Guitar Making

Snow Day - Part 2

2010-03-21T20:05:00.000-07:00

These pictures are pretty self-explanatory. I'm basically just working the neck shaft down to size with a little finger plane, occasionally going over it with a sanding block to make sure I'm maintaining a straight line. As I get closer, I start blending in the heel and nut areas with a rasp.

Snow day - Part 1

2010-03-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

So after getting the splice glued onto the side, I realigned the fingerboard and clamped it up again, this time much more slowly and methodically so the clamps didn't pull the fingerboard sideways.

And here it is out of the clamps a few hours later. This time I used 2 small finishing nails as alignment pins, drilled through fret slots.

And again to the band saw to trim down the splice close to the fingerboard with this little fence I made for the band saw.

And here it is, ready for carving.

Mistake #872

2010-03-20T16:06:00.000-07:00

I slept well last night, pleased with the progress I'd made in getting the fingerboard prepped and attached to the neck. I went up to the shop this morning to admire my handiwork, only to discover that the fingerboard had shifted slightly and was now slightly overhanging one side.This is a problem, because if I try to sand the fingerboard down to the neck, the maple fingerboard binding will look really uneven.

So I grabbed an old iron that I keep around for such occasions, and used it to heat up the fingerboard and loosen up the epoxy and separated the fingerboard from the neck. Here's the mess the epoxy leaves behind.

During the neck removal the edge of the neck got beat up a little bit, and so there were little chipped out areas underneath where the fingerboard will go. I could try filling that space with superglue and sawdust, but it would look real sloppy and it's in a real visible spot.

I had two options:
A.) Make a new, narrower fingerboard. This one already has a 1-7/8" nut width, which is pretty wide. I could make a new one with 1-3/4" width and that would give me enough clearance that the chipped area would get removed.
B.) Sand the side down flat and splice in a piece of mahogany. Luckily, I kept the neck cutoffs so I had the exact piece to match that side of the neck.

I chose option B. The thing is, if this fails, I can go back and do option A.

So, I planed down the side flat until the chipped out areas were gone.

And here it is with the splice clamped on. Hopefully this will make a nearly invisible glue joint.

Lessons learned in all this:
1. Don't trim the neck so close to final shape, leave a little extra for situations like this.
2. Apply clamp pressure more gradually and evenly across all the clamps, and check often to make sure everything's still aligned.
3. Find better alignment pins.
4. Don't get hasty when you're separating glue seams because you can damage the wood and make more repairs for yourself.

Dot dot dot

2010-03-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Here's my little jig for drilling holes for the side dot fret markers on the fingerboard. This makes it so the dots will be lined up correctly.

These pearl dots are 3/32" in diameter, and are superglued into place. If I could go back and do it over I would use black plastic dots so it would contrast better against the light maple binding. I'm pretty sure it'll look better under a finish.

After the dots were dry, I epoxied the fingerboard to the neck. Then I'll be able to finish shaping the neck.

I've become the world's laziest blogger now that I've figured out that I can upload from Picasa to Blogger, but I haven't quite figured out the whole formatting thing to get the text and photos arranged in a pleasing way. Which is fine, since I use one of the Blogspot templates from 1989.

I shaved my back.

2010-03-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

Long term followers of my blog may remember the Granadillo guitar I was working on, this one actually made it the closest to being finished. I had it nearly to completion but a mistake on the neck stopped me in my tracks.

I set it aside and the following winter it got pretty dry in my house, which makes wood shrink. The center seam started to split and then a part in the upper bout started to crack. I learned an expensive lesson that I can't put the box together when the humidity is really high (say, in the hottest week of August, which is when I did this one). Anyway, I could try to humidify the guitar and glue the cracks, but the truth is it would always have humidity problems. So I routed off the bindings and removed the top and back from the sides. The top is toast, but I can salvage the back. But I have to take the old braces off and redo it at a lower humidity so it can handle the drier times of a year a bit better.

This thing I'm building is shaped like a guitar.

2010-03-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Special K - part 3

2010-02-26T07:02:00.001-08:00

Special K - part 2

2010-02-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

Last night I glued in the K inlay with a mix of ebony dust and epoxy. Sanded it flat to 220-grit this afternoon, and got out the headstock slot routing jig from luthiertool to route the slots and drill the holes in the side for tuners.

