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Posts tagged headstock veneer
Bailey custom acoustic from 40,000 year old Kauri-p4
May 16th
…Mother of Pearl ‘Southern Cross’ inlay…
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- Super glue and tweezers, mini router and cutters, scribe and scalpel, and a large chisel for prising off the peices
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- The mini spiral downcut router cutters leave a clean edge
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- The pieces are temporarily fixed in place for marking out
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- A scribe was used to score around the outline and the pieces are removed
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- A mini router is used to make the channel
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- A close up of the router in action
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- A 1/16″ cutter was used to rough it out first
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- After a second finer pass with a tiny 1/32″ cutter
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- A bit of work on the corners with a scalpel and they are ready for the inlays
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- Test fitting the inlays- they should drop in without any force
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- The inlays are glued with a paste made from epoxy and wood dust
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- After the glue is hard the inlay is sanded flat…it’s finished!
The guitar is now fretted and inlaid ready for finishing…
Sandy had mentioned some kind of Southern Cross inlay, so this is what I came up with. As luck would have it I had four of the stars left over from a previous project so only had to make the smallest one. I checked the relative brightness (magnitude) of each star to make sure I got them in the right place using the Wikipedia entry on The Southern Cross. Being from the Northern hemisphere I have never actually seen this constellation, so hopefully I can be forgiven for not knowing them by heart. I had to be slightly artistic with the exact placement to fit them around the tuners and logo, so please do not use this as a star map to navigate by or you may never be seen again!
Bailey custom one string bass-3/7- making the neck-2
Mar 17th
…Work continues on the one string wonder…
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- Planing a rough radius onto the fretboard
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- Perfecting the shape with a 12″ radius block
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- Checking the shape with a 12″ radius gauge
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- Carving the neck
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- The neck is now ready for inlays and frets
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- Individual string saddle with piezo pickup, acoustic preamp, and midi circuit
The neck is almost finished after completing the headstock, radiusing the board and carving the neck- It feels great and its a lot of fun to make. I’m starting to really like this.
Although there is only one string right down the middle, the tuner is not located centrally to the neck as you might expect. To work out the position it is offset by half the width of the tuner post plus half the thickness off the string. This way the string will go straight through the nut to the tuner. This is sometimes called ‘straight string pull’
I drilled the tuner hole and checked that it fits ok. At this point all I have left to do is put the inlays and frets in and make and fit the nut. Then I can put a string on it and check how it reacts. I have not put a truss rod in this neck as there will be a lot less tension than the usual four, five, or six stringers. It is a very high quality piece of quartersawn maple and very stiff so i’m not worried but I’ll test it out anyway…Part 4
Bailey Custom Carved Top – faded blue denim – 3/4
Dec 19th
…This colour is very cool and quite easy to do…
The back and sides were first sealed so if any colour runs onto these areas it will easily come off. Then colour is applied to the front of the body and the headstock. In this case it is just ordinary water based blue dye. After it has dried it is carefully sanded with fine (320g) sandpaper. This removes most of the blue but some of it ‘sticks’ in the figure of the wood because the stain penetrates deeper in these areas. The tricky bit is getting it all to look nice and even with no dark or light patches. The more highly figured the wood the better the result. It works on both flamed and quilted maple. You can also use black for this.
The colour is protected with a sealer coat which must be dry before the logo is applied to the headstock.
The guitar was then sprayed with a couple of coats of matt lacquer.
All this happened last week so it has had enough time to dry before assembly next week.
Custom Build – Set neck, Single cut, Flamed Cap- P15
Oct 28th
…Fitting the mother of pearl Bailey logo…
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- The logo is very carefully aligned and fixed with tiny drops of superglue
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- A scriber (pointy thing) is used to mark all around the edges
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- Then the pieces are removed by prising gently with a chisel
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- The headstock is now ready for routing
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- A mini router is used to make the recess forthe inlay to fit into
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- The depth is set so that the piece sits slightly proud
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- The ‘underline’ is fitted and I am working on the ‘B’
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- Sometimes it takes a few goes to get a good fit
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- The recess is now cut for the whole logo
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- The pieces should drop in – if they are forced they may break
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- I used black superglue to fill the hole
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- Then the pieces are pressed in – glue seeps out the edges
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- After roughly sanding it flat I do the dot over the ‘i’
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- A 2mm hole is drilled for the dot
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- Then it is glued in the same way
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- The finished logo after sanding flat
We decided the logo looked better across the top so I went ahead and did it.
Inlaying is great fun….It’s a very simple process but it does take a bit of practice to get really good. It helps a lot if the surface to be inlaid is black – ebony is great for this. If you use black glue, this fills any gaps and becomes pretty much invisible, the inlay then looks crisp with nice clean edges. Lighter coloured wood like maple are much harder to inlay…..
The guitar now has it’s topcoats of lacquer and is looking very shiny. Now it will hang for as long as possible before polishing. The longer its left the harder the finish and the easier it is to polish.
So the next blog about this guitar will be on assembly day when the guitar is finished….It has to be done by xmas so thats plenty of time…..meanwhile I got some repairs to do.
Better get on with it then!
Custom Build – Set neck, Single cut, Flamed Cap- P5
Oct 8th
Gluing on the ebony headstock veneer
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- Ready to glue on the ebony headstock veneer
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- The headstock veneer clamped up
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- I left it like this overnight for the glue to dry
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- Clamps off…..
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- The tuner holes sre reamed out
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- The finished headstock
The ebony for the headstock veneer is about 1mm thick. I marked it oversize, then cut it out roughly on the bandsaw before gluing it on.
Blocks or ‘cauls’ are used to protect the wood while the piece is being clamped. I use titebond for this sort of job. The glue is left overnight to dry.
When the clamps have been removed the tuner holes have to be made through the veneer. A small drill makes the hole which is then reamed to size.
After this I tidied up where the oversized ebony veneer overhung the headstock shape. I did this with various sanding blocks and 80-120g sandpaper. It doesn’t take very long as the veneer is so thin……
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