This Flying V was an experimental project in certain aspects. It started out as a rosewood inlay idea, and was gradually expanded upon from there.
I wanted to create something that was more elegeant yet challenging; and between the crescent moon inlays and rosewood purfling, this project certainly delivered.
The guitar features a 25" scale (between the 25.5" Fender scale, and the shorter 24.75" Gibson scale), medium-tall nickel/silver fretwire, custom maple “crescent moon” inlays within a maple-bound rosewood fretboard, rosewood pickup rings and purfling, neck-through & string-through-body construction.
The Process:
After the rosewood was milled, slotted and cut to size (1/8" smaller than the final width, to accommodate the maple binding), the inlay slots were routed out.
The maple was cut so that the grain was oriented the same direction as the rosewood fretboard, rounded off by hand, and glued into the slots.
The inlays were trimmed flush, next the binding will be glued to 3 sides of the board.
Binding is glued, and will be trimmed to size later. The thicker binding allows for more even clamping pressure, without the need for clamping cauls. It will be trimmed to the final fingerboard width later on.
(This also applies to the height of the binding.)
Glue is dry, clamps are off, and the height of the binding is sanded flush to the rest of the board.
Now for the rest of the inlay. The same bit used for the maple inserts, were used again, in the exact same place, but about 1/8" shallower than before. This is necessary in order to have functional side-dots, due to the maple binding.
Next the rosewood pieces are inserted and glued up.
The final step for the fingerboard is flushing up the top, and sanding the sides to the final fingerboard dimensions.
As you can see, the rosewood side markers are quite visible.
With the fretboard done, it can be glued to the neck stringer, at the same time as the body wings.
This was the first build that I switched to the “inner-tube method” for gluing fretboards.
Fretboard, headstock and body wings are glued. Next is the top cap.
This was the cap I selected for the top. It had some subtle grain reversal (aka figure) and nice spalting. Since it’s a V shaped guitar, the cap will have to be cut and bookmatched at an angle.
This was taken after the top was glued, and rough-cut to the approximate shape of the body.
As usual, the top had to be pore-filled before gluing. Also the upper part of the cap was routed out for the neck and trussrod slot. Everything fits nicely.
The caps for the body and headstock are being glued at the same time, for efficiency.
After the glue was dry, the body was routed to final dimensions using a router and template. Unfortunately I made too deep of a pass with the router, and it took a chunk out of the body. Luckily I had some cutoffs leftover, and I used a cutoff piece to graft-in the missing chunk.
With that aforementioned fiasco out of the way, I wanted to do something a little different, and decided to go with rosewood purfling, and no binding.
I did this by making another template which was about a 1/2" smaller than the body, and routed around it with a 1/8" bit.
The rosewood will be milled to 1/8" thickness and steam-bent to fit into the channel, in a similar fasion to how rosettes on acoustic guitars are done.
The body purfling is glued in.
This process will now be repeated on the headstock.
The rosewood purfling is now glued in, scraped flush to their respective surfaces, and looking pretty cool.
(Still need to carve the neck.)
Carving the neck.
At this point, the neck is carved, pickup, bridge, and output jack cavities are routed, and the string ferrule holes are drilled.
Headstock is stamped with the serial number.
And the Manitou logo on front.
The bevelled channels behind the bridge is for access to the intonation screws on the bridge. At this point, the guitar is ready for finish.
