January 4 2006

As mentioned previously, this was, if I recall correctly a week or two of tedious exacting work for Joshua, he handmade the marquetry logs for the herringbone inlay from Holly and Ebony, glued them up and created scraping jigs to get them the right thickness. Apparently one of the more difficult problems he faced was how to bend and glue the all wood inlay. He persevered and was ultimately successful, inventing some new construction techniques for himself along the way. Originally he thought he might not be able to accomplish this work without a thickness sander, a very expensive piece of equipment that he did not yet own, but as you can see, he managed rather nicely, although at great personal expense in time effort, and devising new processes to accomplish his goal. Having been in the unenviable and self-inflicted position of restoring a 1974 FJ 40 LandCruiser for the last two years, I can assure you that there are always unexpected "surprises" when you are attempting something you've not done before. So I can certainly empathize with Joshua here when he discovers just how difficult this part of the operation will be.

Joshua writes:

Jerry,
Sorry I missed your call a little while ago. I know you have been anticipating pictures of the progress on your guitar. I'm currently binding it, and as it goes most of the hard part is over (also most of the slow part!). I'll send pictures of that process as I finish it (probably thursday I should have it trimmed). Here are the pictures of the herringbone. You can see all the veneers that get layed up together to make a long log from which I cut pieces at an angle (the herringbones). After this they get trued up and glued together into a new log, which then gets a long piece of brazilian rosewood glued to it before its cut up into bindings. That is the picture with the clamps. Its all come out very nicely. The hardest or most tedious part are the lines which go around the herringbone, which are reduced to .3mm by hand through a scraping jig I made, and also the thickness scraping of the herringbone itself to make it as accurate as possible. Having done this twice now, I think it will be some time before I put this much into making inlays again! However, I'm proud of how it has come out.
Best wishes,
Joshua