So, as discussed in the previous two posts, the last sessions were spent on installing the binding around the edges of the guitar. The result on the top was pretty spiffy:

Top with binding and purfling

Cleary visible in the picture is the residue from the glue. So I got to work with the trusty cabinet scraper to remove the glue, and scrape the binding flush with the sides.

All went well for about five minutes until just about half of the back binding came off! As it turned out, the combination of the glue, the binding material and the rosewood was an unfortunate one. They simply hadn’t attached properly. At closer inspection, the top binding and purfling also didn’t stick. Disaster! Two nights of work gone (a month!), and I was left with a soundbox with messy binding channels filled with dry and hardened glue…

After the Great The Weld-on Disaster

Only one sensible option here: route the channels clean and start over… After cleaning up we opted for a different ivoroid binding material and used CA (super)glue instead of the Weld-on cement. A test piece showed it stuck properly so by the end of the night, the new back binding was installed. Look two posts back for pictures, it looks much the same.

Definitely a shame, but in all honesty, the new binding material looks better and I managed to install it much cleaner. Fingers crossed for next session and let’s hope this was the last surprise for this guitar.

Lets start by looking at the result of the last session. After peeling away all the tape from the mummified back of the guitar, it looks like this:

Ivoroid back binding

I think it came out nicely, overall. Once the top binding has been done, all the glue residue will be removed with a cabinet scraper. At that stage I’ll also scrape the bindings flush with the body.

But first, more of the same to be done on the top! I already routed the two channels which are needed for this part of the job, using the same Festool router we used for the back. It turned out that the purfling channel was a bit to shallow so I adjusted this first.

Next stage: bending the purfling strips. These small strips of laminated mosaic need to be bent to the shape of the guitar before installing them, so on to the bending iron they went. Of course, these are much easier to bend than the sides of a guitar so it was done in a matter of minutes:

Bent purfling strips

On to installing the binding and purfling. This is a little more challenging than doing just binding alone, because both strips made of different material have to be glued in tight at the same time. This takes practice, steady hand and lots of painters tape:

Top binding and purfling installed

A preview of the result I’m aiming for:

Preview of the finished top

Next session: shaping the bridge. Also, Ive decided I want to bind the fret board (like on this D-42). This will give me the necessary width of the finger board because at the moment the string spacing is a tad on the small side, which the binding will fix.

First job of the night: creating the end graft. I decided use the same kind of zig-zag strip I used on the back as the end piece. I measured, scorched a few line with a  razor knife, and started chiseling out the channel to accomodate the strip. Not too difficult as long as the chisel is very sharp and you take your time:

And the result:

One of the things that scared me most when I read about guitar building was the stage that followed: routing the binding channels.

Binding, for those who wonder, is the material used on guitars to cover and protect the glue joint attaching the top and back to the sides. Both wood and various types of plastic/celluliod are used as binding material. Lots of nice pictures of various types of binding here at the acoustic guitar forum.

Every book shows different methods on how to route for binding. Youtube has a number of helpful videos, such as this one and of course, StewMac has an expensive jig for it. The scary bit is that you have spent ages completing a sound box and then having to take a router to it to create a little channel just wide and deep enough to accomodate the binding.

We use a Festool trimmer to route the channels, and to be honest, this was no where near as difficult as I thought. In fact, after the first pass, the rest was done in no time. Once the channels were created, the cream/ivoroid binding I use was installed on the back. The procedure is simple: put some Weld-On cement in the binding channel (about 3 inches at the time), put the binding strip in, and fasten with painters tape:

Here’s a picture of some guy with a receding hairline  installing his binding:

All done:

With all this done, I made a quick start on the bridge. The bridge I’m making will be a standard martin-type belly bridge. After selecting the rosewood bridge blank, I drew the contours of the bridge onto the wood, set out the string spacing of 2 1/8″ (i.e. the distance from the middle of the low-E bass pin to the high-E treble pin) and routed the slot which will eventually accomodate the bone saddle:

with the routed channel:

Next time I’ll be installing the top binding and purfling and hopefully do some more work on the bridge.

