The tuning machines for the L-00 arrived this week. I had actually hoped to buy them a year ago! But, life happens and the money is needed on more immediate thing. Seems like my children want to eat...

The machines are from the Stew-Mac "Golden Age" series of replacement tuners. They are patterend off of vintage style tuning machines primarily for replacing worn out machines on otherwise still worthy guitars. I choose the relic treatment not for any faux vintage for my guitar, but because I didn't want anything too shiny. I also choose the engraved ones just because I liked them better than the plain plates.

Everything is going to completion! Bob's Boreal was picked up this afternoon and will be travelling with him as he moves house to Ottawa in next week. Done just in time! The Cruiser in the back needs only paint and to have the trim installed, and the guitar just needs set up for the strings to play just right.

I am declaring the finish on the L-00 done...at least for now. After slaving on it over the last few weeks and suffering the inequities of errant dust, I reminded myself that the purpose of this particular guitar was that I have something around that my hard picking friends can thrash on instead of despoiling my delicate nylon string gutiars.

So, with that personal edict in mind I glued on the bridge and bolted the neck on to start checking and refining its alignment. While it was all together I decided to get a couple of glamour shouts of it sitting in the canoe.

Been working the L-00 along. On the classical guitars I apply a shellac finish in a French Polish. On this gutiar I am trying a varnish finish. A number of guitar makers are turning to varnish as a finish as Nitrocellulouse laquer is risky to use for small shops, what with all of those nasty chemicals it requires.

Anyway that you look at it, applying a finish is a long, tedious, and challenging process. I hate factory guitars for setting public expectations to evaluate a guitar on how perfect the finish is.

Anyway, the Mahogany and Spruce is looking lovely.

The L-00 now has all of the bindings glued on.  Scraping them flush is next.  Few things set off the guitar better than nice bindings and purfling, but it is easy for some builders to really overdo it.  I am not a fan of bling just for bling's sake on a guitar.  If you're going to over do it you really need to commit to it.

The work on the rowboat has been pretty intense lately, just so much to do!  I needed a little mental break, and I want to get this done and out of the shop before some tragedy befalls it.

 The neck is only in place temporarily right now, just to see how it is all going to look together, I still have to do the final fitting to ensure that it lines up precisely with the center line.  I'm liking it.

What do you do with a perfectly nice Bocote headplate on your guitar neck when you decide to trim your gutiar with Ziricote?

Why, you make up a Ziricote headplate.

And plane the Bocote one off.

Then glue the new Ziricote one on.

And sit back and enjoy.

Shaped and glued on the back braces for the L-00, then started shaping them. One small glitch in the otherwise very nice plans that I am using: the width is given for the back braces, but not the height! So I had to do some sleuthing, and decided to use 15mm.

What I did find during my research, is that I'd really like to try a ladder braced Gibson L-1 style guitar.

And got the back glued on.

A little more work got done on the L-00. The linings were shaped to the top dome of 25' radius, and the back dome of 15' radius.

The bracing for the top is glued in. I have been using fish glue more and more and really like it. I am following the traditional Gibson L-00 bracing pattern pretty closely, except that I am shaping the braces slightly differently.

Top bracing shaped, and the top is ready to be glued to the rim set.

I'm slowly building a steel string guitar, a Gibson L-00 style guitar. I've pretty much stopped playing on steel strings in favour of nylon strings, but I have friends who come over and can't play without picks. I'm tired of having guitar picks put scrapes into my nylons string guitar tops, so I'm putting this together for them to wail on.

I wanted a nice vintage vibe for this guitar so I am going with a traditional herringbone rosette. Not sure if it is traditional to Gibson, but oh well. (Yes, I could look it up if I wanted to, but I wanted a herringbone rosette and that's all there is to it!)

The body of the guitar is Mahogany and the top is spruce.

Its funny, but emotionally I'm not really counting this guitar as a real guitar build...