The fretboard

Just for a break from the body and to get a rather tedious job out of the way, the fretboard was done next.

For this, I have a nice piece of Rosewood that i bought as a blank. It is wider than required and I had to actually buy a profile planer to put the radius on it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics of it but I will on the next one.

I used my small table saw to cut the fret slots first after marking them all from the plan. I made absolutely sure they were 100% accurate as it is obviously important to the notes the guitar will play when finished. It took absolutely forever to cut them all and get them right.



The trapezoid inlays were actually bought as shown, already cut to shape but a little thicker than required. This meant I could use them to mark out the position of the slots accurately and then set about using my Dremel to cut the recesses. Again, it takes absolutely ages and you need a LOT of patience.





I probably went through almost my entire collection of "bits" to get these right and it almost drove me mental. But they all fit nice and tight. And if you have any doubts about the conditions I'm working in...



Next, I have glued in all the fret markers using epoxy glue. The kind where you use two squirts. 1 of glue, the other of hardener. You can buy it anywhere. It looks a bit messy, but final sanding to create the bevel profile is yet to be carried out.



Profiling was done using a special sander I bought from Stewart Macdonald (USA) to create the bevel on the fingerboard and I then sanded the whole surface by hand using VERY fine paper until it was silk smooth. Couldn't resist applying a little linseed oil to see how it is going to look.