Here’s a few shots of the top before it goes on.

I sign and date each soundboard, as well as note who it was built for.

Once again, I need to cut notched in the sides to accommodate the braces, same as on the  back.

Then its time to glue the top on, using the go-bar deck once again.  The sides go in the mold, with the waist spreader holding them in place, and then everything is glued and clamped up

Now the box is closed for good! And the spreader is still in there!  That’s alright though, remember, it is smaller than the soundhole diameter, and since it’s made from a turnbuckle, it can swivel about and come out.

Then I just trim the overhanging top to shape with the trusty Porter Cable. I have several of these PC 510’s, and I keep the flush trim bit chucked in this one.

You can see how I hold the guitar in place using bench dogs on my bench.
Once everything is trimmed flush, I’ll use my cabinet scraper to level and true the sides. This is kind of an awkward task, and its best accomplished by using a body holder like this one, which is made from pipe clamp fittings, a couple boards, and some carpeting for padding. It’s mounted on the end of my bench.

This is a common holding tool, I don’t think I’ve seen a luthier without some variation of this device.
It’s vital to get the sides very clean and true at this point, so a lot of time is taken on this task. This is because the next step, routing the binding ledge, depends on the sides being exact. The cutter used for this task uses a bearing to index off the sides. This cutter has several different sized bearing, to allow routing ledges of various widths. This bearing matches this binding strip exactly.

It takes two passes, and a change of bearings, but the result is a nice clean binding and purfling ledge If you look close, you can see the two “steps”, one for the binding, one for the purfling.

The tool used for this operation, by the way, is my binding machine. I made this machine as an adaptation of the Proulx version of this jig, which is itself a version of the Williams binding jig, which is an improvement on the Fleischman binding jig. Modern lutherie is like this - a long chain of improvements, being shared around by practicing guitar builders. I’ll do a write-up of this machine at some point in the future.

So after the binding ledge is done, I use a simple pattern jig to route the endgraft detail, as seen here.

This is a wedge shaped piece of ebony, that will be bound by thin white/black/white purfling.

I first glue these elements in place, leaving them overlong.

Then, I trim the ebony endgraft and cut the 45º miter on the purfling.

Once that’s in place, I can cut the miters on the binding strips, and begin taping them into place.

I work around the body, maneuvering the two purfling strips and the binding strip into place, and then snugging it down with a piece of tape. Notice, no glue yet.

Once everything is taped into place, and it is all lined up and seated properly, I glue it all down by wicking thin CA all along the bindings. This stuff is penetrating by nature, and flows deep into every crack. It also bonds well with the binding material.
After it is all dry, which only takes a few minutes, the tape comes off, and I use my cabinet scraper to scrape everything flush and clean.

Once tape comes off, the guitar is always a mess underneath. Lots of excess glue, bits of glued on tape, and it doesn’t look good. You’d think that it’s been ruined:

The cabinet scraper is such a wonderful tool, though, that after about 5 minutes of work, a beautifully smooth and flawless surface emerges.

Now the construction phase of the process is basically over. All that’s left is to sand every square centime down to 220 grit. Then, the finishing process starts.
I won’t blog the finishing process this time, since it’s pretty boring. Basically, I’ll use several wash coats of thinned epoxy as a pore filler and sealer,  and wet sand that flat. Then I apply 6-8 coats of KTM-9 waterbased lacquer, and sand and buff. I’ll also be french-polishing the neck with blonde shellac.
Pretty, soon, you’ll be seeing some finish shots of this guitar.