Thursday - The Bridge and Neck

Today we prepared for placing the bridge on the guitar. This meant that the neck would have to be temporarily bolted on to lay out the proper placement. We had some tooling to do and I also started carving the heel of the neck. We also shaped the bridge on the drum and belt sanders.

Positioning the bridge

The bridge was positioned and the two "E" holes were drilled through the body. This allowed a couple bolts to be placed prior to gluing and clamping. Then the bridge was glued and clamped in place.

Clamping the bridge in place

George then showed us how to radius the neck and using an ancient tool called the spokeshave (so named because it was used to make the spokes for wooden wheels) we carved the shape of the neck.

Shaping the heel of the neck