Off the rails

With the bass hitchpin rail successfully installed, I went ahead and glued in the other rails, starting with the most difficult one, the bentside hitchpin rail. This rail will anchor nearly all the 8-ft. strings, and it needs to have a solid connection both with the soundboard and the bentside, so I clamped it in both directions, like so:



Fortunately, the steam-bending I described earlier was successful, so the bentside rail went in without a problem. Afterwards I glued in the easier spine rail:



And last but not least, the cheek molding:



Once all the masking tape was off and all the excess glue laboriously cleaned up, the rails were finished.



Next I sanded and shellacked the soundboard, cleaned up any last traces of glue around the bridges, sanded again, and shellacked again.



Next I'll install the rose, then mark out and drill all the holes for the hitchpins and bridge pins.