Success!

When I got into class this morning, it was just like Christmas unwrapping the tape from the binding to see how it turned out, and I was very happy. There are virtually no gaps in the top binding, which my instructor said doesn't happen very often with wood binding. With some confidence in what I was doing, I got the back binding installed before lunch. The back binding is a little more difficult, due to the curvature or the back and the fact that you have 2 butt joints which are both visible that have to line up with the center line perfectly. The top is much easier in that respect as it only has one butt joint at the tailblock and the binding is covered up by the neck/body joint at the dovetail and does not come together because of the dovetail mortise. Around 2:00 this afternoon, I removed the tape from the back and was pleasantly surprised to see that the back binding turned out even better than the top, and I have been in a good mood all day since. Starting to scrape the binding flush is very rewarding because everything looks so dirty when you take the tape off, but scraping really cleans it up and makes it look nice.

Here is a shot of the bound box:
There is still plenty of scraping to do.

I also started on the end graft today and should finish it on tuesday. I got the 4 miters cut in the side purfling(next to the binding) and got one of the end graft pieces of purfling mitered and cut. I'll just have to fit the 2nd piece of purfling and the cocobolo piece that is going in the middle on tuesday and it is going to look awesome.

Here's what the end graft looks like so far:

I did get my neck rough cut on Tuesday and the fretboard slotted yesterday, so next week will be all sorts of fun stuff like cutting the neck angle, routing the dovetail tenon, carving the heel, fitting the neck, radiusing the fretboard, cutting the taper, gluing the fretboard, and maybe some work on the headstock and neck shaping...

I should be doing some actual cool stuff in electric tomorrow, so I will try to take some pictures and blog again this weekend.