Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
I started a discussion on the Musical Instrument Makers Forum board. Opinions ranged
from "hell, just bandsaw it out, millions of guitars are made that way by the big
companies" to "I just broke a headstock the other day - along the short grain". Most
posters were irrelevantly concerned with the strength of the glue joint. I knew that a
well-made glue joint would be stronger than any piece of mahogany, so I wasn't worried
about that. What made my mind up was that I would have only one shot at bandsawing
the neck out of the billet, while I could make two or maybe three necks from the same
billet using the scarf joint. If I messed it up, I'd have another chance. That's what I
decided to do.
The next step calls for cutting the neck blank along a fifteen-degree angle to the face.
The cut-off piece is then turned around and the sawn face is glued to the underside of
the main piece to make the headstock angle. This is an extreme angle, much tighter than
my miter saw can do. I looked around for a protractor - I must have a dozen of them
dating from grade school on up - and couldn't come up with one. How to make the cut?
I pondered the meaning of fifteen degrees. I knew I could easily draft such an angle
with a compass or with a pair of drafting triangles, but I didn't want to go drafting on the
side of a piece of wood, or cutting up little pieces of paper to transfer the angle. I started
playing with my draftsman's triangles and came up with the equation 45 - 30 = 15.
If I clamped the two triangles together with their points together and sides aligned, the
angle between the two hypotenuses would be my fifteen degrees.
Resting the hypotenuse of the 30-60-90 triangle on the face of the board with the 45
degree triangle resting on the edge and the points lined up with my mark on the top
gives the correct angle along the edge of the board.
Here the board is marked for cutting. The
cut is seven inches from one end of the
blank; meaning that the furthest part of
the cut is seven inches -- the short face is
about three inches. That's not totally clear
in C&N, but you can figure it out. It's a
tricky cut for a handsaw, but a lot of
trouble to jig up for a table saw or
bandsaw. I decide to start with the
dozuki, a small Japanese backsaw, since
its tiny teeth will immediately dig in on the line, and then follow up with something
larger, since the "back" on the dozuki won't let it go all the way through the cut. In fact,
none of my backsaws will make it all the way through, so I finish the cut with a small
ryoba, seen in the background of the next photo. These Japanese saws cut on the pull
stroke, which is more comfortable for me. The cut starts from the top in this view, and I
watch the lines down both sides as I saw.
I thought about just running this piece through the bandsaw with the fence at 1/2", but
it's somewhat small and I like my fingers (push stick? Moi?). I'd have to smooth up the
results with a plane anyway, and I like my plane as I've said before. I adjust the plane
for a big cut and begin hogging material off the smaller face.
And here's the glued-on headstock. A lot of work, but it came out well. That's a six-inch
scale for reference.
This operation -- everything up to this point -- took one Sunday afternoon from about
2:00 to 6:00, including an hour in the clamps. Including a 4:00 run out to Home Depot
when I realized I had no fresh glue. Including searching around for the protractor and
coming up with a trick substitute. Including a lot of head-scratching and pondering over
what do do next and exactly how. The next time I do this operation, it's probably 40
minutes excluding the glue-drying time.
Next: Truss rod, heel block, headstock veneers, who knows what else? Carving the heel,
cutting out the peghead, drilling? Find out next week, same web-time same web-
channel.
I managed to get down to the shop during the week and do one quick chore, which was
to cut and glue the heelblock to the neck blank. The rest of the operations on this page
took place on the weekend.
A little terminology here. From one end to the other: The Headstock is the piece of
wood at the far end of the guitar that will be cut down to become the peghead - this is
familiar as the place the tuning machines are mounted. Peghead veneers are laminated
to the front of this piece to provide strength and to hide the scarf joint made last week.
The other side of the scarf joint ends up where the carved curve of the neck meets the
flat of the peghead, so it's disguised by the complex geometry of the area. The next part
is the neck shaft itself. The fingerboard with the frets is glued to the front of this, with
the nut at its very end. The nut has the notches that the strings run through, and
determines the spacing of the strings at the "head end" of the neck.
At the other end of the neck is the heel -- right now, until it's carved, it's called the heel
block. The heel is the deep part at the end of the neck that joins to the body of the guitar.
