Summer 2004: PAT'S DREADNOUGHT

April to June 2004 . . . .This summer, the major project I have going is a dreadnought guitar for the son of a teacher colleague of mine. He's graduating from college this year, and my teacher buddy commissioned me to build a guitar for him. I had given her the very first guitar I had ever made, and she said he loved it (despite all the first-building flaws I can see in the guitar!!!). Thus, she thought it would be neat if I could build a guitar for him as sort of a graduation gift, I suppose. Anyway, after emailing Patrick a few times to find out his preferences for this guitar, I began to work on it as time permitted during the school year. This is what I have done so far. . . . (NOTE: I have not documented specific details of the processes here, as I have already done that in previous projects.)

RIGHT: This guitar will have a bound ebony fingerboard.	LEFT: Before I did anything else, I built a side bender for the dreadnought. I hadn't built a dreadnought size guitar since 1998, when I was still bending sides with only a bending iron. This one looks a little different from my previous bender, which I had built for the Grand Concert guitar.
ABOVE: Here is the sideset, after I have bent the sides and glued in the mahogany head and tail blocks, basswood kerfing, and popsicle stick side braces. This will be a bolt-on neck, so in the headblock you can see the two bolt holes and the hole for the Hot Rod truss rod.	ABOVE: Here's the neck blank with the stacked heelblock.
ABOVE: I bound the rosewood peghead veneer (some leftover rosewood from a previous guitar) with ebony strips, and then pinned the veneer to the neck blank at two tuner hole spots. I used the veneer as the template to rout out the final peghead shape.	Here's the neck after I have trimmed the sides and rough heel shape with the bandsaw.
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