sealed!

OK, the soundboard is glued in.  No turning back now!

I put the instrument up on its spine side, to blow the dust out of its soundbox cavities, before covering them over for good.

There were 16 "decorative" nails to be placed, marking the positions of the soundboard braces.  I did these while the soundboard was still unattached, so that I could hammer into the braces while they were resting against the floor.  I drilled down to a depth of 1/2" using a drill spacer as you can see, then hammered the 3/4"-long nails in the rest of the way: which caused them to very slightly break through the bottom surfaces of the braces.  So the pre-drilling to avoid splitting was probably especially important.

My fine little jewelry hammer has been just right for all the hammering jobs in this project so far.  Putting in the tougher steel hitch-pins may wreck it for any future jewelry career, however.

Last chance to see inside.  Here's the glue-bead, waiting for me to place the soundboard on top and then hammer in the 106 "structural" nails...

...Which took quite a while, most of an hour; so I was glad that the Titebond II tends to stay workable for that long, especially in low-air regions where copious amounts have been used, as here.

122 nails, total.  And then there will be 49 hitch-pin nails.  And there are 196 nails already, between bridge-blocks and the nut.  That's approximately... a lot!