trussed and bound

At the beginning of this week I completed the binding on the two guitars that I am building at the moment, including this guitar for Julio. Both these guitars have cocobolo bindings, which is one of my favorite woods for this job. I know I've posted pictures of this operation before but it always makes for a good photograph.
Going back even further are these shots of the back inlay going in. Although I used to make the channel with a scraping chisel, I now prefer to use a router to make this cut. I don't have any problems with using routers (or bandsaws, piller drills etc) to build my instruments. There is a school of thought that says that a hand made guitar should be made using traditional hand tools only, but this is a not a view to which I subscribe.There are guitar making tasks that are made genuinely more efficient by using machinery, and the time saved can be more usefully spent on operations where the precise touch of the makers hand is needed.
This is a picture of the back strip fitted but not glued as yet. You can also see the rather stunning rosewood, which has some lovely colours and a nice tight grain. It is very well quartered too. as can be seen by the medullary ray figure.