Building 14

Finishing and Setup

The guitar now goes through a tedious process of final sanding, filling gaps, and making sure all is ready for finish. I am spraying a water based finish that is very popular with many Luthiers called Target USL. I usually do an oil finish with Tru-Oil on the neck now. I am not spraying solvent based finishes like nitrocellulose lacquer or the newer catalyzed polys because of toxicity issues. The waterbased look very nice but I am concerned about long term durability so most of my work gets sent out to a professional guitar finisher. For Nitro I’m currently using Addam Stark on Santa Cruz CA who used to be the head finisher for Santa Cruz Guitars. He does a very nice job.

A couple of recent guitars just back from Addam. He does a nice burst

After finish the guitars are cleaned up, assembled, final neck set is verified, and the frets are leveled and dressed. The position of the bridge is carefully marked, finish removed under the bridge footprint, and the bridge is glued with hot hide glue. The bridge is radiused to match the curve of the top, and a small ledge is cut in the edge to make sure the edge of the finish does not prevent good contact with the top.

Tuners installed, and the bone nut and saddle made. I use a 1/8” saddle to give more room to intonate and make sure it is snugly fitted in the slot. Bridge pin holes are reamed and slotted. I always use unslotted bridge pins as they are far superior to slotted for string stability.

The guitar is then strung up, nut spacing set up and slots cut and I then let it sit a few days to settle in before final setup. After that time I set the final action, intonate each string separately at the saddle and give er’ a trial run. It’s always exciting.

Gluing the Bridge

Tuners going on

A couple of new ones get used to being strung up for the first time

I usually let the instruments sit around the shop for several weeks and often find little things to tweak, then it’s into a a nice case and off to the store or new owner. I get attached to them and usually hate to have to see them go.

Thanks a million for looking

Terry kennedy