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...