Some progress on F4 after returning home from Siminoff Camp ...

First I want to say how pleased and surprised I am at the number folks that have viewed my web log here since I posted the "dailies" while at Roger Siminoff's Lutherie Camp in October 2009.  I set up a simple counter after I got back home and to date (since the counter was initiated) the site has been visited over 635 times and by people in 14 different countries!  Clearly Roger is getting some well deserved interest in the camp and has fans across the globe.  One slight disappointment for me is that not one of the visitors has chosen to leave me a comment ... it's easy to do just click on the word "comments"  at the bottom of any day's posting and let me know what you think, why you visited or just say "Hi"!!

So if you linked here specifically looking for the photo essay I did on the Siminoff camp just scroll further down to the October entries ... it's all there and it was a blast!!

Now, since I got back home my work on the F4 has been sporadic ... the first thing I did was fret the board that we had bound at camp.

Here is a picture of the frets I cut oversized (length) and laid out so that I could trim the tangs to fit over the binding.

From Lutherie

To trim the tangs I used a modification of a technique Roger showed us ... I took a scrap block of wood and cut a groove in it that fit the tang of the fretwire moderately tight and then attached a cutoff wheel on my Dremmel tool and slipped the fretwire just over the edge of the block and in about two seconds per end was able to cleanly trim the tang flat ... it didn't take but one fret to realize those suckers get HOT during this little operation and a glove was called for!!

From Lutherie

I made a point of using a granite backboard when I seated the frets because I wanted a clean strike and seat ... worked like a champ!

From Lutherie

Once a fret was "set" I "seated" them with a flat iron strike ...

From Lutherie

This is what the frets look like hanging over the edge of the binding before I trim and profile them ...

From Lutherie

From Lutherie

The finished fretboard will show up in later posts ... the next step will involve the TrueChannel binding jig I received for Christmas and then getting the Rosette channel cut and the Rosette laid in ...