Wednesday 1st October ’08

well, the week begins thus!!

David’s bespoke Vanquish model has a last few coats of wax applied and buffed..

before we get to the intersting work.. each fret is blackened with permanent marker before being flattened and profiled

and polished..

as she will have a locking nut we’re going German with the tuners.. Schaller M6 tuners are well matched here.. note the multi-laminate rosewood neck.. pretty, and very very stable!!

the Kahler trem and pickups are installed

followed by strings and the lever operated locking nut built by Kahler.. it takes a bit of setting up, but once working it makes a complete mockery of standard allen key operated ones!!

the flame maple backplates are screwed in

..and I remember once again why I build guitars for a living instead of playing them… still, I get to play your custom beauty first and that gives me a real buzz!!

she will be hung on a wall in the display room for a week or so to see what effect the strings have on the neck and then she will be wired up and set free!!

back to more mundane matters.. Stuart’s new custom guitar is in need of some inlays..

the trapezoid shapes are cut out of the abalone sheets with a jewelers saw

and then each inlay is tidied up carefully with several small files..

before we get to the inlays the binding channel is routed.. you might have noticed that the order in which I go through each process is very important.. and constantly changes as I grow up in my art.. this time the reason for cutting the binding channel first is simply so that it is easier to place each inlay in the center of the fingerboard..

one of my favourite breaks in normal proceedings is when I need to sharpen my tools.. it takes around an hour to hone this number of tools to a razor edge and is an almost meditative process!

back to the inlays, now my knife is sharp and has a good point I score around each piece of abalone

and then the cavities are routed out.. using the mini-router saves hours of work with fiddly chisels..

everything is tidied up, checked for fit and then glued in place..

and while we wait for the inlays to cure the black and ivoroid binding strips are glued in..

after lunch and a cuddle with our one remaining westie puppy the inlays and binding are cut flush to the fingerboard before everything is polished up through the grits with wet and dry papers..

finally the jumbo frets are nipped to fit over the binding and glued in place..

eventually each fret end is filed down and angled in

before the fretboard recieves her first few coats of oil!!

on to Dave S’s left-handed plagiarist model.. the fret slots are marked out and cut

the inlays are put in and the fret slots are filed a bit to ease the passage of each fret and also lessen the possibility of ‘tear out’ when she has a refret (a long time in the future… these are stainless steel frets!!)

Five necks have more coats of oil applied.. and here we leave it.. more of the same tomorrow.. but I may get to building the odd body or two!

regards.  Ben

Crimson Bespoke Guitars UK