Prepping to rough carve the heel

After considerable time spent not working on banjo stuff and then dorking around with the design of the heel, I finally got into the shop and worked up a sweat cutting off this little piece of wood. The old Harbor Freight workbench was barely up to the task. I opted not to show off some of my elaborate clamping setup here. It's a little tricky securing that bad boy with the radiused, fretted, and scooped fretboard.

As you can see, I managed to not cut through any holes previously drilled for mounting hardware, despite opting to draw the line a little closer than planned when I embedded the hardware.

Next I'll plane down the heel cap, glue on the decorative cap, and get to to carving. I'm working from the Guitarmaking Tradition and Technology book for this part.

90 views and 1 response

  • Jul 17 2012, 5:50 AM
    Monica R Hoover responded:
    Ahhhh...the smell of wood again fills the house.