I'm pretty happy with how the inlay turned out. There is definite room for improvement (smoother edges on the pearl, better routing technique so less filler is required, placement of K would look better a little to the left and angled back a bit), but I didn't just completely botch it and it will be usable so I feel like it's a success.

Special K - part 1

2010-02-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit of what I've been working on this week. This will be my first attempt at inlay. My buddy is a graphic designer and was teaching a class at the local university and had a student design a logo for me as part of a project. I'm not sure if I really want to use it as a logo, but figured it gives me something to work with for my first inlay attempt. The logo was my whole last name, I dropped it into Autocad and just traced the K. I had to alter some aspects of it to make it easier to cut without breaking. I'll post more pics later of my set-up for cutting the shell.

Bandwidth

2010-01-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

Sorry, had to disable most of the pics for a while as my bandwidth was unusually high this month and I'm too cheap to move up to the next level of hosting.

I'm back ya'll, and that's a fact ya'll.

2009-12-06T19:21:00.000-08:00

Anybody still out there?

Here's a guitar I started a while back, it's based on a 20's Martin 00 12-fret. The back and sides are bubinga.

And while I was waiting for the glue to dry on linings on the bubinga guitar, I resurrected this project. It's an OM with a Florentine cutaway ("Florentine" means it comes to a sharp corner instead of being curved). I set it aside a few years ago mainly because I thought the cutaway was beyond my ability. It still is but I'm going to move ahead anyway. Back and sides are East Indian Rosewood and the top will be cedar. I had bent these on older forms based on a different OM plan, and the curves had relaxed a bit over the years, so I touched these up on a hot pipe to get the correct shape.

Well that's it for me... See you all in 2011!

Vacation Day 5

2007-08-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't quite spend as much time in the shop yesterday, it was time for some much needed relaxing with my wife.

I leveled the frets. I marked the top of each fret with a Sharpie, then lightly sanded with sandpaper on a straightedge. When all the marks are gone, the frets should be level. It leveled up quickly and evenly.

I did have a few stubborn frets on the upper part of the board, the ends weren't staying down. I made a makeshift fret press and used superglue to hold down those frets.

Vacation Day 4

2007-08-02T21:27:00.000-07:00

French polishing supplies...

A couple French polish sessions on the top just to seal it so it won't get stained by pore filler.

Pore filler on the back and sides, looks like a mess now but when I sand it back the wood will be nice and smooth.

The heel cap glued on, same wood as back and sides.

I tapped in some frets and started filing the excess off the sides.

My custom made fret-bender.

Vacation Day 3

2007-08-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Vacation Day 2

2007-08-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

Here are some highlights from yesterday.

The fingerboard is only attached with double stick tape at this point, to give me a guide to cut out the rough shape of the neck.

I roughed out the shape a bit, now it's starting to look like a guitar neck.

Now I have to make ramps into the slot so the strings have clearance to get to the tuners.

Working on getting the neck fit properly to the body, which involves a lot of attaching and detaching the neck as I make adjustments.

I sand to make a flat surface so the fingerboard can lay flat and true.

And at 1:30am last night I glued on the fingerboard to the neck with epoxy and called it a night.

Vacation Day 1b

2007-07-30T20:13:00.001-07:00

Vacation Day 1

2007-07-30T07:25:00.001-07:00

I've got this week off of work, and the goal is to finish this guitar. The deadline for the luthierforum contest is Friday, so expect lots of updates with very little text description this week.

Wedge and bindings

2007-07-25T06:04:00.000-07:00

Less talk and more rock:

A little bit mo mo mo

2007-07-23T08:46:00.000-07:00

It's lonely at the top:

Brace yourself:

Back to it:

Epoxying in the neck reinforcement:

Attaching the top, closing up the box:

Banding, Bending and Binding: (Also bonding, bunding, and sometimes bynding.)

Still More on the 00 12-fret

2007-07-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

Dial-uppers are going to hate me. I apologize for the lack of text.

And I'll end the night with a mistake... I drilled this hole in the top slightly off center. So I filled it with glue and sawdust, and I'll try again.

More on the 12-fret 00

2007-07-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

More work on the 2nd Buildoff guitar...

