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Building an Electric Guitar for the Los Lonely Boys A master luthier handcrafts an electric guitar for the Los Lonely Boys. From "Special Presentation" episode DLLB-S

(Continued from page 3)

The guitar neck construction continues with the creation of a truss rod.

Continuing the Guitar Neck Construction

Materials:

fret wire cut into 3" segments
hammer
arbor press
crowning file
sandpaper
files
router
chisels
power sanders

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	Figure F
	Figure G
	The sanding process passes Kelly's is-it-smooth-enough test!

1. After attaching the fret board blank to the neck with a truss rod underneath, Kelly's crew taps frets into fret slots along the neck.

2. Each fret is firmly into place using an arbor press (figure F).

3. The frets are clipped, filed, sanded and crowned. This is known as dressing the frets and is one of the steps that will be instantly noticed by any prospective player. A poor fret job can hurt a musician's fingers--and could create bad tone and strings that won't bend.

4. A router is used to cut channels into the headstock and its decorative rosewood veneer. These two channels are specially requested by Henry to mimic the look of a Bajo Sexto guitar.

5. The channels are chiseled in the spots the router could not reach, and sandpaper brings the headstock (figure G) detail to the specs required for proper stringing.

6. After the rough carving earlier, this neck is left with machine marks and rough spots. Sandpaper and files remove the imperfections but do not cut away any real "meat" because the dimensions are already where Kelly wants them to be.

Note: Kelly always reminds his staff that "sanding is the foundation for a perfect finish" for any guitar. "If you don't do a good sanding job, the rest of the process isn't worth a nickel," he said.

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