Building Number One - Part Four (neck) - Page Two (January 2, 2008)
Page two of Part Four, Building Number One
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Building Number One - Part Four (neck) - Page One (January 2, 2008)

My apologies for so much time passing since my last installment, but I felt I really needed to concentrate on getting these first guitars done. I am way past my initial time estimates for all of my clients and I’m feeling extremely guilty about it. I’d really like to start out by thanking all of them for their kind support and patience this first year of my new guitar venture. Thanks guys! As promised, this installment will cover the last half of the fabrication of the neck. There are a ton of steps throughout the building process, in fact that’s one of the reasons I thought this would be a good column. A lot of folks just don’t realize what really goes into building a guitar by hand. There are so many steps that I can not show them all here. I’ve tried to include as many of the steps as possible, but unfortunately some are not shown, especially in the paint booth. Nevertheless, let’s start where we left off, with a sized, glued up neck laminate with the peghead veneer glued on as well...
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Building Number One - Part Three (body) (September 10, 2007)

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote. The biggest bummer was while I was carving the back shape into the neck for 001 an 1¼” long by 3/16” wide black/green stain on the visible side of 001's neck appeared… ain’t that a bitch! After all the time, energy and dollars committed to the beautiful neck of 001 this stain shows up… neck lost! Welcome to the wonderful world of guitar building. I talked to the customer, Eddie, and unfortunately he didn’t like any of the alternatives I had available to him, so I had to start the search for the right Brazilian fretboard again, as well as start the neck fabrication over. Fortunately, the amazing vendor I had for the Brazilian was able to send me several more fretboards almost immediately. In fact, one of the fretboards looked like it was a sequence cut from the original 001...
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Building Number One - Part Two (neck) (June 3, 2007)

This time I’ll show you some of the work involved with the building of Number One’s neck. A lot of folks think it’s pretty much as easy as sticking some frets into a piece of Maple… well it’s not quite that simple… at least on the P-1. I’ll be breaking the neck building into at least 2-3 different
Functional Art articles, because there is just so much to cover. In fact, there are tons more steps than what I’m outlining here, but if I keep taking the time to document this build, instead of building it, I think I’m going to be upsetting my very patient client, Mr. Eddie James...
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Building Number One (broadband version) (April 22, 2007)

As I mentioned in this column last year, I decided to build some guitars again. After many years away from the guitar business, I got the “jones” again, and designed my newest guitar, The P-1. Over the next several months I thought that I would take you through the journey of building serial number 001, which was ordered by Mr. Eddie James (thanks Eddie!).
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