It ends in a tenon (sometimes a dovetail tenon, but not in this guitar), which is a
projecting piece of wood that mates into a recess in another piece, which recess is called
a mortise. The piece on the guitar that contains this mortise is called the headblock. The
headblock is just inside the body of the guitar at the "top" end.
I think that covers the terms we're going to be using for the moment. The next job is to
install the truss rod. The adjustable truss rod is now a standard feature of steel-string
guitars, both electric and acoustic. Classical (nylon-stringed) guitars don't use them,
because the string tension is so much less that the neck is likely to stay straight without
help. A little digression here. When a guitar fretboard is absolutely straight, it won't play
properly, because the strings vibrate both side-to-side and up-and-down (and every way
in between) even though the plucking action may be side-to-side. On a straight
fretboard, the up-and-down vibrations would hit against the frets further down the neck
causing buzzing or even wrong notes. So a little relief in the fretboard is called for. This
relief is a slight curvature along the fretboard away from the strings. So that if you were
to fret the string at the first and fourteenth frets, you would still see a little daylight
between the string and the fifth fret.
This relief is automatically provided by the tension of the strings pulling against the
neck; but it might be too much, or after some time, the neck may tire and bend a little
too far, raising the action - the height of the strings above the frets - so high as to make
the guitar unplayable. The truss rod is able to correct this by introducing a reverse
curvature inside the neck. The simple adjustable truss rod consists of two steel rods
firmly attached at one end (or, usually, one rod bent double) and with one (upper) rod
held stopped at the other while the other (lower) rod can be shortened, by turning a nut
threaded on to it. Pulling in on the lower rod forces the upper rod into a downward
curve. When this pair of rods is embedded in the neck, its curve forces the neck to bend
back a little, restoring the relief to the proper amount.
The truss rod is not able to adjust a bad high action on a guitar - although the results of a
truss rod adjustment can seem to do this. All the truss rod can to is to force the neck to
bend backwards, which helps only if the neck is bent too far forwards. (Some truss rods
are two-way adjustable, that is, they can add relief as well as reduce it, but the one going
into this guitar is not that kind).
through hole for the lower. The lower rod is longer and it's threaded on the end,
accepting a long threaded sleeve that can be adjusted with a hex key through the
soundhole of the finished guitar.
This photo shows the end block of the truss rod as well as the markings on the neck for
cutting the tenon. The line across the neck marks the distance of the fourteenth fret from
the nut: this will be the place where the neck joins the body. The lines running from this
line to the left mark the edges of the fingerboard: the neck blank will be carved back to
these lines. The lines running from the juncture line to the right mark the edges of the
tenon. The wood outside these lines will be cut away to leave a protrusion that will fit
into the body of the guitar, into a matching mortise in the headblock. Those paying
attention will notice that the part of the neck shaft that overhung the heelblock has been
cut off.
Lacking clamps that can reach out to the middle, I weight down the two pieces for
gluing with whatever is handy.
And so to bed for this weekend, the second of the great homemade guitar documentary.
I had hoped to get a little further this weekend, but slept in both Saturday and Sunday.
The following weekend was worse in terms of the project. Work and social
commitments prevented me from getting into the shop at all. I picked up the following
weekend, though, on the rest of the operations on the neck.
Here it is with the one side coped. You can see the two dozuki cuts on the right, one
along the long, shallow angle, and one right through the first cut, making the short,
slightly steeper angle down to the nut seat. No, I didn't make a 90-degree turn with the
coping saw on the left; I used the dozuki to meet the coping saw cut and remove the
block of wood. If you look closely at the coping saw cut on the left, you'll see it wavers
a bit. I have a bear of a time cutting straight with a coping saw, or following a curve. I
keep clear of the line, though, and I'll clean it up later. By the way, the peghead shape
was marked by cutting out the peghead from the second set of plans and tracing around
it. I found that the width of the peghead at the nut on these plans was substantially less
than that of the neck at the nut. I tried to figure out why this could be and finally
decided it was a mistake, and adjusted accordingly.
