the Back continued - gluing up and trimming

I spent a fair amount of time fitting the bottom to the rims, notching the rim and kerf lining to let the bracing end sit flush. Sorry no pics but it did come out nicely. One concern. I had been working on the back for a couple of days at this point and noticed it was cupping. Very noticable as I was dry fitting. I would seat the back at the neck end but then had to rock it to dry fit the heel end. Wasn't quite sure what kind of problems this could create. But carry on.

Similar to the top I thought I should clamp the back on first and then install the screws. This is dry fit and clamp trial # one. I don't know how long it took but it seemed to take forever to clamp and then drill and screw 20 something deck screws, especially trying to hand tighten each one at the end. This wouldn't do. I did another dry run. Because the screws had all been started in run #1 this one went faster and more smoothly. And I was smart enough to put a new battery on the power drill.

Before closing up the back I wanted to create a label of some sort to identify the guitar. No time or money for a fancy logo maker. I looked at tons of labels on line and in guitar stores. You can really spend a lot of time on this if you choose to.Well I chose not to. I sat down with my computer and the certificate program in Microsoft Word. I like the fender font and I like green and I had some left over rattle can burst amber and I came up with this. I hit it with a couple of light coats of clear lacquer and attached it with some 3M spray adhesive.It actually looks pretty good in real light.

Here we are at various stages of the glue up. I was in scramble mode trying to clamp and screw quickly. I think I had about half the screws installed at this point.

I wasn't entirely happy with the glue up, particularly around the narrowest part of the waist. So I removed some glue, reglued and reclamped and ended up with a much tighter bond.

When I trimmed the overhang flush to the sides I got a little tear out but this should be trimmed off when I install the purfling and bindings.

You can kind of see where a baseplate screw scratched a path on the back. I should have protected it a little better by applying some masking tape to the base. No worries - it will sand out.