Progress continues...

I'm happy with the priming/sanding of the bowl, so it's time to glue the top.

But, before gluing the top I wanted to make a caul to use when it comes time to glue the bridge.

I cut the caul base plate out of 1/4" birch ply. I marked the center line and the location of the X braces.

Next, I traced the shape of the caul onto 1/2" hard balsa. Balsa is good for these types of jobs because it's dense enough so it doesn't crush under pressure, but soft enough so it won't mark the underside of the spruce top.

And, cut to shape.

Transfer the brace locations to the balsa.

Cut, and glued to the birch ply using CA.

A perfect fit.

Next job is to glue the rosette into place. Is it at 5:00 or 5:15? I dunno. But, it's permanent now.



I laid down a bead of Hysol 9462 around the kerfing and then laid the top into place. I flipped the whole she-bang over. I used the bowl-bending fixture so that I could apply an even pressure all the way around the periphery of the bowl.

A large bag of rags provides the weight needed to clamp the bowl to the top while the epoxy cures.

I'll let it sit here until Saturday morning to ensure the epoxy has fully cured.

After that, it's time to grind down the excess and route the groove for the purfling and binding.

Is it at 5:00 or 5:15?

Is it at 5:00 or 5:15?

I think it was somewhere between 15 and 20, typically.

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Yeah, the rosette rotational placement is like Art's RI. The RI rosette is muddied up compared to the original because it's probably the original silkscreen that's worn out. The rosette I got from the MS was the same way.

Here's a pic I took of the original vs. the new one.

It's actually a lot like this one below on the left. They had pretty loose standards back then when it came to gluing in the rosettes. Both of these guitars are original shiny bowls and both had the grapes in different spots on the clock.

Well, it is what it is. The rosette is glued down and ain't coming back up.

I couldn't wait until Saturday. Like most epoxies, Hysol will cure faster in warmer temperatures. I checked it this morning and it was plenty hard to pull off the board.

I also added the bridge to verify the scale length and it's spot on. The bowl has relaxed a little but and the neck alignment dropped back about an 1/8", but it'll be fine and certainly a whole lot better than how it arrived to me.

When I tap on the top, it's got a great big hollow sound like a drum, which is very good.

Tonight's job is to grind down the edges of the top so it's flush with the sides of the bowl in preparation for routing the grooves for the purfling and binding.

Thanks, Paul! It's getting there. Not as quickly as I would have liked, but that's another story.

Any way, I got the top ground down and I'm ready to route the grooves for the purfling and binding. On one of the factory tour videos it shows a worker routing the groove on a router table. The body (sans neck) is placed face down on the table with the router bit sticking up through a hole in the center.

I can't do it the regular way because the neck is attached to the body. So, I bought the attachment from Stewmac, seen below.

Before I attacked the guitar body I wanted to test the attachment on some scrap wood. This attachment will work, but just barely. Here are the grooves I cut in the scrap wood. The upper groove is for the purfling and the lower one is for the binding.

Speaking of binding, I bought some cream binding from AllParts.com. Their cream binding matches the color of the Ovation binding almost perfectly. The .060" is the correct thickness, but it's too wide which will make it hard to glue and tape the binding and purfling to the body.

The binding on modern Ovations are about 1/4" wide. The early guitars used 3/16". So, I needed to remove 1/8". Now, I could have spent $200-$300 on a tool from Stewmac. Instead, I used my Stewmac router attachment to make a tool to narrow the binding, which is 5/16" wide.

Here's the tool with the binding clamped into place.

I used my cabinent scraper to shave 1/8" off the binding.

Now, I'm ready to route the grooves into the body. I'm going to try to get that job done tonight.

I was able to get the routing on the body done last night. (Yay!)

Here's the holder I made from a banker's box. I weighted the box with a sand baggie I had and the body is wedged into the banker's box.

This is a close-up of the grooves.

As expected, the attachment prevented me from routing all the way up to the sides of the neck, so the area on both sides of the neck will have to be carved by hand. It looks bigger in the pic than it really is. The unrouted area is only 1/2" on either side.

I finished carving the grooves for the purfling/routing.

Next job, gluing the purfling binding into place.

Progress continues.

Binding and purfling are glued into place. I'll let the glue harden for 24 hours, then pull the tape off and scrape them down.



After that, it's the final clear finish on the top and the final black on the back. Getting closer. Woo hoo!

Binding tape pulled up. Binding and purfling are ready for scraping.

Binding and purfling have been scraped.

Edges and neck are masked. Final clear coat applied and looking real purty. Once it's cured, I'll cut and polish it, then move onto the bowl.

The top has been cut and polished, so it's time to move onto masking and painting the bowl.

Final coat of gloss black is on the Bowl. I'll let it cure for 24 hours, then cut and polish it.



The list of things to left to do is getting really short, now.

Woof! How badly do you want to put a set of strings on it?