Status of Guitar Serial 015

Being made for Kirk Singletary

Status as of 4 November 2004

 

This guitar is for Kirk Singletary of Charleston South Carolina.

It will be a Grand Auditorium Body Style with a cutaway. Quilted Mahogany Body, Red Spruce Top, Ebony fingerboard and Bridge.

The majority of the material is on hand The top has been sanded to thickness, joined, sound hole inlayed, and cut out to rough shape. The back has been sanded to thickness, joined , center seam inlayed and cut to rough shape.

The sides have been sanded to thickness and profiled. The bending of the cutaway was unsuccessful! It cracked! so I am back to square one on the sides.

 

I have a new set of quilted mahogany sides to be bent. This time I will bend them by hand!

The tailblock and neck block have been cut out. The neck blank has been glued up

  
     
 
Here is the unsuccessful bending attempt using the fox side bender. I will not try that again. Bending figured wood by hand is the best solution.
     

Monday 27 September 2004

Completed bending the quilted mahogany sides by hand and glued the head block and tail block to the sides while in its form.

  

Here the sides are in the form with clamp on the tail and head blocks.
     
Neck has been assembled, truss rod slot has been routed, fingerboard has been cut and slotted and inlayed with mop dots, and ebony binding.    
     
 

The sides have been contoured (top 25' radius and back 15' radius) and the lining has been glued on.

Here I am contouring the sides on the back edge by rotating the sides while it rest on dish with a 15' radius lined with sand paper. The top lining has been glued on.
     

Tuesday , 28 September

Glued down the back's center seem reinforcement, and braces.

Cut out all the top braces and bridge plate, ready to glue once the rain stops.

    
     

Tuesday, 5 October 2004

Back has been braced

Top bracing is in progress.

Fingerboard has been glued to neck and radiused to 16". The neck heel has been rough carved and joint neck joint hardware holes drilled. a 2 1/2 degree back set was cut into the neck joint.

  
     

Wednesday 6 October 2004

Top bracing complete. Now will do top and back tuning and final shaping of braces followed by assembly of body.

 

  
     

Thursday 14 October 2004

The body has been assembled! the back and top have been glued to the sides and access wood trimmed.

The neck has been final carved and the heel cap glued.

The end graft channel has been routed using a new jig I made for this purpose to fit my laminate trimmer

  

Here my two helpers are supervising the process on gluing the sides to the back.

 

 

    

Here is the back of the guitar. The quilting looks pretty nice!

  

The neck is just resting in its place so you can see we are getting closer each day.
Here is the body before any sanding and binding work and the neck before the heel cap is added  
     

Here is the end graft Jig in place with the router/laminate trimmer resting in place

  

Here is a better look at the jig. The router is guided by the two adjustable rails so I can get a consistent tapered engraft.

4 November 2004

Gebeaux Logo has been inlayed on head stock

 

"Kirk" has been cut out of MOP and will be inlaid at a later time.

 

  
     
  Binding has been installed and scraped flush to body. Using Black plastic binding, with bwb purfling on top and bw acent strips on back and sides.
This took a lot longer than I had hoped so I will not be able to start appling finish until after thanksgiving.  
    Gebeaux Guitars
 Test  does this work??