The First Guitar: The Kerfing

 




The kit comes with 6 pieces of kerfing and it works out that each side fits about two and 3/4 pieces.  These are strips of mahogany, and I was surprised how flexible they were.  If you bend them too much, they will break, but it was a very comfortable bend fitting them to the curve of the body.  Using clothes pins with a heavy spring, I dry fitted the kerfing to the body to make sure everything looked good, and that the clothes pins were strong enough to squeeze the material tight - they were

When gluing the kerfing, you want to make sure that it is 2/32 higher than the sides of the guitar.  This will allow for some material to be sanded down to match the angle of the neck and end block.  The blocks have a different angle on each side, but we will see more of that when it comes time to do the sanding.  I have to build a sanding block with a 2 degree angle on one side, and  a 5 degree angle on the other side.  For some reason I am putting this part off, but I don't get to this step for a little while yet.

You can see I used quite a few clothes pins, but I found if I didn't use this many the kerfing might not make perfect contact with the sides.  You have to be careful not to put too much glue on the kerfing because it is hard to get inside to wipe it off.  I think I have said it before, but I am curious to see how the finished rosewood looks.  This is a  good picture that allow you to see the "grain" in the wood.  I put grain in quotations because it kind of seems as though is has been stained in strips.

The piece of plywood that straddles the guitar is squeezing it tight to the cardboard cutout that is reinforcing the interior.  I used a belt sander to shape the edges of the plywood so that it didn't have any sharp edges, and I had to take some of the material off of the inside of the clamp so that is wasn't too tight on the guitar.  Once I had a good fit, I carefully slid it down the sides.  This picture shows the clamp, but it is important to have the clamp on before putting the kerfing on so that the guitar has a consistent shape for the rest of the process.