These pics are a couple days old, I haven't uploaded the latest photos yet. I bought a dehumidifier yesterday because it won't stop raining here so I can't keep the humidity down in my shop. If I brace the top and back and close up the box in high humidity, things will shrink and crack when the air does dry up.

The cedar top I prepared had water stains on one half that would not sand out on either side, so I joined a spruce top.

Preparing the neck blank.

Here's my jig for cutting the scarf joint at 15 degrees.

I clamp together the neck shaft and headstock pieces, and drill two holes. Then I use two toothpicks as alignment pins so they don't shift around when I'm gluing this important joint.

Preparing the macassar ebony fretboard.

Profiling the rim assembly.

I started another one for some reason

2007-06-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I still haven't even finished one guitar yet, and I'm starting another. I'm actually shooting for having this done by the beginning of August. There are several reasons/excuses.

First of all, I got a back and side set of Granadillo for a very very good price from Hibdon Hardwood with the understanding that I would build with it soon and post pictures on a guitar making forum. It really is nice stuff to work with so far, and attractive to the eye.

B. I'm in this guitar building contest at luthierforum.com that ends at the beginning of August, and to be eligible for any prizes at all, I need to complete the instrument.

III. I'm attending a family reunion in August and it'd be nice to be able to bring a guitar I made.

This one is based on a Martin 00 12-fret. I'm going for a minimalist look on this one, partly for time reasons and I also just like the aesthetics of the idea. I think it'll have a cedar top, but the last pictures show some sort of staining or discoloration, so I may have to use a spruce set from my stash if that doesn't sand out.

Lowden Guitars - shop tour

2007-03-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

My favorite woman and I eloped to Northern Ireland last week, there'll be more posts about that here on my other blog.

While we were there, we got the chance to meet George Lowden and tour his small guitar building facility in Downpatrick. I also ordered a guitar from him, it will be a custom S-25 made with a "Lucky Strike" LS redwood top. That should be ready in six months or so.

I apologize if you're on dial-up, I'm about to post a lot of pictures. Most are self-explanatory, I may add a few notes under some of the pics.

Here's a table display in the Lowden Guitar office.

This is the outside of the office located in a business park north of Downpatrick. The shop is across the parking lot.

George and I at his office.

David Pierce at the workbench, he was fun to chat with. You can tell these guys really love what they do.

This is Wes Grierson, he actually just arrived last night in Northwest Arkansas to play some shows at the university where Joy works and maybe at a local church.

I thought this was brilliant. It's a bicycle innertube sewn to a piece of plywood. They use this to attach the back and top to the side assembly, it keeps even pressure all around. You can see it in use in one of the previous pictures.

This is George's fret slotting machine, it's been in service since the late 70's.

Two motorized radius dishes for sanding the profile to the side assembly.

He uses washing machine motors and pulleys for the motorized sanding dishes.

George at his bench.

George at his bench again, I think he was working on a pickup installation.

Buildoff - Rosewood Fretboard

2007-01-14T15:49:00.000-08:00

I've been working all weekend at my day job, but I've taken a few short breaks to get some shop time.

In my last post, I had slotted the fretboard with my fret slotting jig on the table saw. The next step was to taper the fretboard with this table saw jig.

I didn't take a lot of pics for the next step, binding the fretboard with flamed maple. It was a challenge for me to get a nice tight mitered corner where the maple wraps around the end of the fretboard. I used a very sharp chisel to cut the miter. It took a lot of practice to get the angle right and to get a good straight vertical cut. You can see I went through five little pieces of maple, I kept cutting them a little too short which would make a gap at one of the corners.

Here it is sanded to a 16" radius with a Stewmac aluminum sanding block. I'll include another view from the end so you can see the radius.

It's not a great pic, but here's a closeup of the end of the fingerboard so you can see the mitered corners. I feel pretty good about it since that's the first one I've done.

Slots

2006-12-31T15:19:00.000-08:00

I got my new Stewmac Fret Scale Rules in the mail yesterday so I cut the slots on a couple fretboards with my new fret slotting jig. I just tape the scale to the back of the fret board, and then I align it with the reference line on the jig. I use magnifying reading glasses so I can get everything lined up accurately. The second photo is the view from above when I'm aligning everything before I make the cut.

The lighter colored one is East Indian Rosewood, and it'll go on the rosewood parlor guitar (the "build off" guitar). The darker one is ebony and it will go on the cocobolo parlor.