Both the top & back had to be jointed using a jointer and a bench hook with a plane or a flattened aluminum box section covered with sandpaper. Flattened means you can't take for granted that extruded aluminum as delivered from the supplier is straight (it isn't!). Frank used his granite machinists flat covered with PSA sandpaper get it flat. Unfortunately the adhesive is a bugger to get off after all the pressure.

As we jointed the edge to be glued, we would periodically hold the pieces against a window to look for light leakage at the joint, then keep going till it was perfect.

What you see here is Frank's current preference for joining the edges. Titebond is the glue used for most of the project. That's a 10# weight on the top

To shape the sides we used a combination of the bending iron to first get a rough shape at the waist and a start of the upper and lower bouts. The final shaping is done with a Fox-style bending machine with 150 W incandescent bulbs for the heat source. Frank's bender has the lower slat (heavier than usual) permanently attached to the pattern, eliminating the usual cross-tubes which align the sides.

Here I'm getting a little practice on some scrap wood to see what it feels like. This exercise raised my admiration level of those who use this method exclusively!

Frank demo'ing the real thing. The walnut proved to be easier to bend than material I've since used (mahogany & maple).

I'm using the router table again to cut the radius of the braces. We used a 28' radius on the top and 16' radius on the back.

[ 10/2007: Frank told me recently he's changed to a 32' radius for the top of the Prima. ]

The back strip glued in place and planed. It ended up about 1/16" at the edges and about 1/8" along the centerline. It's ready for sanding.

I have no pics, but we marked each brace on the back strip, then pressed a single-edged razor blade down through the strip. A chisel was used to pop out the scrap.

We didn't use a go-bar deck to glue the braces. After pre-fitting all the back braces into the strip we glued and clamped each brace. We had to avoid excessive clamp pressure so we didn't leave the brace glue-starved.

In fitting the braces into the strip, we strove to have the brace tight enough in the strip that the back wouldn't fall off the brace when it was lifted off the table.

Now inlaying the purfling and pearl. The pearl Frank supplied was pre-cut in a radius, but not the radius we used. I just broke it into pieces that would conform to the rosette radius. Only a tiny amount of filing was necessary. Once glued and sanded you couldn't see they were individual pieces without very close inspection.

After the purfling and pearl were dry fit into place, the area was sprayed with accelerator before gluing with CA. The accelerator causes excess glue that spills out onto the top to cure before it penetrates the grain. Makes cleanup (sanding) an easy job.

More of the same.

Afterward we used the drum sander with rough grit to bring down the purfling & pearl to the level of the top.

I learned later on a top I did at home that using a fine grit heats the plastic purfling too much and smears the top. Better to use a rough grit, then finish the sanding with an orbital.

We used a jig to route the rim at the tail to hold the end graft. I saw some left-over rim material lifting from the end block, so I changed the depth and cleaned it up. Which left the cavity too deep for the material Frank had chosen (mea culpa!). Steve let me use some of his scrap padauk which turned out to be a fortuitous screw up... I really like the red wood!

Btw, the padauk is nasty stuff to work with: every time sandpaper touched the stuff it was like an explosion of rust over the whole shop. Really need some good dust collection to work it!

Here the sound hole braces have already been glued to the top. Now I'm gluing the radiused tone bars and finger braces.

Every time we finished some gluing on anything we took time to clean up all glue squeeze-out. Also, when gluing, we used just the amount of glue that was necessary in order to minimize squeeze-out. The result of this extra care was that the inside looked every bit as finished as the outside.

Btw, we were taught to not use water to do cleanup around the glue joints since this can weaken the joint.

Here Jim is giving me a hand gluing the back to the rim. We had to move quickly so that glue didn't skin over before clamps were applied.

Previous to this step I had fit the ends of the braces into the kerfed lining.

Jim trimming the overhang off his top. Trimming was easy on this spruce top, but on a later guitar with a redwood top, which is very hard material, I learned it can be a difficult task... or at the very least, scarey!

Since the area that contacts the fingerboard (where Jim is routing at the moment) is flat and at about a 1.5 - 2 degree angle (for the neck set), this router, which has an adjustable base, had to be set to compensate for the angle. This router (made by Hitachi) is no longer available, but Porter-Cable has a laminate trimmer that is supplied with 3 different bases, one of which has an angle adjustment.

The supplied fret board, also from Martin, being trimmed to shape with more kiva steps at the sound hole.

Actually, this is what kiva steps look like when woven into a rug or blanket. On pottery or on a real kiva, the steps have 90 degree angles. But I like the name, so...

We were supposed to use epoxy to bond the neck & fingerboard to the body, but the test sample didn't kick off (cure). So mine was assembled with Titebond. Epoxy is preferred because it fills gaps and Titebond doesn't,

The adjustment end of the double action adjusting rod (accessible from inside the body) is just visible and I'm keeping the glue away from that mechanism.

Titebond, like hide glue, is heat and moisture sensitive. Assembly with Titebond means that (with a lot of work!) you can disassemble the joint for repair or resetting the neck.

More pics & steps missing, like fretting the fingerboard and working the frets to shape.

Here the neck is bonded, the frets are all set & leveled, the temporary bridge in place (using the hollow machine screws from Stew-Mac) and the guitar is strung up. The reason there were no pics is because I'd gotten behind and had to rush thru these later steps.

Prior to fretting the finger board, the radius (16" as it comes from Martin) was slightly reshaped to give a conic section. It's an approximation as we used 16" (at the nut), 18" (about 1/2-way) and 20" (beyond the 12th fret) radiuses.

Fret leveling was done with a sanding board that had a flattened plate glass surface.

This shows just how right Frank was... I can't make out any of the gaps around the inlays!

I'll never understand why after all these years Martin has refused to change the headstock shape so that the #3 & #4 strings have a little clearance as they cross the #2 & #5 tuning machines!

Looking for some more cleanup that might be necessary.

If you look really closely you can see there are only 4 pegs used for the strings. That's because we used the drilled temporary mounting screws available from Stew-Mac. The bridge won't be glued till after the body is finished.

From the left: Steve Young (Doc), myself, Frank Finocchio and Jim Groener. Jeff wasn't able to complete his guitar. He had to get back to school (3rd graders were reportedly holding the substitute hostage!) plus he had a gig that weekend, so he was going to come back later when he could free up the time.

Even though Steve worked much faster than either Jim or I, he kept volunteering to run errands for Frank in order to keep the class moving. As a result he ended up working the rest of Sunday to finish while Jim and I started finding our separate ways back home.