Meeting
April 19, 2015
New Member: Dennis Danner with his bass uke
Santa Cruz guitar with cracked top
Jack brought his son's Santa Cruz guitar with a cracked top. The crack follows the center top seam from the bridge to the end of the lower bout. Options discussed: 1. Leaving it alone. 2. Wicking some Titebond into the crack and then clamping it shut and maybe adding some cross-grain, diamond shaped cleats across the crack. 3. Ask Chet, our acoustic guitar repair expert.
Howard's shop in Roanoke, VA
Meeting highlights: New member - Dennis Danner, cutting the neck mortise on the Ziricote guitar for Bookbag Santa, cracked guitar top, bass uke, and more...
Cutting the neck mortise for the Bookbag Santa guitar
Howard used his jig to hold the guitar body and align the mortise, then cut the mortise with a router in multiple passes. The tenon will be trimmed for a good fit.
Dennis Danner's Electric Bass Uke
Justen's Fret Job
Justen showed the progress on his neck. He bought a fret bender to help bend the fret wire to the radius of the fretboard. He used his CNC machine to cut the fret slots. The slots do not extend to the fretboard edges, simulating a bound fretboard. All the frets are installed and his next step is to dress the fret ends.
Robbie's Dreadnought Kit
From Robbie:
This is my first experience using a spray gun.
I'm using a gravity fed gun and a porter cable 120 psi compressor set at ~ 30 psi.
I've practiced a lot on scrap wood getting the pattern, pressure and distance from the guitar just right.
The results have been good although I've gotten a few runs that have needed to be scraped down and sanded.
I have also learned a very important lesson concerning humidity. It must be low when spraying to prevent cloudy spots.
It's also very important to go slow when developing the spraying technique ( just like building a guitar ).:-)
Robbie continues the finishing process on his Martin kit. Jerry checks out the neck.
