Work from 11/25/08 through 12/6/2008

The sole purpose of the headstock is really just to hold the tuning machines.  It’s never flat with the fingerboard but angled at about 10 degrees so that the strings exert some pressure on the nut.  It can be virtually any size and shape.  Most built it with a fairly simple Martin or Gisbon style head shape.  I really liked the headstock designs of Tom Doerr in Florida who I got the wood sound-hole rosette idea from.  It had a nice asymmetrical shape that gave a lot of free space for the ebony and mother-of-pearl inlay of “Christy”. 

The headstock is an integral part of the neck.  It can be cut out of one large neck blank or scarfed on as a separate piece.  Scarfing solves some short-grain issues when cut out of a large blank but creates a joint.  If I scarfed mine, I’d lose some of the benefit of having continuous strips of carbon fiber.  But it’s because of the carbon I wasn’t worried about having short grain issues.  So I cut out my headstock to it’s rough thickness when I rough-cut the neck.

To further strengthen the headstock and unify the design I decided to laminate layers of veneer on either side.  Each side will have a 0.050″ thick show veneer of cherry followed by 0.020″ thick veneers of black walnut, maple, and black walnut.  The walnut-maple- walnut sandwich keeps the BWB theme I used in the binding.Before I could glue them on I had to thin down the headstock to it’s final thickness which is based on the length of the tuner shafts (about a 5/8″).  I smoothed the front face using sandpaper on a hard block and then thinned down the back using the beltsander and hand blocks.  I glued them on using regular wood glue, flat cauls and lots of c-clamps.  After the glue cured I tacked on a template of the headstock I had drafted on the computer, cut it out, sanded the edges smooth and drilled the holes for the tuners.

The inlays were next.  The first was Christy’s name at the top of the headstock in ebony.  The second was the big inlay of Christy based on a photo of her when she was 8 weeks old carrying a partidge wing.  I found a cool font for the first one called “Black Rose.”  I made a template on the computer and printed out three copies.  One I spray-glued on the headstock in it’s final position.  The second I glued to a piece of 0.050″ thick ebony.  The third was a spare…  I cut out the ebony by hand with my jeweler’s saw and a fine blade and routed out the headstock using my Dremel router and some small carbide bits.  The inlay was then glued in with epoxy and sanded it flush when cured.

The big inlay of Christy was done in a similar fashion:  I made a tracing of the photo and made 8 copies using a photocopier.  One copy I spray-glued to the headstock and taped on a piece of wax paper.   For each piece of ebony and shell I glued a paper copy to the ebony/shell stock and cut out each piece individually.  The individual pieced were then glued together in place on the wax paper.  When all the pieces were cut out and glued together I peeled the inlay from the wax paper, removed the tape and routed the rebate down to the thickness of the ebony and shells. I then epoxied on the inlay.  I sanded it flush with the headstock the next day.  Any pinholes and voids in the glue lines were filled with superglue and sanded flush.

The other inlays on the guitar are the dots on the front and side of the fingerboard.  They are pre-cut dots of green abalone that are installed by drilling a shallow hole, attaching with super glue and sanding level.  The side dots are 3/32″ while the fingerboard dots are 1/4″ and 5/16″.  These were the easiest inlays in the world…

All that’s left is finishing and setting up the guitar.  Getting close to the end…