Making a truss rod cover shouldn't be that big of a deal. Get a piece of wood, thin it, shape it, drill some holes, apply some finish, screw it on, and move on.
Well...
I was planning on making the cover out of a piece of rosewood, but when I laid some rosewood over the opening I just didn't like the way it looked. I was afraid that rather than blending in it would actually draw attention to itself, and the truss rod cover is not what you want to catch the eye, so I decided to use ebony instead.
I actually used the cover of my Yamaha guitar to trace the shape. Cut it out on the bandsaw, thinned it with the sander, beveled the edges, and applied a couple of coats of Tru-Oil to match the finish on the rest of the headstock.
Then it came time to drill the holes. Marked them out, drilled one, two, then the third...and the wood split. Tried super glue but couldn't hide the crack. So I had to make another one.
This time I drilled the holes before cutting it out so that there would be support on either side of the holes and the wood wouldn't split. Except when I drilled the top hole, the bit wandered and drilled off center.
I'm running out of scrap ebony. But there's a piece from the original headstock that had to be scrapped when I had to make a new neck. It still had the logo inlaid in pearl, but I figured I would just put the pearl on the back side where it wouldn't be seen.
Marked it out, drilled the holes, cut it out, sanded and shaped it--and then I realized that the pearl was showing on the edge.
I thought third time was a charm.
I found some scrap from cutting out the bridge, but it's a thick piece that needed to be resawn. Then thinned on the sander. Everything else went well on this one.
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