Day 13: Completing the Box Frame

I was able to get the pickup/bridge box frame glued up last night. Once I complete this, I can get the hole drilled through to the back and place the pre-amp, including soldering up the pickup connections.

Just a little scraping and sanding and then on to drilling!

Until next time...

Day 12: Recovering from an Epic Fail

Okay, it wasn't really a failure of epic proportions, but it was a failure. The frame I glued up to fit around the pickup/bridge box was too small to fit over the box. Epic? Hardly. Disappointing? Most definitely. So, I decided to go ahead and just glue the parts to the body around the box, which I fixed with glue a few days before.

I have no idea why I didn't just do this the first time around - it's so much easier to cut them a little long and and sand them down to fit perfectly. Lesson learned.

Until next time...

Day 11: Finishing the Pickup/Bridge Box

Once I decided to replace the crappy plastic box that came with the pickup with an African blackwood version made by yours truly, the fun began. Cutting astonishingly small pieces of wood has never been my forte, but I'm learning. For one, I've taken to cutting these small parts by hand using a miter box I built for just such a purpose.

I picked up a fine-toothed pull saw to make this easier and my plan came together!

Once I had the tiny parts cut up, I sanded them down using a sanding stick, which is really just a scrap of wood with some 320-grit stickyback sandpaper tacked to it.

I used the small grit sandpaper because the wood was already in pretty good shape. Then, I began the process of gluing the "box" that would fit into the body notch I carved last week. Because the parts are so small and I wanted to be as accurate as possible, I simply used another piece of scrap with painter's tape to prevent the glue from sticking to it.

Sure, there's probably a better way to go about this, but I'm not aware of it at this time, so scrap and tape it is. Fortunately, I had several small clamps on hand. As I continued to glue up the little box, I went ahead and threw the bridge in to see how it would fit.

All is well. In the photo above, I've not yet glued the top part to the bottom. That will happen tonight once I'm certain the glue has completely dried on the upper wall pieces. I'm using Titebond Hide Glue, my favorite for lutherie work, and I'm happy to see this project finally coming together in a more concrete way.

Until next time...