After trimming the top edge of the peghead off with the dozuki: here's a really cool
plane curl that came off the side of the peghead. Next to the dark rosewood and
mahogany, the thin edge of the maple veneer looks like Oreo filling.
So, here's the first part that's looking a little bit like a guitar. Had to show this view. The
roughness down by the nut will be carved away later when the neck is shaped.
Here's the first step at shaping the heel; cutting away most of the heelblock. The choppy
appearance of the curve is caused by having to back up the bandsaw blade and re-angle
to make the curve. I still have the 3/4" blade on it that I use for resawing. Keeping the
cut quite far from the final curve is a security blanket for an insecure carver. The rest of
this operation is done by eye, and I want to have a large margin for error in putting the
'point' on the heel.
The cheeks where the heelblock is wider
than the neck are removed with the
bandsaw. In Cumpiano and Natelson,
visible here behind the neck, it says not to
come closer than 1/8" from the line where
the edge of the fingerboard will go, but it's
not quite clear whether they mean
sideways or below or both. Later it's clear
they at least mean not to carve all the way
up to the corner from below. I keep away
both ways.
The first step is to make a straight "ramp"
from the fingerboard edge (or rather just
below it) to the corner of the bottom of
The next step is to "concave" the ramp to the outer curve of the heel shape. The sides of
this curve are still straight along the direction of the length of the neck; no curving
toward the point of the heel is tried yet. This will establish the contour of the part of the
heel that meets the guitar body. Cumpiano and Natelson use a specially modified chisel
to make this and other cuts in carving the heel; I prefer a knife. This is a knife of a
pretty ordinary contour, similar to a Sloyd knife. It's from Woodcraft, and they just call
it a Swedish carving knife.
Here's the heel carved into the neck shaft.
The shaping of the rest of the neck shaft
will wait until later on. The knife carving
here was followed with the scraper to
smooth out the tiny ridges between knife
cuts. And that's it for this weekend. Tune
in next week, or, if you're not following
along in real time, click the link below to
see the rosette inlaid into the top, and
other exciting procedures!
I began by following the figures in Cumpiano and Natelson, starting with a 4"
soundhole, 1/8" of wood, an 1/8" veneer strip ring, and so forth. When I routed the
channel for the purfling ring, I naturally tried it for fit. It would not open out that wide.
The most it would do was a 4-1/4" diameter, and I was asking it for another 1/8" beyond
that, which was enough to leave a wide gap that would not be covered by the end of the
fingerboard. I retrenched, and routed down the wood between the first and second
channels, leaving a 1/2" channel into which I would inlay all three parts of the rosette. It
came out fine; but next time I'll measure all my materials before working on any of
them!
The process in the pictures, then, shows the start of a three-piece rosette ring that
finishes as a one-piece. If you see anything odd, that probably explains it!
I had prepared a board by routing the channels I thought I was going to use, and used
this as a mold to let the curved stripping set.
I used the template I had made by gluing the plan cutout to a board to trace the outline
of the top onto the spruce sheet from the materials. I then cut the shape of the guitar top
out of the sheet, leaving a 1/2" border all around.
The materials come with the top wood in two "bookmatched" pieces; that is, they are
two consecutive slices from the same log. To bookmatch the pieces, you place them in
the orientation they had in the log, then open them like a book and glue the two near
edges together. It yields a symmetrical grain pattern, and, for an instrument soundboard,
a symmetrical wood structure. When you order a top, you can have LMI sand them to a
given thickness and glue the pieces together. These operations are tedious and they
require either extreme skill with a plane or a heavy-duty thickness sander, so I opted to
pay for the thicknessing and joining to be done for me. I also had them thickness and
join the back, and thickness the sides.
This top is made of Sitka spruce, a wood native to the American Northwest. It has a
very high strength to weight ratio and acoustic characteristics that make it the most
popular wood for steel-string guitar soundboards. When I "tap test" the top wood by
holding it near the edge and rapping it with a knuckle of my other hand, it has a bell-like
sound. It is a beautiful piece of wood. I'm now about to take a chance at not wrecking it.
