Gluing and Tapering, PT 1 | On Sunday afternoon, I decided to go ahead and do my first gluing. When you start gluing, things have to line up or there will be big trouble on down the road. This first bit is fairly important: gluing the neck block and the tail block which also attaches the two sides.

Again, I was so wrapped up in the process I forgot to take pictures of gluing and clamping. Basically, I lined up the blocks and set up everything in a test run to see if had it all laid out. I then applied all the glue and held it all in place with 6 - C-Clamps on the tail and 6 on neck block. It looked like some kind of Frankenstein device.

After the glue had set over the afternoon, I took all the clamps off and checked everything out. I wicked a little CA Glue (superglue) around the edges of the blocks at a couple of places where there were tiny gaps just to make sure I had a tight fit.

I also decided to go ahead and plane the taper on the back of the guitar. This design slants on the back from around the waist to the upper bout by about 17mm (a little over half an inch). I shaved this down with my block plane (my new favorite tool) and "eyeballed" the curve. This will all get refined when I radius the back, which I hope to do this week.