With the fingerboard now glued to the neck I was ready to give it its radius. The fret board is not flat, so using a 16″ radius sanding block, I went through a whole range of sandpaper: starting at 80 grit and moving through 120, 180, 240, 320, 400, 800, 1000 and 1200. The result: an ebony board, silky smooth to the touch. I also filled the little gaps around the fingerboard inlays (especially the one at the 12th fret) with black shellac. Not as flat as I would have wanted, but good enough for now.

Next up: fretting!

After cleaning the slots and adjusting the depth mostly at the sides because of the newly sanded radius, the frets were hammered in.

This really does look like a guitar, doesn’t it?

Next time: the last thing to do before it time to do the setup: shaping the neck. The shape I´m after is what I have on my martin D-18V, which sports a so-called modified v-neck. more info on these shapes here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Building procedures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.