I agonized for a while about how to put the channels in the top for the soundhole
rosette. I thought of grinding a special cutter for a fly cutter, but the one I have isn't big
enough, and besides, if you look at it, it seems awfully risky. The thought of modifying
my Porter-Cable router to cut circles as recommended in Cumpiano and Natelson didn't
appeal to me. That's a lot of horsepower against the delicate spruce of the top. LMI
offers a specialized router harness for a Dremel tool that does all kinds of magic for
lutherie...but it's 125 clams, and I've already spent a lot on this project. In addition to
which, LMI takes forever to ship anything.
LMI offers two grades of boxed materials for steel string guitar, differing mainly in one
having mahogany back and sides and the other rosewood. The other differences are in
the ritzier decorative materials in the rosewood set. The rosewood set comes with
Martin-28-style herringbone purfling and rosette, and the back strip features an
elongated checker pattern of maple and rosewood pieces. Picture a little further down!
The normal way to do this would be with a froe, a specialized tool for splitting wood. It
has a long blade with a handle mounted perpendicular to it. You drive the blade into the
end grain of the billet, then pull the handle to the side to turn the blade and widen the
crack. I found Sunday afternoon not quite done when I glued in the back strip, so I went
over to the Woodworkers' Club to see if they had a froe. They carry two models, an out-
in-the-woods he-man one and a small one for splitting basket strips. I figured on the
small one. Well, they didn't have either one, so I settled on the method pictured. I
started a crack about where I wanted it by driving a chisel deep into the side of the billet
near the end, then walked the crack down the billet by leapfrogging two chisels down
the crack. Apart from having whacked my thumb four or five times, it worked like a
charm.
As you can see, the split diverged significantly from the sawn
face of the billet. I'll now resaw the braces out of the billet using
the split planes as references, and the lines of the fibers will run
uninterrupted through the length of the braces, at least in the
center third or so of the brace.
After rounding, the ends are beveled down to the soundboard level.
The next step is to glue on the soundhole braces. They don't take much clamping
pressure, as the glue soaks right into the spruce. A very thin glue line.
The braces are glued "in the square" to give a level surface for the clamps to bear on,
but are then shaped to various rounded profiles. The finger braces are feathered away to
nothing right along the edge of the X brace and a half-inch or so away from where the
sides will be, leaving room for the linings. Other braces will run right up to the sides,
and there will have to be gaps in the linings to accommodate them.
I didn't see anything in Cumpiano and Natelson or on the plans to indicate what the
grain orientation should be in the braces. There is a figure in C&N that shows all the
braces in cross-section that has hatching that might indicate grain direction, but
elsewhere in the book grain direction is plainly marked and labeled with the word
"grain" as in the diagram of the headblock. So I didn't pay any attention to the exact
orientation of the grain in the braces, taking care only that it should have as little runout
as possible, by cutting along the split planes. So some of the braces have annual rings
oriented perpendicular to the surface of the soundboard and some are parallel. They
must be different in acoustic properties: I would guess the vertical grain in the second
picture above would be less flexible. But maybe the difference is negligible.
Here is the layout of all the braces except the X. The lower face braces have been glued
in and shaped like the finger braces. They are also arched like the upper face brace. As
you can see from this, all the braces except the two uppermost lead into (or away from)
the edges of the X brace. All the ends go right down to the X-brace line, whether they
will feather away or butt up against it.
The X brace is the largest, or rather it
consists of the two largest, braces on the
soundboard. The two parts cross
symmetrically between the bridge patch
and the soundhole, and the arms of the x
contact the bridge patch and the
soundhole braces. There is a lap joint at
the point of crossing, that is, each brace is
notched and the two notches interlock.
The joint is made with a very exact fit --
not just as a way to clear the crossing --
to have the most effective coupling of the
two members. In this photo, the braces are
just laid into their position. Like the upper face brace, the X brace is given a slight arch
before being glued into position.
This week, the sides must be bent. I've done some bending before, making a couple of
small Shaker-style oval boxes of white oak and cherry. That was done by boiling strips
of wood in water and strapping them around a form. The free-standing method of
instrument building involves shaping the ribs against a hot tube by hand and eye alone. I
look forward to the challenge.
