On Monday of this week, we sprayed our final two build coats of lacquer and gave them a full two days to cure before wet sanding. This means that the finish will shrink back less after you do wet sand, but meant that I didn't have much to do for the first three days of the week.
Thursday, I finally got to wet sand and do an initial buff. The next step after that is to check the neck set and correct any shifts that may have occurred in the finishing and wet sanding stages. It doesn't take much material added, or removed from either side of the heel to misalign the neck, so you have to take the time to check again. In theory it also doesn't take much to correct the problems, though it's always more work to shift it in a favorable direction. With every neck set, there are three things to look for: The neck pitch, which is the angle at which the plane of the fingerboard meets the plane of the guitar top; Then the center lines of the neck and the body must align; And finally, the fit. Ideally the fit of the neck to the body if flawless, with no gaps or rolled edges. This can be achieved with the use of chisels and sanding sticks if needed, and then finished by pulling sandpaper between the joint until the fit is achieved. I'll let you all decide how I did when I go back home.
Here's another shot of the bridge being glued in place. This is a bit of a different clamp arrangement from what was used on the baritone, but it uses the same basic idea. There is a large clamping caul inside the guitar that fits into the bracing pattern to disperse the clamping pressure evenly. These clamps have a leveling foot that keeps the long body of the clamp from sagging. The leveling feet are placed on another small caul to keep it from marring the face of the guitar.
Here's a picture of one side on my guitar heel and how it fits. However the lighting and reflections are a bit deceiving so refrain from judging until you see it in person. After the initial buffing and during the final neck set, a bunch of grit from the 180 grit paper used for the fitting process fell all over my bench and put some more scratches in my guitar in various spots. They are no big deal and they will be taken out in the final sand and buff, but you can see them in some of the pictures here. So remember, it's still a work in progress.
When this guitar is done, I'm sure that I'll be fairly happy with how it looks, but right now so many things need to be polished and cleaned that I'm not that impressed with it yet. Hopefully you all don't see the things that bug me so much. The headstock turned out looking pretty sharp, though I'll have to do some creative polishing inside the tuning machine slots.
Here's a picture of... Something. I'm not quite sure what I was aiming for, but you can see some good detail in the rosette when you enlarge the image by clicking on it.
And one last picture showing an accurate depiction of the rosewood color minus the reflections present in the other picture. I got lucky on my wood selection, which hopefully doesn't mean less luck on my next set. Monday I will string up and do the initial setup, and then unstring, re-sand, buff, polish, and then do a final setup. Almost done, so hopefully just one more day. I imagine we'll start our arch top guitars immediately once these are done.
I finished my classical guitar this week, and though I have not been able to really play it in a quiet environment I can tell it has good sustain so I'm hoping that the actual volume and tone are nice as well. Hopefully I will have my guitar graded by Friday afternoon so that I can take it back home to play for the weekend. I'm fairly confident that my grade will again be higher than my last guitar, but I have no guess as to how much higher. I was able to spend a lot more time going back to the buffing wheels to remove scratches so this instrument shines pretty nice. The lacquer is very vulnerable for the first month, so I need to be more careful to prevent scratches in the first place. We have a carpet pad on our benches, and while we are wet sanding we have construction paper down on top of that to keep the mess controlled. However, I've learned that the paper is more abrasive than the buffing wheels and will scratch up the guitar, so while I'm doing setups in the future I will need to put something softer under the instrument. It's a process that takes time to master but ultimately this will save time and frustration.
Since this guitar has so much dark wood on it, any scratches really show, so I was sure to take out everything I could see. It looks great and is getting good reviews so far. I had a bit of a set back with the bridge earlier this week but it's all straightened out now and playing well. In the morning I'm going to make one final action adjustment before tuning. Classical strings take about a week to quit stretching, so I'm constantly tweaking them beings that we get graded on the tuning as well.
