Day 141: Registers Fitted

As you probably know from my last post, I've been in the shop more lately working on the upper and lower registers. These structures are guides for the jacks (the vertical popsicle-stick-like pieces that hold the plectra) and I found they needed to be trimmed to accommodate their horizontal movement when activating and deactivating the four-foot and eight-foot ranks of strings (more on this later). I cut 10-degree bevels into the bottoms of the upper registers before I "closed the comb" and, this week, cut similar bevels into both the top and bottom of the lower guides.

Once I complete all of them, I glued strips to each side using a jig I had originally constructed to join bookmatched guitar tops and backs.

The jig simultaneously pulls in from the sides (hence the larger pieces of plywood in the photo above) while also pushing down on the top of the pieces being glued. The wedges are the key to this operation.

After a couple of hours of drying, I removed the wedges. I had roped this one up in a funky way, so I needed to push the wedges in farther than usual. Hey, it's been a while since I've used the thing, okay? Regardless, I ended up with a nicely glued lower register.

You can see a pencil line at the bottom of the photo above - this is where I cut the thing to length (width?) before fitting it into the case. I also ended up needing to trim the width and height a fraction, so I went to work on the Roubo with an old Stanley Bailey No. 4.

Once I got it shaved down, I snugged it into the case and it fit just fine.

Then, I threw the uppers back in...

And stuck a piece of beech I'll be using the make all of the jacks through the upper and lower and it slid through without a hitch, resting nicely on the key below.

At this point, all is well. The next step will be to cut the new window in the nameboard (yeah, the one I screwed up a while back) and make the existing ones a little larger. Now that things are progressing nicely once again, I decided to take a baby picture before proceeding with next steps.

Baby Picture

Until next time...