Fretting over fretting

Well, nothing too serious, just a wordplay...

Here's the pretty much finished & lemon oiled fingerboard. The frets, of course still need a leveling when the neck's attached. I personally like the colour like a crazy. But that's just me... In the pics there seems to be an extra dot at the 15th fret, but just something in the lense, I suppose.

Neck joint & fingerboard. And quite some stripes

The baritone get-together-date is approaching. I decided to practice the neck joint with the guitar that's coming to my possessions. Good decision! A lot learned again. For example: Double check the depth of the router bit cut before routing the neck pocket... This one turned out 10mm deeper than planned. Happily, there was some reserve left in the heel block...

The neck joint takes some tweaking to sit properly

Gluing down the fingerboard

The heel and the bolt inserts. Highest is the truss rod nut peeking.

Bolting the neck to the body - about the 5th test drive, pictured by my nearly 2 years old son 

"Daddy truing the fingerboard"

Approaching the shape. Pretty striped overall... The neck (underside) will be shaped after the fb radius (16") is final and the 20 frets are in place. The finish'll take away the purpleness of the back and sides and turn it into chocolatey-brownish tone.

I used the barely visible 2mm abalone dots as the fb markers for an understated look.  There's pretty much going on  colorwise anyway. Once finished, there will be about all the shades of chocolate.

The headstock veneer with nice striping & curl

Electrified

My "workshop" has had some electifying additions lately. Namely, a band saw, a belt/disc sander and a vacuum to remove the saw-&sanding dust. All this helps a lot in cutting&shaping, especially with the neck components. Still, a lot remains to be done with traditional tools - and so it should be too.

The Teletubbies used to have a vacuum cleaner called NooNoo (or something like that). This one is almost as cute, only the eyes are missing.

Here's the power tools. The Santa Cruz guitar on the wall is something every shop should have...

The long & short. The fretboards are in shape, and the right one is already slotted & dotted

There's going to be a lot of streaking going on in the baritone...  Both the headplate & fb are macassar ebony. The fb had to be filled with superglue/sawdust as there's an open knot right in the middle.

Here's the jig for routing the neck pocket to the guitar. That's next in the line

This day I've been mostly shopping

It's been quite a few busy weeks with everything else. Today I finally got a few hours to do a little something - namely shopping - with these projects . I picked up two truss rods from Amfisound and two sets of Schertler tuning machines from the customs. In addition, a couple of router bits to fit the truss rods and making the neck to body joint.

Cutting the scarf joint at an exactly 13° angle

Here's some head veneer options, cocobolo and macassar ebony 

Here's another macassar ebony head
veneer. This one's going into
the baritone guitar,  I believe.

Planing the scarf joint in line

And gluing it down.
Sorry about the messy picture,
but the room WAS messy.
The plastic bag is there to prevent the
gluing caul to become a part of the guitar

Todays purchases, ready to be fitted. Yes, there are 8 of them in the left side group.
 It's going to be an 8-string baritone.

Genuine ebony buttons, 18:1 gear ratio

The Spanish Cedar neck-to-come, satin chrome tuners
and the router bits. Here we go!