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Since the last post in April, I’ve been working on my second guitar and eagerly waiting for the return of #1. Well, the wait is over. It’s done at last. I’m very pleased with the way it came out. It does need a bit a of tweak in the set-up, but the neck angle is good so that should all be a matter of adjusting the nut and saddle. Here it is, in all it’s glory on a crappy video.

To be able to play your own instrument is something very special. And now on to the next one(s)!

The last bit if real hard work is underway. I’ve started to shape the neck:

So, what was once a straight piece of wood is slowly but surely becoming something that resembles a guitar neck. Pretty cool. This does take quite a bit of practice and after all of the nightmares I’ve had with this thing the idea of screwing up is really quite daunting. So, I’m definitely taking this one slowly…

Now what we almost have a guitar, it needs somewhere to live. So I settled on a nice Hiscox Artist Pro-II OM/000 sized case which should be arriving soon.

More next week!

I forgot to take pictures at the last session, but a quick update:

the neck will not be bound. It’s time to finish up on #1 so I’d rather settle for a smaller neck than run into issues with binding again. As a result of this decision I had to make a new bridge because the original one was drilled for string spacing for a slightly wider neck. Using that one would result in strings running off the fretboard at the high frets.

I did some inlay work at home on the ebony fretboard, slotted diamonds as position markers and a fancy leaf inlay at the 12th fret:

More diamonds to be added at the 3rd and 14th frets. It’ll be glued onto the neck this week.

The Sunday night was spent with a jeweller’s saw, needle files, a nice mother of pearl shell blank and a lot of patience.

I ended up with a nice logo to inlay into the headstock:

MOP headstock logo

Things are starting to pick up again after the holidays and I’ve managed to sqeeze a few sessions in.

The neck is ready to be attached. It’s taken a while because of all the neccesary improvisations but… We finally finished the bolt-on neck.

The other major accomplishement is the closed sound box. Here it is being glued together using spool clamps:

Closing the sound box

And the result:

Guitar body front

Guitar body back

We’re slowly moving into the last stages of the build, but what’s left is:

Routing the binding and purfling channels (example of the procedure here), fretting and glueing the fingerboard, attach and shape the neck, make a bridge and fit it, make and fit a heelcap. And once that’s all been done it still needs to be finished which appears to be just about the hardest part of all.

More to follow shortly!

Today, I spent the whole day in the shop. We made some great progress but you’ll have to wait for my next visit to see some results. My iPhone was empty with no charger at hand so no photos.

Anyway…

First job of the day was to continue working on the sound box. The back of the guitar, which had been finished months ago, had been patiently waiting for this day. I had to create the notches in the sides and the kerfed lining to accomodate the back braces and make it all fit snugly. It almost worked. Only one notch was slightly off and had to be sawed slightly bigger than I’d had hoped, but luckily the binding will hide all that.

Next up was some work on the fret board. It was planed on the shooting board, but I couldn’t get this ebony planed straight for the life of me. Luckily Jan helped out. I need some practice on this really hard and dense stuff. After the finger board was done (aiming for 1 11/16″ at the nut) I cut the fret slots. Easy job on the saw table.

We decided not to close the sound box yet. Reasoning behind this was that because we diverted from the original plan (Spanish Heel neck-to-body attachment to a bolt-on), we had to make sure we could still make adjustments around the neck block in case more improvisation was needed. So… with the tenon already cut on the neck, it was time to route the mortise into the neck block to receive the neck attachment.

Scary stuff indeed. We (and I use ‘we’ liberally, as in ‘Jan’) used the StewMac routeing templates. Most of the afternoon was actually spent on creating a jig to fit the template and attach the body of the guitar. All in all, we ended up with a solera-like contraption which held the body and could be mounted to the side of the table, allowing free access to the neck block with the router. I’ll take a picture next time, because I realise I’m not making this any clearer…

But… numerous passes, routeing bits and prayers later, we ended up with a perfecty fitting neck joint. The tenon on the heel needs to be adjusted slightly by cutting it a bit shorter, but that shouldn’t be a problem.I’m getting there!

The site has been unreachable for a while due to some technical issues I won’t bore you with. We’re back and that’s all that matters!

A lot of ground to cover in this long post, so here goes:

The neck was left alone after the last post. It’s good enough as it is for a rough fit. I’ll get back to it as soon as more work is needed on the fret board.

Almost all of the work of the last sessions went into constructing the sound box of the guitar.

I started with the bending of the sides. We use a Fox bender type of construction, which is a bending jig named after its creator, Charles Fox. Basically, the sides are bent over a template by placing a silicon heating blanket over the jig, followed by the soaked wooden side and finally a flexible metal sheet. By gently pressing down the wet wood over the heat, the wood starts to give and takes shape.

Here’s one of the sides being cooked:

Bending sides

I must say that I was almost disappointed at the relative ease of this procedure. Here’s a detailed description of a setup that’s similar to what we did. Maybe next time I’ll try my hand at bending over a traditional hot pipe, but knowing me I’ll probably just burn myself and break the sides as well.

Result: a nice set of OM shaped rosewood!

Bent sides

The sides are glued together using two blocks of mahogany. The block at the back is relatively small. It will hold the end pin (or maybe a jack if I decide the guitar is good enough for a K&KPure Western mini pickup).

End block

The neck block is a different matter all together. You may remember we had to change the original design which was based on a so-called classical or Spanish Heel neck-to-body construction, to a bolt-on. In order to accomodate the mortise and tenon and get a good connection, we ended up with a pretty large neck block. You’ll see it below.

