Some finishing pics....

Final coats of lacquer are on, now waiting a month for it to cure before final leveling and buffing.

Ready for lacquer

Made a cool little "horizontal turntable" (using Lazy Susan hardware) for rotating the guitar during spraying. Will be able to hold the neck as well.

First coat of epoxy filler in place...

Using Z-Poxy filler. 

Look at that figure! Just imagine what it will look after 10 coats of lacquer.....

Ready for finish....

Making a scoop cutaway

Once again, I did a ton of research, and there are 3 or four different approaches. I decided on this for now. It worked well for this application, which was to use a simple binding scheme with no purfling. That allowed to use a curved insert for the scoop that matched the binding.

In previous pictures, you've seen where I made my own full height kerning to span from the back to the top. This was to insure that I'd have gluing surface anywhere the cutaway was made. I also put extra material on the top above the tone bar for the same reason.
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So here is our cutaway template. Made from a piece of 4" ABS pipe cut at a 45 degree angle. There's a key reason to use this.

Here is the traced outline of the ABS pipe. Targeting the 18th fret for depth.

And here is our "implement of destruction" for cutting the cutaway. With sand paper wrapped around the ABS pipe, I'll sand the scoop out which should give me a nice consistent profile.

After about 15 minutes of sweat. This is when I realized I should tilt the vacuum holder back and sand on the level. My leg muscles were burning...

A shot of "the beast" in action. 

After I knew about where the cut would be on the side, I used a fret saw to cut a little faster rather than sanding all the way in. Note that if you're confident of where the lines are on the side, you could do most of this at once with a band saw, but I wasn't.....

here's the final cutaway (literally). For the last bit, I used a rounded file to make sure everything was planar top and bottom (was too difficult to do that with the monstrous sander).

Time to make the insert. Here is my vacuum mold, made from a piece of 4" PVC pipe. This is important. The PVC is schedule 40, the ABS is schedule 80. The difference in their outside diameters is about 1/8" or .125 which is close to the thickness of my veneer stack for the insert. That means the OUTSIDE of the insert will match the INSIDE of the cutaway we just made. Below is my test stack.

So for the real insert, I used 4 pieces of Indian Rosewood veneer that measured .017" thick. The walnut burl was coming in at around .024. Together it adds up to .092", about the thickness of the sides. So this insert needs no support other than the gluing surface on the sides.

Here's the veneer sandwich after I pulled it from the vacuum bag. I used the cold press glue again, which was odd. The glue bound to the wax paper on top too, so I had to sand away all the wax paper from the rosewood side. But it did give me a good 15 minutes of open time to work with the stack and not have to panic.

Insert has been rough cut to size.

Perfect fit!

Glued in and bound up.

Here it is after gluing and sanding flush.

Bevel and cutaway!

The walnut burl looks great, and the rosewood in the stack matches the binding.

 RETROSPECTIVE. This worked well for the simple binding scheme, but the sanding part was a LOT of work. I think in the future, I will adopt Kent Everett's (see beveled armrest post) approach to making the cutaway. Maybe solid blocking, profiled and "scooped" before it's glued into the body. Then I can rough cut the scoop, final sand to the support, and then use a single veneer to cover. By making a ledge on the soundboard ahead of time, I can do a more complicated purfling scheme.

With full support in place for a veneer, I could also do more of a Venetian transition on the shoulder, rather than a Florentine style cutaway.

Making a beveled armrest

This weekend was very productive and I was able to get both the beveled armrest and "scoop" cutaway finished. This post will deal with the armrest, and the next will detail the cutaway.

I did quite a bit of research (i.e., "googling" about the best way to make a beveled armrest. The two best techniques are referenced here. At first I found a video by Robbie O'brien of O'brien Guitars as part of his "Luthier Tips Du Jour" series:

Luthier Tips Beveled Armrest

And this is the road I started down. However, there is a second video on youtube made by Kent Everett of Everett Guitars:

Everett Guitars Beveled Armrest

Now, at first I thought these were the same technique, as they were both filmed and published by Robbie and the second is a "teaser" for you to buy Kent's DVD tutorial. But they are different, and after I realized there was value, I went ahead and purchased Kent's DVD. After it arrived I realized I was going about it "the hard way". Kent's technique is mucho simpler, and the DVD is well put together and gives you all the information you need.

IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING DOING AN ARMREST BEVEL, BUY KENT's DVD. Follow the links in the youtube video above.

I won't go into full detail because I don't want to take away from Kent's tutorial, and I wasn't able to do it completely as he shows due to the fact that I had already started. But here is how I progressed. Commentary in between the photos.
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You've seen the armrest blocking and soundboard cutaway in previous posts. Here I am doing it the "other" way, with a UHMW template for the router bearing bit to follow. For this I used a template guide bushing in my Festool MFK 700. The hard part (other than making the profile) was to get it located and staying in place. There's nothing you can clamp to. I tried double stick tape, I tried heating up the UHMW with a hair dryer (that helped a bit) but finally I just ended up with long strands of binding tape going around the body. Note that you'll want to spray the top with shellac to protect it. In retrospect, I think I could have used my rubber binding band without having it get in the way of router. Sorry, forgot to take pictures of it in place.

THIS IS THE HARD WAY. Buy Kent's DVD.

I routed the binding ledge on the side and made sure to just go through the sides into the bevel blocking. Now I'm trying to catch up to Kent's technique. I used a chisel and a file to chip and clean away the waste parts of the side.

Once again, this ain't the smart way. I stopped the binding at both ends of the bevel, split the remainder in half on the bandsaw (yeah, that was interesting!) and used half of it as purfling to match the binding. The other half went on the side for a similar purpose.

This is the hard way. BUY KENT's DVD.

Here it is with top and bottom bindings in place.

Adding filler material to support the veneer when it's all beveled to fall away from the bindings.

Here it is beveled, mostly ready for veneer. I had some voids, so I used wood putty to fill them in , then sanded smooth for a good veneering surface. Yes, I was tempted to use bondo.....

Don't do it this way.

 Time for veneering. I didn't follow Kent's technique, don't ask me why. I decided to get some Titebond "cold press" veneer glue and put it on all at once. I also used "Super Soft II" to "rubberize" the veneer so it could handle the curves and the edges. It was VERY brittle, and this helped. Of course, if I'd done it Kent's way, this wouldn't be necessary.

BUY THE DVD.

Time to wrap it all in rubber banding to get good pressure. After I pulled this off, I still had some bubbles from the rubberized veneer. I just re-wrapped it again making sure to get pressure on them, and a couple hours later is was fine and dried.

Here it is after initial sanding to get rid of the veneer where we don't want it. Mineral spirits have been applied to highlight the wood.

So in retrospect, I made it work, but I wouldn't do it this way again. 

BUY THE DVD!!!!

Closing it all up

Back fitting went very well, no extreme pressure needed for good contact on all kerfings, all braces contacting their mortises well.

I also carved the bass side braces down a bit for lower frequencies.

The body is tapered from 4" at the tail block to 3 1/4" at the head block.

Here it is just before closing up.

Soundboard modified and attached

Tonight I modified the top for the beveled armrest (based on the excellent technique shown in Kent Everett's - Everett Guitars - DVD tutorial). It's now glued up and ready for the back to be fit. Still taps out great.

Fitting the tail graft

I saw a build somewhere on the internet where they put the tail graft in before attaching the top and back, and decided that was a smart move. This way the graft doesn't extend through the plates, and therefore I don't have to worry about how thick it is relative to the bindings.

This one is actually 1/42" walnut burl, vacuum bag veneered over a thicker piece of not-so-impressive curly walnut that I'd originally planned to use. So after cutting the graft pocket, I just turned it upside down and ran it through the drum sander till was .010" thicker than the pocket. Just perfect for sanding flush with the sides: