Day 18: Hours and hours of sanding….

 

 DAY 18 – 19/3/2012 10am-4:30pm.

 

Oh the irony. My first session back since shaving my noggin’ for the World’s Greatest Shave, and the first tool Chris hands me to get on with my guitar is a hair dryer…….

I blow-dried the masking tape to soften it, then took the tape off the edges of the guitar, revealing the newly glued bindings. The gidgee looks gorgeous as bindings. It complements the blackheart sassafras and contrasts the bunya pine. But there will be a lot of work to plane and sand the bindings flush to the guitar.

For the most part, the bindings are glued on really well. There are a couple of tiny gaps between the bindings and the guitar, but this will be filled in easily later.

 

Planing and sanding the bindings flush to the guitar:

I planed the excess edges off the gidgee bindings. This will save sanding time, as gidgee is a very hard wood and takes a long time to sand.

Even so, I spent most of the day sanding. Hours and hours. 80 grit sand paper for the back and sides, 180 grit sand paper for the soundboard (as this timber is much softer and you don’t want to leave scratches with coarse sand paper), until I got the bindings flush to the guitar.

Hours and hours of sanding, but a beautiful guitar is revealing itself.