After the sides we joined together, I started on the kerfed lining. These flexible strips of wood are glued in marginally proud of the sides after which they are sanded back and flush with the sides. They provide a good glueing surface for the top and back. You need a lot of clamps for this!

Glueing the kerfing

After both lines of kerfing were glued and the sanding was completed, I glued the soundboard onto the sides using spool clamps. I need to make some of these myself on a rainy afternoon. All you need is some threaded rod, mdf, cork and a few wing nuts. And a lot of time and patience, of course.

Luckily Jan has them aplenty:

Glueing the soundboard

With the top attached, I moved on to the back. Same procedure more or less, but the back is slightly more complicated. If you look at the way most steel string guitars are built, you’ll see that the back is not straight. It takes quite a dive towards the neck. This is clearly visible if you look at a photo taken from the side, such as this picture of a Gibson J-45:

Side profile of a Gibson J-45

You’ll notice the dramatic drop-off starting more of less where the guitar is at its smallest. To accomodate for this, you need to remove quite a lot of material from the sides. You also have to make sure you do it evenly on both sides, or you’ll end up with a crooked instrument. There are lots of ways to achieve this evenly, but I just measured and used a sanding stick. It seems to have gone OK!

After that, the kerfs were glued to the sides again. More sanding next time, and then it’s time to close the box! This is the state I left it in:

Almost ready to receive the back

Also visible in this picture is the piece of ebony that will be made into my fret board. It was thicknessed on the drum sander to approx. 6.5 mm. It has a bit of flame/streaking which is usually dealt with by staining the board black. I think it adds a bit of character to this first guitar, so I’ll leave it as it is.

Stay tuned for more!

It’s been quiet here lately. I did manage to squeeze in two sessions over the last month, but never got round to posting any updates.

Here’s the top as I left it at the last session:

Bracing in progress

What we have here is a top with only the X-brace missing. I only did a little bit of extra work on further shaping the braces that can be seen above.

The next step was to glue on the X-brace. Now remember, we radiussed the X-brace slightly to put a bit of a radius into the top. Using four cam clamps and four small clamps on the edges, I glued everything together.

Glueing the X-brace

While the top was nicely clamped up, I had some time to spend on the neck. This guitar, as I mentioned before, uses a so-called Spanish heel for the neck-to-body construction. It’s more common on classical guitars, but it’s what Willis uses in his book, and also what Jan uses on his guitars. For a nice overview of making a neck, take a look at Robbert O’Briens youtube video here. I also mentions the use of the stacked heel, which is what I’m doing

On the band saw I took three blocks of nice mahogany of a blank and glued them together as a sandwich onto the neck I’ve been working on:

Neck block sandwich

And that’s where I left it…

Next time I’m finishing the top bracing (finally!!) and hope to make a start on carving the heel out of the neck block. Then we’re getting close to bending the sides, which should be interesting to learn.

Last week’s session was fairly uneventful. I spent my time on bracing the top.

I mentioned before I’m using Alex Willis’ book on guitar building as a guide for this OM. His bracing pattern is interesting.

Martin has a nice overview of the different bracing patterns they use on their guitars. The discussions about various types of bracing, and whether to scallop, taper or keep braces straight are the stuff of legend. Basically, what it comes down to is that the braces need to be distributed heavily enough on the top to support the pull of the strings. But we also want the top to move and vibrate as freely as possible for optimal movement of air and transfer of sound.

American Luthier Dana Bourgeois has written a numer of articles on the topic of bracing and what is known as voicing the top. If you’re interested, you can read one of them on his website. And while you’re there, take a look at some of the eye candy he builds. It fantastic looking stuff. His Country Boy Deluxe is (figured mahogany over adirondack spruce) is just mouth wateringly pretty, especially in a burst.

The Willis design is close to Martin’s A-bracing, but because he uses a Spanish Heel to attach the neck to the body, the braces are let into the neck bleck. We’ve decided to change this a little and keep them short of the neck block as not to interfere with the truss rod channel.

I glued the A-braces and the finger braces onto the top and that’s where I had to leave it. More to follow in a couple of weeks!

Bracing the top in a go-bar deck

During the previous session, I redid the inner-most ring of the rosette. Or more precisely, I watched as Jan worked his magic with three slivers of wafer-thin veneer. It stayed down, so I started this session with the trusty cabinet scraper and scraped the rosette flush. It definitely looks the part!

Scraping was followed by the thicknessing of the top. It seems easy enough, feeding it through the rotating sander? Well, if you’re like me, you’re still heading for a near disaster…

Thicknessing the top

What happened was that I didn’t open the correct valve on the dust hose. So, although the vacuum was happily blasting away, no dust was actually being collected. It built up inside the sander resulting in uneven sanding and STRIPES in my top (as can be seen in the picture above; it’s clearly visible on the left!).

After a few of these near misses, I’ve luckily become weary of everything I do, so I keep asking for opinions around the shop.This mistake was caught in time and corrected. *phew* Top saved…

The sound hole was removed with a circle cutter like so:

Removing the sound hole

After which I ended up with a nice coaster and a nice looking 3-piece rosette!

Sound hole removed!

On to the bracing!

X-brace stock

Time to draw some of the braces onto the inside of the top. I began by measuring in the X-braces. These are slightly radiussed, so onto the shooting board they went. With that done, I marked the points where the two braces will intersect and created the overlap with the use of a Japanese Pull Saw. I actually finished this, but didn’t take a picture. More to follow next time.