OK, just a LITTLE progress!!

neck & tail blocks glued in, linings glued in (you can never have too many clamps..... clothes pegs do the job nicely!!)

Back & top braces all glued into place, the back braces carved and the back glued into place.

I've left it for the weekend with the maple bridge plate glued in place

Monday will hopefully see the top braces carved and the top fitted.

then I'll bind it with mahogany as per Tim's specs.

so.... the 12 fretter has it's first coat of lacquer.... pretty much a find the glue splodges coat. these will be sanded out, then the long slog of spraying and sanding starts.......

while that was drying I got started on the next two. the walnut dread that is the prize for Tim, who won the cover competition, and a walnut cutaway mando......

"stealth" bindings on and sanded. the Bindings are walnut from the same block of wood as the back & sides so there should be a fairly good colour match.

the neck Join needs a bit of tuning now, then a LOAD of sanding before the lacquer starts to go on.

Nearly the whole day to myself today so a fair old bit done.

I routed out the binding channel front & back then started working on the neck joint.

I got to the point of the neck actually being on the guitar, but there's a lot of fine tuning to do, intricate carving that'll need me to sharpen my chisels......

still, now it looks a little bit more like a guitar!!


Other tinkering at the cello got the scarf joint cut & glued on the headstock and the body wings glued on. I plan to use the wagner Saf-T-Planer to lower the top of the thru neck to match the rest of the top.. right now it looks like one of Bo Diddly's rectangle guitars!!

AT LAST!!!

the parcel arrived from Spain with the bracing wood!! so the last couple of days have been spent shaping, glueing and carving the braces on the inside of the top.

the bridge plate is walnut, and these braces were about 1/2 way carved when I took this pic.

once I was happy with the "ding" of it, it was glued onto the back & sides and held with all the big clamps I own!!

I've also been looking at the neck and slimmed it down from the 25mm thick to it's "racing weight" of a hair under 22mm

while I was waiting for the parcel from Spain I let my mind wander in the direction of the electric cello I've been plotting for #2 son for quite a while.

I had 90 minutes covering a silent study unit so I produced these drawings.......

Deliberately blurry to stop y'all stealing my ideas!!! (right!!)

I've lammed up the thru neck, maple, mahogany and maple.

the maple came from my favourite builder's yard and the mahogany is a chunk of a tongue & groove wall panel......

still, nice grain, even nicer price!!