I used to round the soundhole by hand with a file. Now, I make a round disc to fit my soundhole, fit it with sandpaper, hook it up on the drill and let it trim out a perfect circle.


The fingerboard is being glued on.

The ebony fingerboard is indexed to the Spanish Cedar neck into pre-drilled holes with two brads, on the first and eleven frets' positions. This allows accurate marking and shaping of the fingerboard on the soundhole end.


With the line as guide, the fingerboard is roughly cut out with a coping saw.

I'm cutting the 6th fret... all are cut to the depth of 3/32" with a simple guide block clamped on the left of saw. It gets a little harder to saw through on the last 1/32", so the parrafin (white) helps lubricate the saw a bit.


After all the 19 frets are cut, the fingerboard is tapered from nut width of 50cm to 12th fret width of 61cm. With the lines drafted, the fingerboard will be carefully planed to them.


Here's work done so far...

This african ebony fingerboard is being scraped to achieve the glue face, to the neck.


African ebony micro scraper shavings.


The scraped surface needs no sanding.

The bindings are leveled out at every place.
(Single purflings of maple/walnut, for the back, like the sides)


Here's the new heel design with the consistent binding/single purfling scheme.


Here's the double purfling scheme for the top.

With a sharp scraper, leveling the bindings flush to the sides is quite therapeutic :)

Right after installing the third binding strip, I had a surprise visit from a diligent former student, who is Berklee-bound next month!

After coffee, came back to bind the fourth and final binding of the paulownia back.

The four rosewood bindings for this flamenco guitar, had to be pre-bent to shape before installing unto the ledges. At 2.5mm, the rosewood bindings are too stiff to flex itself round the guitar's profile. It's an extra step to bend them accurately for the perfect installation. But it looks good and protects the guitar against minor daily knocks.


These are a few sheets of the veneers I have in stock. The top (chocolate) sheet is walnut and the lower two are lightly figured maple. They are 0.5mm thick, among the thinner varieties of veneers around. They are fragile, crumple easily and are prone to tearing, just by looking at it! Oh yes, the purflings in this guitar are made from strips of them. The back has single purfing, that is-walnut/maple, while the top has double purflings.


The first binding strip has been glued down, held on by masking tapes.


The mess after unmasking...


A little cleanup with a scraper at the tailend, to prepare for the other binding pair.