Glue line?

I believe what you are seeing is dried glue that has pushed out of the joint during clamping. It just had not been leveled yet. Then again, I could be mistaken totally. But, that would be a mighty large glue line .

 

I would agree...

Man, you need to get some experience with woodworking, and don't set expectations high to start with. You need to learn how tools work with the wood, and how wood works with wood. Many towns have woodworking clubs that give classes, and in Austin, one place does free classes. This will give you the opportunity to have very knowledgable people teach you the right way to use tools, and the right woodworking techniques right off the bat.

That having been said, I would imagine it is VERY rare to see a one piece top or body for that matter. Only because the size log it must come from will be huge, and beyond the capability of most tools to mill, resaw, sand, or plane (for the home user, anyway, and many shops). Look at the price difference between, for example, a 13" planer and a 15". Up to double. A common sized blank will not run through the 13", but 2 7" pieces will. You would need a very expensive bandsaw indeed to resaw 14 or 15". And if you are using exotic wood, you may not even find a piece 14" wide at a reasonable price, if they are willing to cut you a 20+ inch piece anyway.

Properly prepared, a glue line will be almost invisible on wood. On my latest bass, I had a very hard time seeing the glue joint, and had to look closely at the grain to see it after it was sanded. On a bookmatched top, sometimes you may not really see it at all. To get good glue joints, just run the edge through a jointer, or through a square table saw. I prefer the slightly rougher cut from the table saw, the rougher the surface, the better it will bond, and the pieces will still mate tight enough to make the glue line a non-issue.

On a side not, this is exactly why most accoustics have an inlay down the back side, to cover the glue line. Look at the pic of my pass in this post, for example.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=214854

Notice the inlay on the last picture. It did not need it to cover the line, but I wanted to dress it up to match the binding.

 

What you see in that image is the glue freshly wiped away and the dampness from my wiping cloth still showing on the wood.

To see how the joint came out after sanding and other clean-up scroll down to the image where the blocked/bound Fedner-style neck is set into the body. The only thing you can see of the joint in this image is the two alignment holes where the template was attached to the body during routing. These holes will also disappear at a later stage - one with the bridge installation and the other with a p/u route.

When I have a few new images I'll add them to that thread and you'll be able to see the glue line is gone - just wood grain coming together ...

All the best,

R