Found your body at the assembly station the other day:

  So I asked it to pose for a picture:

  And then the neck got jealous, so it joined in, so to speak:

Nice...been a long time since we've seen one of these babies roll of the line. Can't wait to see it finished.

Cool!!  I agree with Jonathan; it's nice to see a California Special in the FTC.

Now with more glue!

 

Cool. I'm looking forward to seeing this quilt under some finish.
 
Graeme

Hi,
 
Mike from NJ here.  These are my new guitar's baby pictures.  I'm going for an ocean burst with emphasis on the emerald center, going to the auqa/teal edge.
 
This guitar represents a middle aged crisis wish fulfillment of a man who spent too much time away from music.  
 
Hope I can be worthy of it when it comes home to me.
 
Actually, it is only the noon of life, and this drop dead gorgeous lady will get me back on the path.
 
Good wishes to all!

Hi Mike,
 
Welcome to the forum and congratulations on a great choice to get you back on track.  
 
Best,  
 
Art

Hey Mike,  I hope to have a mid-life crisis someday too.  Congratulations on your return to music.

Open question to all in forum:
 
Look at the front of the guitar, near the tail, especially on the lower body half.  Does anyone else see a waterstained appearance to the grain?
 
Does this give the appearance of a fault (blemish) in the grain that will detract from appearance later?

Are you talking about the dark shaping marks around the edges which will obviously be sanded out during final shaping? otherwise all I see is a nicely figured slice of quilt maple - the dark lines indicate to me that you'll be getting a very deep quilt effect similar to woody.
 
Graeme

I agree with Graeme- really deep quilt, which should look great when the finish hits.

No reason to panick - if there's anything really wrong with the wood I'm sure they'd rather not put their name to it.
 
There's another FTC thread here for a Further, where they found a nasty spot in the neck after they started to shape it, which was even after the neck was glued to the body wings. They took the whole instrument apart and built a completely new neck.

Michael:
 
No need to worry.  Once the finish hits it, you will be blown away!  People who see Woody for the first time invariably reach out to touch it because they can't believe the surface is really flat.  The 3-D quality of quilted maple under finish is my all time favorite guitar top.  Swirly cocobolo is a close second, which is why I chose it for Woody's back.  Alembic don't do no water stains!
 
Bill, tgo

OK.  Thanks for the encouraging feedback.

Quilted Maple is so hard to judge from photos. Now that we're sanding the guitar, the amount of figure appears to wane, so it will be especially rewarding when the finish hits it.   The blue arrows are all pointing to the same type of feature:

 It's not a stain, but rather part of the structure and natural beauty of the wood. It's just where this piece was cut revealed it this way.  The routing is completed now:

 

  So in a couple of weeks, we'll have sealer coats and the first shots of color. Once you see that, I know your mind can be at ease. This is going to be a stunning guitar.