This is “Special Project ,”SP2″. A Parlor Guitar built from Lacewood.

I will give as much detail as I can without duplicating the Processors along the way.For example in in “SP1″ I will detail the building of the neck for that Guitar which is an OM.

It will have a flat headstock and be equipped with Gotoh 510 Tuners. Normally I would not repeat the building of the neck for this(“SP2″) guitar,however this is a  Parlor and will have a slotted head stock and be equipped with either, Waverly or Gotoh open geared Tuners.Whilst I will not repeat the building of the neck I will give you some Detail of building and equipping a Slotted headstock.

So two, with this Guitar (“SP2″) I will not show or give any detail with respect to the bending of the sides,of this Guitar, as Guitar (“SP”3), is an OM “Cutaway” made from the Malaysian Blackwood , which has already pictured and describe, under the category “Woods”. I will however  describe and photograph the bending of the sides for this Instrument,(“SP3.”)

In other words I will not duplicate any of the processors between the three Projects.

What all this means is that we will enter the construction stage of the Parlor Guitar (“SP2″) with the sides bent and in the mould ready for block planing to shape ,to take the Kurfling.

The bent sides have now inserted into the Parlor mould as can be seen in the pictures underneath this text. As can be seen from a close examination of these pictures the sides have NOT been cut to length, this is the next procedure  and then end blocks will be glued in place and the sides cut down to follow the contour of the Guitar plan.

If you look carefully at the first picture you can see the gorgeous pattern in the timber ,starting to emerge,even at this early stage.

Close-up

of Lacewood in the Parlor mould showing the delicate pattern of the wood

Pictures of the joined back were shown in the “wood “section, you will recall that the back was joined with a piece of highly figured Maple, that was placed between the back halves and glued to form a decorative feature down the middle of the joined halves or back.This is one way of building in a back-strip, although it is often argued that this is not the strongest way of going about it.

The alternative method is to route a channel down the middle of the back after the back has been glued together and glue a Back-strip into the route and  then sand the back-strip down to the thickness of the back. This process takes longer, but in my opinion, gives a stronger and better all round job.This is how I am going to place a Back-strip into the Malaysian Blackwood back when the time comes.