anya's sides bent and in the mold

finally, more pics. Dale's dread

Curly Narra binding

nice clean joints

beautiful Brazilian rosewood

clamping the back veneer on the peghead

Anya's guitar

Anya is getting a jumbo 12 fret cocobolo guitar.  Here is the back thinned down with the requested white back stripe.

adding the reinforcement to the inside of the back.

Dale Dread, more work

Neck work

The two halves of Dale's 14 fret neck band sawed to general shape.  Blood wood veneer on left that will be part of the central sandwich.  Anya's neck blank on left

Dale's dread with purfling being glued in place.  White plastic "binding" is just a place holder and quite temporary.  Teflon strip also comes out to leave a void for the abalone strips.

one of these neck blanks is Dale's and the other is Anya's  I cannot tell from this picture which is which.  Dales will have blood wood and narra for the center laminate and Anya's neck will have maple and two black layers.

This is Dales neck blank with the carbon fiber stiffening rods glued in place. You can also see the truss rod channel cut.   Above that is gluing up one of the four binding strips with lines of bloodwood and maple purfling.  That binding sandwich will be thinned down and then bent probably today.



Dale's neck work

First you have to glue up the stock.  This is mahogany turned so that the grain is vertical.  Taken from a straigt board.

After this dries the neck blank is machined square and straight, (again) and then split.  The outside surfaces that will have been machined are glued back together with whatever laminates are desired in the middle.  In this case it will be a sandwich of one layer of narra and two of bloodwood.

Topping Dale's Dread

Just a little touch up sanding and this top is braced and the braces are carved and ready to glue to the sides

gluing the top down

sides are scraped smooth

well pretty smooth  at least we are ready to cut the purfling channel

Dale's Dread. back work

gluing on the back braces

Carving the ends of the braces.  The plexiglas piece governs the depth of the brace ends

Shaping the lining where the back glues to the lining.  This is a spinning disk of sandpaper that is spherical in cross section, with the same radius as the back

clean interior, back is now glued in place

The outside is not so clean but you can begin to see the overall color scheme