Sunday, November 12, 2006
Fretboard musings
As it turns out I didn't have the patience to wait 24 hours for the glue to set on the binding patch so I just went ahead and sanded the body. The binding was a tiny bit high in some places indicating I hadn't routed deep enough all the way around. Sanding took care of that though. And the patched binding looks pretty good too. Most people probably won't even notice it (I hope).
With the body essentially done I turned my attention to the fretboard. Ostensibly there isn't anything to do but since I wasn't ready to start carving the headstock or doing inlay work I just started musing. When I mocked up the neck placement I immediately found that the fretboard had a rather sizable gap on either side. So much that I could stand a piece of scrap binding next to it and still see the gap on the other side.
This got me thinking that I should add binding to the fretboard! I had just enough scrap binding to do both sides if I cut it in half lengthwise. I even had enough to do the end too. I was getting excited about this when I noticed that the frets were filed so aggressively that the fretboard wasn't even square on the edges. Foo. The more I look at this fretboard the less I like it. To help me feel better about it I decided to spruce it up with a nice coat of fretboard oil. Although the edges belie it's doorskin roots, it actually looks pretty good now.
Considering I've essentially only finished the first step of the instructions (sand the body), including a mock-up shot at this stage is a bit premature. But that never stopped me before.
With the body essentially done I turned my attention to the fretboard. Ostensibly there isn't anything to do but since I wasn't ready to start carving the headstock or doing inlay work I just started musing. When I mocked up the neck placement I immediately found that the fretboard had a rather sizable gap on either side. So much that I could stand a piece of scrap binding next to it and still see the gap on the other side.
This got me thinking that I should add binding to the fretboard! I had just enough scrap binding to do both sides if I cut it in half lengthwise. I even had enough to do the end too. I was getting excited about this when I noticed that the frets were filed so aggressively that the fretboard wasn't even square on the edges. Foo. The more I look at this fretboard the less I like it. To help me feel better about it I decided to spruce it up with a nice coat of fretboard oil. Although the edges belie it's doorskin roots, it actually looks pretty good now.
Considering I've essentially only finished the first step of the instructions (sand the body), including a mock-up shot at this stage is a bit premature. But that never stopped me before.
# posted by Mark @ 7:07 PM 
