I was fitting and gluing in the end wedge. Well, I have since scraped the end wedge flush with the rim and it looks great. I neglected to take a picture of it, but trust me. There are enough pics in this post anyway.Here you can see I cut the stepped
channel for the binding and
purfling. The back plate only gets
binding. It does not need
the beautification of purfling.
It does wish it had it though.

I also borrowed a router from a friend and went to work cutting the "rebates" for the binding and purfling. As I mentioned, purfling is partly there for decoration and partly there to protect the edge of the guitar. Same goes for the binding. There are many options out there for binding and purfling. I went with a herringbone patterned purfling that is commonly found on a Martin HD-28 which is a $2500 guitar that still uses a plastic binding. On my guitar, instead of the plastic binding, I am using a flamed or curly maple binding. Binding with wood like I am doing is a little more difficult but looks so dang good!!
Here is a shot of the rebate on the back
plate. You can also see
my side port in this shot.
I used some thin maple
to bind the edges of the port
just to make it look pretty.
And because I can.

Cutting the rebates is a daunting task because the guitar is not flat. If this was just a box with 90 degree angles between the top and sides and back and sides, it would be pretty easy to follow the curves to rout the channels. But its not. In addition to it not being square, the angle of the rim to the sides changes as you go around the guitar. Routers are not designed to make this kind of cut. Click here for a great explanation of this fact. At least not uniformly, which I needed the cuts to be. KMG makes an attachment that they send with the kit that addresses this issue. Ken, the owner, can explain how the attachment works much better than I can, so click this link to read all about it. KMG Binding Attachment.

I am now up to the installation of the bindings and in these pics, you can see that I have installed one of the back binding strips. That's why there is a truck load of blue painters tape all over one edge of the guitar. The rubber band is around the waist of the guitar because I needed some extra pressure on the binding there to keep it tight to the side. I told you wood binding was more difficult than plastic. Plastic just bends right in and you only need tape to hold it while the glue dries. The rubber band is there because the guitar
said it makes her look thinner if
she wears a belt. Women!!

Now I just have to install three more binding strips and two purfling strips and I am done. Well...not exactly. I will have plenty more to do. I have to scrape the bindings flush and that is sure to take a bit of time. But I am not out to win a race with this build. Originally I was racing, but when I realized I was the only one in the race, I knew I could go as slow as I wanted and still win. I am totally winning!

Fitting the neck

Over the weekend I got a little bit done. As you can see from the pictures I fit the neck onto the guitar. I shouldn't have been able to do this yet. You see, in order to fit the neck onto the body, I had to open up a little channel for the tenon to fit into. In the KMG instructions for the part where you cut the slot in the top for the truss rod, it specifically does not tell you to open the channel for the tenon. But I did it. Why? I do not follow instructions very well. That and I think I know things I don't. For example, I do not know how to build a guitar. I am slowly learning, but I do not yet know. Therefore it is imperative for me to follow to the letter the instructions and not to go charging ahead.
You might be thinking, "Why is it such a big deal that you cut that wood?" Well, I will tell you. Its a big deal because now, when I rout the channel for the binding, I wont have anything for the router to ride on in the area where I foolishly cut the tenon cap. Oh well. I am just making this harder on myself, right? I wish I had not made this harder for myself. At least I got to put the neck on and take these pictures. Please enjoy.
Picture number one is the neck on with no fingerboard. Exciting, isn't it?
I am excited about it. Now it looks more like a guitar!





Picture number 2 (over there---->)
is my guitar with the neck and the fingerboard on. Nothing has been glued yet.














Picture number 3 (look right ---->) is my guitar again with the neck and fingerboard on, only better than the other one because its not as dark. That is not the fingerboard I am going to be using. Its an extra one. But it is a close approximation of what its going to look like. The real one will have custom fret markers. You will get to see them later. Just take what you can get for now, OK.
The neck fit almost perfectly on the first try. Normally with other kits this is not the case. Ken Cierpilowski makes good stuff. I only had to sand a tiny bit to get it absolutely perfect and the problem was probably something I caused. That's all for tonight folks. I hope everyone had a happy Halloween yesterday. I did!