Beefy Bryn Flat-top

I have decided that this thing needs finishing before a deep doze descends upon the forum;  I mean, how many stringed instruments have been produced since I started on this one way back in January?  And its predicted life-span can only be measured in months, I reckon.  I might even come to Halifax to make sure someone plays it before it curls up and dies.

Anyway, it was strings off and get it finished.  I started with fretting.  I fretted it with Evo Gold as usual (FW47104, which is all I've ever used).  I waxed over the face of the fingerboard beforehand because I used a couple of blobs of superglue on each tang before insertion and was afraid it might stain the light coloured laburnum if I was careless - and I usually am.  I used a hammer to insert them.  A normal hammer with a nice polished face.  Three to four blows per fret:  one end, the other end, the middle and then the first end gently again.  One thing I do like about the way my guitars are built is that the guitar puts up with this hammer attack even over the soundboard because the fretboard is supported all the way up to the soundhole;  it's not a nice feeling to be hammering frets into a fingerboard extension with very little underneath it.  Anyway, the frets went in yesterday evening and they were still there this morning:



(By the way, that's a barbecue rather than Darth Vader's head in the background).

I cleaned the wax off the fingerboard during In Our Time.  Started with a razor-blade scraper and finished off the removal with white spirit.  Took ages.  Not sure it was necessary but it looked nice:



The frets are still slightly over-length at this stage of course so I taped the whole thing up for protection before I started filing:



Two layers of this stuff are virtually bullet-proof (though not necessarily Rob-proof) but I got away with quite a lot of filing and sanding and Autosolling without doing any damage to the fingerboard



although the ends still weren't perfectly flush when I finished and I had to do more work after removing the tape, which made the whole exercise slightly pointless.  Mental note made.

I forgot to mention that I did, in fact, spend quite a lot of time yesterday final sanding and egg-white-filling the body (mainly back and sides) of the guitar.  When I'm restoring furniture, it's not usually necessary or indeed  a good idea to aim for this kind of perfection since most old furniture is expected to look old even if it does look well cared-for.  I often spend time and care making things look slightly dirty and dented in a lovely sort of way so this kind of perfection goes against the grain - as you may have guessed.  Nevertheless, I stuck personfully to the task and felt I had produced a reasonable base for my polishing:



Nonetheless, there were still some areas of the pudding which, upon further inspection this morning, had been under-egged so I had another go at them:

 

I still hadn't finalised the heel, which, you may remember, I had planned to sculpt into a heel so I did that before giving the neck and headstock a final going over (technical term):



Now you may not like this but at least it looks like a heel.

Right.  I'm going to indulge myself now.  I know you've already seen approximately 300 photos of this guitar but here are about 20 more:



You might be able to see that I've even cut back the polish on the soundboard, which has been there for a while now, ready for a final finish.  I ended the day by coating in the whole thing apart from the soundboard with a fad or two of polish:  (even more pictures!)



A bit of polishing tomorrow, I think.