New Ebay Martin Guitar Kit

THE NEW KIT IS COMING!!!

Its been a while, since I have posted. I know I keep promising things that I don't follow through on such as sound samples and other things that are not important. Either way, I will follow through on this. I won the following guitar kit on Ebay for $100. I just placed my $200 order for a list of items that will be very helpful. First I will show the description of the guitar kit and then I will explain the other things I just ordered to help me.

African Mahogany OOO/OM guitar kit W/Martin parts. Kit includes: Bookmatched Old growth Western cedar top set is stiff, very close grained nice set. Bookmatched African mahogany back set has nice color match to side set. African mahogany side set is prebent and profiled to OOO/OM body style. Martin factory mahogany neck machined to near final profile with tenon, truss rod slot, and rosewood headplate, Martin factory rosewood fretboard is profiled, radiused, slotted, and drilled for fretmarker inlay 1 11/16" at the nut. Martin factory Rosewood bridge is profiled and has machined pin holes and saddle slot 2 1/8" pin spacing. Western cedar reverse kerfing. Mahogany head and tail blocks. Quartersawn Sitka spruce bracewood. Your choice of walnut or maple prebent bindings. Sitka Spruce back reinforcement strip. Maple bridge plate ( not shown ). Quality fretwire. Nut and saddle blanks. Buyer will supply truss rod , bridge pins, tuners, strings, glues and finish materials.

From Stewart MacDonald (A major Luthier Supply website)

I purchased a Bridge Clamping Caul and Bridge Clamp. The last kit I built, I had big troubles with bridge mounting. I thought I had fixed the bridget the 2nd time I mounted it, but after a week or 2 of playing and retuning, the bridge starting to dismount from the soundboard. Seeing that the 12 strings bridge isnt perfect either, I decided to purchase the clamping caul. The clamping caul is a tool that applys pressure in 4 places. It applys a bar of pressure along the center of the bridge where the strings enter, as well as on each of the wings of the bridge. The Bridge clamp is a clamp that is 6" deep but only 2" tall. This clamp attachs to the bridge caul so you can get ultimate pressure and hold on the bridge. I look forward to remounting the bridge to the last guitar kit and 12 string, this time with perfection!

There are some basic things I had to purchase such as a truss rod, gear tuners, and bridge pins. I decided, since this is my first full on build, and I do intend to take my time, I should probably take the time and money to really make it beautiful. So I purchased abalone fret dots and side dots, as well as a black and white herringbone soundhole rossette. And since I have borrowed my parents dremel router, I decided to purchase green abalone perfling. I got 30" of it, I believe that 21" will make a straight line where the bookmatched back of the guitar meets, and hopefully the remaining 7" can be used where the sides meet at the bottom of the guitar. We shall see when I get to that step. It seems as though most people dont just do a strip down the back, they use the purfling around the entire edge of the guitar, which would be nice, but at $20 per 15" doing a whole guitar outline and the strip down the back, I would be out nearly $100, and weeks of work. I wouldn't mind doing that, but because it is such a delicate area of the guitar (the seams that hold the whole guitar together) I would prefer not to mess with it too much. Though doing a strip down the back is dangerous in itself, because routing too deep, would cause the back to seperate. We shall see when I get to that step if I feel comfortable with it.

Thats all I have to say for now, check back in a few weeks and I will hopefully have some great updates for you! Thanks for reading, and for now I will anxiously await, the new guitar kit!