Building a T-Style Acoustasonic from a Harley Benton kit - Ep03

Welcome to the Next Project!

T-Style mod project - Episode 3.
This is another high-speed overview of a bunch of work. Whew, I'm tired!

00:00 - lights, camera, action
00:04 - project intro
01:06 - pulling teeth (frets)
01:38 - comment - what to do?
03:04 - fretboard failure? no, not really
03:19 - break out the big iron
03:35 - plan "B"
04:24 - headstock takes shape
05:26 - plug the hole
06:01 - how to fix what i started
07:13 - cutting a veneer inset
08:18 - making this up as i go
09:00 - veneer bandage
10:06 - a new fingerboard!
11:29 - installation rodeo
12:56 - time to unwind


This episode is really focused on doing a bunch of work that was not necessary, but I did it anyway.

Kick-off by pulling the frets, not because they were bad, but just because I could.
The frets were really just in the way of me wanting to address the fingerboard - not that there was anything really wrong with the fingerboard either.

So, with the frets gone, I started radius sanding the fingerboard. My hope was to make a "polished" surface that would be more visually pleasing (to me). It didn't happen, so I moved on to something more extreme. Out came the clothes iron.
But to my surprise, the fingerboard would not budge, The heat ( very hot and steamy ) didn't phase the glue used to stick the fingerboard on.
On to something even more extreme, out came the chisel and hammer.
OK, now I'm getting some where. Off came the fingerboard, in pieces, little shards and pieces.

Down to the truss rod, and once removed, some final sanding of the flat neck surface was done to prep the neck for a new fingerboard - whatever it may be.

I bounced around on the project a bit and cut a new headstock shape, drilled new tuner holes and plugged a "spare" hole. Looking pretty good, but something needed to be changed.
Time for more extreme work to be done.
I cut a inset into the face and back of the headstock, which will receive a mahogany veneer. This was all to cover the plugged tuner hole.
Did I mention this was extreme.

The inset was cut, veneer trimmed to fit, and some wood glue tinted in the direction of the wood color (kind of overshot the color, meh).
Veneers glued and clamped in place, and it's looking much better. I really need to learn how to properly carve and do inset veneer work, maybe someday.

A new piece of wood was chosen for the fingerboard. I piece of Leopardwood. The radius was cut and the board prepped for gluing to the neck.

Time to rebuild the neck. The truss rod was re-installed and taped over to keep excess glue out of the channel, glue applied and the fingerboard put in place. I again used the large rubber band process to clamp the new fingerboard in place. This is the second time I used this process, and it's getting easier and faster, taking 6 minutes to apply the glue, place the fingerboard and twirl the rubber band into place.

All this work went pretty well, a lot of learning along the way, and a couple new fixtures built just to slow down the progress.

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