Finish Sanding a Somogyi Guitar
The last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of overtime for Ervin to get this one ready to go to the finisher.
The customer is coming from Japan in September to pick it up, and for there to be enough time to do the finish, it had to be ready by the end of June. This ended up as my project, and I had to put in some extra time to meet the deadline.
I radiused the fretboard, and was about to install the frets, when Ervin decided he wanted to add an inlay.
Not to worry though, after a bit of cleanup work I was back on track with the frets.
The workflow takes a bit of getting used to, with multiple people sometimes working on a guitar.
There were some spots on the inlayed strips that needed attention. Small gaps etc.
Here, using a knife and chisel, I carefully removed a purfling strip that needed replacing, then inlayed another one. This guitar has an abundance of inlays, and it was a fair amount of work to check them all.
Then into the final sanding, which is the last step of the build, and the first step of finishing. This needs to be done with care, as any imperfection will be highlighted by the finish. After sanding the entire instrument, I asked Chris Morimoto to check it over. He pointed out a bunch of things that needed some more work, so I went back and fixed them. This cycle repeated several times, each time picking up smaller and smaller things, until I got the ok.
Although cleanup and sanding isn’t the most fun job, I learned a lot of valuable tips from Chris Morimoto while doing it. The level of attention to detail Chris gives each guitar is pretty incredible, and it was challenging and educational to try to meet his standard.
Now that that’s off to the finisher, I’m able to take some extra time for myself to catch up on my build. Currently working on the binding.