Part 9: "It looks good - how does it smoke?"

You'd almost think I knew what I was doing!
Okay, my moment of hubris is over lest I tempt the wrath of the wood gods or the ire of the router king...
In short - I'm happy with how it looks. There are many many many mistakes and goofs but overall it looks how I wanted it to. I'm only about 60% done but it looks further along than that. Here's what's cookin' today:
(FYI - there is a healthy whallop of mineral spirits on the wood for most of these images - hence why they look so sleek).

My original intention was not to create my own nut and bridge out of brass and cocobolo. When I first started planning this build I was going to make the bridge and nut out of aluminum. Because it's easy to do and cheap! You cut a peice of aluminum to size, slot the top for strings and maybe smooth out the edges so you don't hurt yourself on sharp metal. The problem is that this looks exactly like what it is - a piece of cheap aluminum, bought at home despot and repurposed for something it was never intended to be.

Then I had a brainstorm - why not use both? My plan is to cover the bridge with some kind of hand-rest - so you'll never see it. So, after I had spent the better part of 2 hours shaping, sanding, and polishing the cocobolo used for the nut - the idea of using aluminum for the bridge (which was already cut to size) sounded great!

For the curious: I sanded the cocobolo down to size (so that it would match the height of the aluminum bridge) with 150, 220, 320, and 400 grit sand-paper. Then I polished it with 000-steal-wool. I went through the same process shaping the valley that holds the brass rod. I wrapped sandpaper around the rod and shaped the valey that way - by hand. It took a while to get it right.
I cut the brass rod with a hack saw and then polished that as well with the steel-wool (after rounding off the corners with a file).



FYI - the coin is a 1937 Irish 1 penny piece. I'm toying with the idea of inlaying it right about where it is.


As you can see from the images of the headstock - something is rotten in the state of denmark. It's a whole post unto itself - but in short - the headstock now has a piece of walnut veneer on it - hiding sins most grave. I'll speak of it soon.