This week was focused on starting the fret board of the guitar. We started by drilling holes with a 3/8″ forstner bit about halfway deep into the fret board. we had to make sure every hole was perfectly centered. To do this, we marked the frets we wanted to drill with two diagonal lines connecting opposite corners of the fret. this would ensure that every hole was in the center of the respective fret. as shown.

After we completed drilling the holes we inlayed the fret dots by taking a piece of plastic rod specially made to fit in these holes. We glued the plastic rod into the hole using super glue, then sawed the part of the rod extended from the hole off. Once we had done this for each hole, we clamped and glued the fret board to the neck of the guitar and let it set overnight.

This week we drilled the jack hole and the holes for the wiring to pass through. For the jack hole we used a 3/8″ Forstner bit and drilled it in diagonally into the electrical box as shown.

Besides drilling holes I also continued to carve the surface of the guitar.

Overall, I learned how to drill with a Forstner bit and long, thin drillbits without damaging them or the guitar.

Assuming that you are using a guitar kit like me, you will already have a body blank that needs to be shaped and refined such as the one in the first photo.

The edge of the body will need to be sanded with progressively smaller grits of sandpaper to prepare it for routing. I started with 80 grit, then moved on to 100, followed by 150 and finally 220.

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Once the edge is sanded the body is ready to be routed. Routing is the process of giving a block of wood a stylized edge. I did this with a hand router and moved it around the guitar, but it can be done using a table router as well. In this case I used a 45 degree router bit

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After you are done routing the guitar, you need to sand some more. This isn’t necessary if like me you decide to carve a border around the guitar, but I will elaborate on that for my next post.

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