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Here's the completed neck pocket and truss rod access slot. The holes for the neck plate are drilled and now its time to test fit the neck.
Looks good! Putting the neck in place is always when the collection of parts starts looking like a guitar :)
Some very nice gain patterns on the back, perfect for a transparent finish!
The side grain even has nice flowing swoops.
Now it's time to mount the bridge and start routing the pickup cavities.
The bridge is carefully positioned and screwed in place. Next the string through holes are marked with a punch.
The string through holes are drilled most of the way through. The body is so thick that the small drill bit would wander off course if I tried to drill all the way through. Having said that, one of the holes is carefully (slowly!) drilled all the way through just to have a frame of reference on the back. I measure the distance from the bottom of the body to the holes on the front...
...and mark off the same point on the back. You can see that the drill bit wandered a tiny bit, but not much.
I route the pickup cavity for the bridge pickup and then install the bridge and pickup. The requirement on this guitar is to position the 'neck' pickup so that the low E pole pieces are 1.75" apart so I need the bridge pickup in place to determine the location of the neck route.
Everything lined up perfectly!
I thought a nice touch on this build would be to make the string retainer block out of a piece of the same African Blackwood used for the fretboard. First the cavity is routed, then the block is carefully shaped to fit. The final fitting will take place after the body has had a finish applied as that will shrink the size of the route ever so slightly.
The dark colour of the African Blackwood string retainer will look great against the transparent butterscotch finish. I always think it looks even nicer when you look carefully and see that even a small piece like this block has grain visible.
Next, all the edges of the body are rounded over, then it's time for the belly carve. You can see where I've drawn in the shape on the back and side. In the background you can also see the grinder I'm about to use. Yes, I said grinder!
Once the carve is roughed in with the grinder, it gets cleaned up with some sandpaper.
Using a grinder on wood is not for the faint of heart! But, with a little patience and practice, sculpting even delicate curves is possible.
The body is now ready for (lots and lots) of sanding, then it's on to the finishing stage. Have I mentioned that I don't enjoy gain filling swamp ash? It's like trying to fill the Grand Canyon!
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