Saturday - Sweatin' Bullets

Today was an interesting day. After putting the body together, it is necessary to give it a finished appearance - all the seams do not quite fit together perfectly. It is necessary to put a small strip of decorative wood at the butt end. This was done by measuring perfectly and cutting a line with an x-acto knife resting against a straight edge. Then chiseling out the remaining pieces. Then fitting in the decorative piece. Surprisingly enough, this went fairly smooth and I feel real good about the end result.

Beginning the chisel process

The next thing to do was to put in a binding and purfeling channel. These are decorative strips of either plastic or wood surrounding the guitar body. In order to do this, one must use a router and a special fixture attached to it.

The router - or the little machine from hell.

Then carefully go around the guitar body and cut out the channels.

I went ahead and let Jack go first. Youth before age........

Piece o' cake, one might say. Knowing how a router operates, and knowing that it is moving at 20,000 rpm with a 1/4 inch bit that can rip a large mass of wood out of my precious guitar body made me just a tad nervous. Such a tad nervous that I was soaking wet by the time I was done with the process.

Not bad!

George being the master craftsman and master teacher made people feel at ease with the process, and developed an almost goof proof system to do it. Surprisingly, it looks pretty good! In fact, it looks great!