Still workin' on that tailpiece

The bottom is carved out now. All that needs doing is to have the holes drilled for the strings. I'm gonna get a pro to do that for me, as my tools are not quite as accurate as I would like them to be. The spacing for the strings at the tail will be 1cm apart. The bar of wood left at the bottom is where the holes for the mounting "gut" will be drilled.

A couple of the things I've been tweaking are the tailpiece and the fingerboard. The tailpiece needs the underside carved out - looks a mess now, but it'll be all spiffy when I'm done. I want it hollowed to decrease the weight of the unit, as well as to provide a way to drill for the chord that will mount it on the endpin. You can see the portion I have left uncut; this will be the part through which the holes will be drilled for the mounting chord.

The fingerboard was not cut evenly, so one side was wider from the centerline toward the bottom end. The lines on the paper were used to line up everything in relation to the fret slots and centerline of the board. I had to angle in 3mm off that side toward the bottom end. The cut isn't perfect, but I'll be routing the edge later for binding, after its on the neck.

Although I haven't posted in a few days, I've been working on the project in some sense. Mostly, I've been doing stuff like making some purchases of supplies, and tweeking some of the items I've made or am making so far. So, although some progress is being made, it's not much to blog about. Hopefully I will soon be adding more interesting stuff.

Fretboard

The fretboard is ebony. I got this one with the slots cut in, I just had to trim it down the size I want. I got brave and did that on the table saw. Got a few minor chips around the edges here and there, but I'll be routing it down for the binding later, so it won't matter. In the first photo here, I'm preparing to cut the excess board off the end. I decided to do this with a metal guide and a narrow saw blade. It worked quite well, especially since I took my time to make nice gentle strokes along the edge of the guide. The tape is just there to help protect the surface of the ebony. I can use the extra portion for something else.
I want to cut one more fret slot in the board, as this one only has 21, and I'm looking for 22. I thought I had a bit that would be the right width to cut a new slot, but it turns out it's a shade too wide (tried it on the leftover piece of ebony first). Guess I'll have to get a proper fret saw for this job.
On the other hand, I discovered that the (thingama) jig I made earlier is actually quite useful. Think I'll keep it around for other jobs.

Tailpiece

The archtop guitar has a tailpiece like those you would see on a violin, or cello. Many archtop tailpieces are made of metal, but some are made of wood, particularly ebony. Mine will be made of maple. I'm a re-use, recycle kinda guy. We had an old coffee table that was pretty beat up, but it was made of maple, and the legs were flat rather than round, being cut in an elongated triangle shape. I traced around a metal tailpiece that I have laying around and used it as a template for the one I was going to make (with a few modifications to the design of course). The dark line along the front edge will be a raised ebony purfling on which the strings will rest.

Then came the carving. Maple is pretty hard. This took a few hours of work to get to this shape. Still needs some refining, but getting there. Next, I have to cut the channel for the ebony purfling. This required a bit of a (thingama) jig contraption I slapped together from scrap wood.

Here's the (thingama) jig. Yeah, the base kind looks vaguely guitar-like. That's because it was some leftover stuff from when I cut the mold for the sides of the guitar. Anyway, I have this cool rig for my Dremel. It works like a drill press, but it also allows the tool to be rotated at different angles. So I put it horizontally and built up a wooden guide to accurately slide the end the tailpiece along under the side-cutting bit. The result was a nice straight cut.

The sliver of ebony, which is not completely cut to size in this pic, was from an old piano I took the keyboard out of (replaced it with an electronic one). The piano is roughly 100 yrs old. I'll probably also use some of the same ebony for the nut on this instrument.

Just a bit of sanding and fine-tuning and the sliver of ebony fits like a glove into the slot.

I'll be posting with more on the tailpiece as I get into working the underside to accept the gut chord (for mounting onto the guitar), and drilling for string holes, putting fermata inlay on the "bulb", and final finish work.