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!

Knowing that I’d be doing this for a long time to come, I took the plunge and ordered a set of master grade  Madagascar Rosewood (or MadRose, as it’s affectionately called by builders). The supplies are dwindling fast and prices are rising. To match the reddish and orangy streaks of the wood, I also ordered some pink heart shell strips from Kevin Ryan, who created a product called Zipflex. This is pretty amazing stuff: flexible strips of abalam (laminated shell). With this stuff, even a novice like me could D-45 a whole guitar!

I’m looking forward to using it. Here’s a picture of the set of rosewood:

Set of madagascar rosewood

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!

Posts are far and few between, but that’s because last session was spent mostly on making a routeing template for my headstock. But first, we more or a less finished the rough shaping of the heel and neck block:

Shaped heel

It needs a bit more work and a lot of fine sanding, but for now it’s good enough.

We continued on the headstock. To be able to copy the right shape, we had to create a template out of plexiglass like material. This proved to be quite a challenge. My orgininal design was a bit too small, so we enlarged it, but because a template like this has to be absolutely spot on (i.e. symmetrical), this poses some difficulties. After about two hours we had a complete template, and left and right were slightly off, so we need to look into the issue a bit more this coming week.

On a positive note, I received a package from Andy Depaule at Luthiers Supplies. It took two months to arrive because I got stuck in customs apparently. But it dod contain my headstock inlay: a so-called alternate torch.

It’s quite an intricate design, and very brittle. This will be a nice challenge to inlay!

Here’s the design on the first ever guitar to be outfitted with this particular torch, a martin 1902 00-42S:

After last session I was left with a neck which not only had its side slots cuts too deep, they were also at the wrong angle.

I thought we might be able to salvage the neck by taking a drastic step: changing the original Spanish heel neck construction to a mortise-and-tenon bolt-on attachment. Having considered the options, Jan agreed and we got to work.

Luckily he already had obtained some Stewmac routing templates for this neck joint and a routing jig to use them! So, I cut off the heel, leaving enough space for the tenon.

Some routeing and a whole pile of saw dust later, we ended up with a perfectly tenoned neck:

Spanish heel turned bolt-on

With this out of the way, I started on carving the heel into shape:

Carving the heel

Carving is great! It gives you a nice feel for the material, and the way something appears under your hands by taking stuff away is very rewarding. I’ve taken the neck with me, so I plan to get this finished for the next session in four weeks time.

First, the good news: I finished bracing the top. It looks good and I wonder what the brace shapes will do to the sound. It was quite a bit of work for someone without a lot of experience with a chisel, but I’m pretty chuffed at the way it came out:

Finished bracing

With the top out of the way, I got back to working on the neck.

I roughly cut out the shape of the head stock on the band saw. I case you’re wondering about the multiple saw passes in the right and left top corners: I made these cuts to remove these corners more easily.

Roughly shaped head stock

And then… on to the neck and heel:

Neck with stacked heel

I’ve mentioned before we’re using a spanish heel on this guitar to attach the neck and body. The stacked mahogany blocks form the heel, which is then carved at the front. Two slots are sawed into the block at a slight angle to let in the sides. The whole process is clearly shown here:

http://www.hanalima.com/building_spanish.shtml

As you can see in the first photo, the slots in the heel are cut to about 1cm from the center line.

Enter mistake #1… while happily sawing away I was chatting to my fellow builder and looked at the wrong measurement line. I over cut the line. *#$^%

Then it turned out that the angle at which we cut the slots was too great. Although we’re talking fractions here, this has huge implications for the rest of the build. The neck on a steel string guitar is set back at a slight angle (approx. 1.5°). This is done to allow the strings to pass the birdge at the correct angle and to keep things playable. More about this later.

This mismeasurement means that the action on this guitar would be far to high. After a good nights’ sleep Jan decided to remove the stacked heel and put a new one on and re-cut the slots. That’s something to look forward too for next week.