72 thinline telecaster guitar carve – day 2

Spent the day packing my oldest up and taking him back to college. I did squeeze in a bit of time to get back to the guitar body, that I carved last week. I showed the guitar body to the client and he was happy with it, so my next step is to paint inside the cavity behind the f hole (sound hole).

Masking off the f hole

Step one is to mask off the front. I am using frog tape. It is supposed to repel paint away from the adhesive. I have had problems, in the past, with paint creeping under regular painter’s tape, so I thought I would try this.

Masking the inside

I covered the large areas with masking paper, then taped all around the internal chambers. I trimmed the openings with a utility knife, then applied two coats of flat black enamel.

Spraying on a couple of coats of flat black

Paint dried, masking removed

After letting that dry over night, I applied wood glue to all of the mating surfaces.

Applying wood glue

Spreading liberally

I spread the glue evenly, then set the top onto the bottom half.

Using finish nails as alignment pins

My original intent was to place a large amount of weight on top to evenly press the two halves together, while it dried. The I realized that it might slide a little one way or the other. I could sand off the outer sides if that happened, but all of my pilot holes would be misaligned. To avoid this, I found some finish nails that were nearly the diameter of my pilot holes, and used them as alignment pins. Since they now stick up, I had to clamp as many edges and surfaces as I could. I believe that I wound up using 19 clamps in all…

Clamping the crap out of it…

That will dry over night, and tomorrow I will sand all the edges smooth and apply a 1/8″ round-over to the top and bottom edges.