Thinking DIY

So after the last failure , I have ordered and received a set of new clamps, and after sort-of fixing the finish (and some additional work to polish the whole surface with some automotive polishing paste to make the shellac shine) I glued the bridge again (First I have masked around the bridge to avoid glue squeeze-out ruining the finish, and let the masking tape ruin the finish), with the three extremely heavy and serious clamps clamping it down, tightened until there's some glue squeeze out. Given that the clamps were quite heavy, I kept the guitar standing to avoid the clamps' weight pushing the top down. I waited 24 hours, and removed the two clamps from the sides, and waited another 24 hours for safety. Then strung it up (with some used colored strings for the sake of the test). And the bridge didn't break off. And the guitar sounded great, intonation was mostly ok. But there were some more adjustments left, as the action was quite high.

As the bridge was clamped, I couldn't stand to wait, and realized that I could already start leveling and polishing the frets. So after getting some inspiration from other builders, I have started. The most useful videos  I've watched on how to do a fret job were: Fret job - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra1-HQ6GOxw - Highline Guitars Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDy7cF255dY Fret leveling - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbr0VR2CdQ Fret polishing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpeCq_1AvwU - Guns and Guitars So, my steps were: Skipped checking the neck being straight, as I checked it already with the frets of, and it was dead-straight, and I have sanded it  straight Created a leveling beam from a longer (~50cm) block of wood which was planed to be perfectly flat on two sides. I have glued 240 and 320 grit sandpaper to the two flat sides Masked the fretboard with masking tape Marked the tops of the frets with a black sharpie Sanded with 24...

After letting the glued bridge 24 hours clamped I took the clamps off, and stringed it up. One note lower than it should've been. And when fine-tuning the 5th string the bridge was ripped off. Fortunately not with a strange trajectory, not hititng anything (not even the top), and only causing two minor tear-outs on the top. So the clamp didn't work. Next step: order a set of serious clamps. In 5 minutes order was placed. Next step: I want to hear how the guitar sounds, so mount all the 6 strings with the "temporary floating bridge" used for testing the bridge location. And with all 6 strings mounted I found that the initial bridge location was off on the bass side. And probably my scale length wasn't measured correctly, as the bass side was off by 6-7mm, which is a lot. Nevertheless, after setting the bridge at the correct location, it looked ugly with the clamp and the cardboard on the guitar, but it did work. And boooooy, it sounded really good... rich, bassy,...

Neck glued and clamped With everything prepared, it was time to start gluing... the messy, ugly thing with no option to Undo. First I glued the neck: put some glue on both sides of the neck joint, both on the body and on the neck, pushed the neck in place, put the bolt with the nut in to pull the body and the neck together on the horizontal axis, and clamped the end of the fretboard to the body with some cardboard used to protect the body from clamp marks. Two clamps went on from the sides, and an additional clamp from the soundhole, clamping together the brace+soundboard+fretboard. After 24 hours I have removed the clamps, and it was time to glue the bridge. Another safety check, another test-fit of the bridge to more precisely mark the bridge location, with the two tester strings has revealed that the bridge should be ~1mm farther away from the soundhole than I have initially marked it (the unfinished area), but that isn't really visible, and probably will cover that...

Gluing the bridge is an important step, and the bridge must be clamped properly while the glue is hardening to have a good grip. That is done either with a special bridge-clamp clamping through the string holes (which I don't have) or with C-clamps, which I haven't found around. So there's room for improvisation. After checking how people make their home-made bridge clamps, I have found three designs which I particularly like. One from Ben Crowe of Crimson Guitars , simple and mostly wood-based, and another one from Jack Houweling, which is based around some wood extending the arms of a quick-grip clamp, and the last one , based around a bent piece of metal, from Rattlecan Guitar Restorations. Although I like Ben's one, I don't have Mahogany and Maple (or too much hardwood at all), I only have some black locust/false acacia/robinia pseudoacacia, which might be good enough as a replacement. An additional complication is that the bridge I have is an over-sized one...

The neck and the body being prepared for mounting, I decided to first finish them with boiled linseed oil. Applying BLO was easy, and resulted in a beautiful satin finish. Applied two coats with a brush to the guitar top and the headstock, with 24+ hours between the two coats. I started doing a french polish with a very small rubber on the body, but it didn't really turn out as I expected, so I first sanded with P500, then with P1200 sandpaper, and went on with a third coat of BLO, and then restarted the french polishing (after reading some more and watching some more instructional videos) This time I used some thinner (white spirits, as I didn't have denatured alcohol) to thin the dewaxed shellac, and applied it with a larger rubber. Went over both the body and the headstock in a session of 5 runs, sanding with 500, then 1200 grit sandpaper between the 3rd and the 4th run, as the rubber got a bit sticky and left some marks on the finish, and wanted to even that out. The he...