Like Butter

Finishing this guitar is sort of bitter sweet. It is a thing of beauty (in my eyes anyways) and something that I will always cherish. Yet, once it's done I have to leave this place and my new friends. Boo.

Having the neck done feels great. Like I said earlier, the neck has been my favorite component to work on. Funny, since I had the most trepidation about the neck at the beginning. Most of the tooling was done with a scraper ( 2.5" x 4" thin rectangle of metal with a sharp edge).

I wish I could explain how good it feels (in yr bones, heart, mind) to take a swipe with the scraper and remove a long, thin ribbon of wood. Like butter. Especially with mahogany. Take the feeling of popping bubble wrap or walking on that thin ice that forms an inch above the ground and crunches pleasingly under foot and multiply it by 5. That's what it feels like.

While there is artistry involved, there should be little guess work when shaping a neck. Arlen showed me how to draw the end profile on paper and then apply those measurements to the neck blank. Then, you just push and pull yr neck into shape.

Here I am doing some finishing touches.





By the end of the day I was ready to set the neck. This means I fine tuned the area around the dovetail joint to fit snug, while achieving the proper pitch angle of the neck and creating a sharp and snug joint from the heal to the body of the guitar.

Here's Arlen giving me a hand.



It's friday, so we're having a fire tonight. Fun as always. My last weekend here. No tears.

Have a great weekend.