A whole week

That's a week since my last update ... where did that week go to?

I left last week's thrilling episode with the body and cap glued and clamped together. As the photo below shows, the clamps are off, and the body and cap are fixed together successfully. There's a bit of a glue line down the centre of the cap, but I'm expected (hoping) that the line will either disappear when I sand the front down, or will disappear when I oil it, if the sanding doesn't work. Time will tell ...
One of my (expensive) acquisitions from StewMac is this sanding beam. I've fixed some 60 grit paper to the underside, and spent about 30mins sanding the fretboard ... The beam has a 12deg radius shaped into the sanding side, so this also shapes the fretboard. Takes a long time though ...
One of the scariest bits of guitar making (to me at least) is shaping the neck. Here's the start position, with some guidelines drawn on ...
And after a few minutes attacking it with a rasp, here's a rough shaped neck. As well as being one of the scariest parts of the process, it's also one of the most rewarding. After some more attention with lots of sandpaper, the neck has taken shape, and pickup it up and feeling the smooth shape of the sanded neck is definitely one of the high points of the process:
And here it is, sanded.