The last item for the soundboard is to make and attach the tailblock. The making is
straightforward; it's just a block three by four inches and 3/4" thick. The grain runs
parallel to the grain of the sides, so that the surface glued to the soundboard and the one
glued to the back is long grain rather than end grain.
Because the four-inch dimension is to be across the grain, there's no way to cut it out of
the neck blank log, since the widest dimension is just shy of four inches. Presumably
LMI intended the tailpiece to be made with the grain going the other way. While
recommending the horizontal grain, Cumpiano and Natelson acknowledge that folks
disagree about it. Since I have a good, straight-grained piece of mahogany knocking
around the shop, I decide to use that and follow the C&N program.
It's critical that the end that attaches to the soundboard be perpendicular to the face that's
going to be glued to the sides at the butt of the guitar. I use the fore plane to level the
edge of the board before cutting off the block, checking with and engineer's square.
After cutting out the piece, I final-level it with the block plane.
Yes, there will be a next time. I will drop the clue that the process was successful to a
good degree, and quite enjoyable. I've never had the opportunity to see this being done,
so I relied on the thin chapter in Cumpiano and Natelson and a couple of other sources.
I had wondered about the brevity of the information I was able to find on this, but now,
trying to describe the process myself, I no longer wonder. It's pretty hard to describe,
but here goes. I'll try to point out things that I think are helpful; things I didn't know
from reading, things that surprised me about it.
First off, I don't have pictures of the process. Maybe another time I will recruit my wife
to take some, but the procedure is so intense and hands-on (and damp!) that I just
couldn't set up even a time-delay shot or two. I don't think still pictures would convey a
lot of information about how to do it, anyway.
Preparations
The sides need to be matched and jointed. Place the sides together so the figure
matches. Usually, the pieces will have come from a single board and matching involves
placing them back together in the orientation they had in the board and then opening
them like the pages of a book so that two edges are together. There are two ways to do
this, so pick the one that looks best and choose the side you want to have showing on
the outside of the guitar. On my materials, there was really no difference inside and out
so I could pick the figure orientation without considering this. At one end of the pieces,
the figure took a slight curve, and I decided to put this end at the tail of the guitar. I put
the two pieces together face to face and, using the fore plane, jointed the edge that
would be contacting the soundboard so that it was straight and smooth.
Both pieces had begun to split at the tail end, probably due to bringing them into my
house in mid winter when the inside humidity went to almost nothing. I had to plan on
not using the last inch or so. Fortunately, this is a small guitar!
I rolled a small roll of electric tape along the outline of the template, and marked the
location of each major turning point or focus of a bend in terms of the number of
rotations the tape made. I then transferred these measurements to the side material so I
would have reference points to work from. I made each mark on the convex side of the
bend, so I could see it while holding the concave side against the bending iron. This
turned out to be only a little bit helpful, as I checked the bend against the template so
frequently I always knew where I was without referring to the marks on the wood.
The first step is to soak the side material in water. I looked around for an appropriate
container, and came up with a 36" window-box liner from Frank's garden and crafts
store. It wasn't a good choice, as it turns out, but it was better than anything else I found.
36" turns out to have been the outside dimension. The sides and ends of the container
narrow down to a little shorter than the side wood and a little narrower than the side
wood, which is 35" long. Of course. I was able to sort of wedge it in there. Brosnac's
book shows a tray made of sheet metal that he uses for boiling the sides in. I may go
that route if I can't find anything ready-made of plastic. On one side I soaked the neck
end first, bent the shoulder on the pipe, and then was able to fit the whole piece in. On
the other piece, I used more water and soaked all but six inches or so of the butt end.
When I stepped back to look at it, the end sticking out of the water had warped almost
into a "C" (as you look at the end grain). I was concerned that this stress might increase
the split. I turned it around and got that end under water and it unbent pretty quickly. At
first I intended to use water from a teakettle that had been brought to the boil, but it
barely covered the bottom of the trough. I used hot tap water instead. I soaked for about
20 minutes.
Bending
The LMI Professional Bending Iron takes a long while to heat up. So long, in fact, that
when I first tried it out I was afraid that it was defective, because after several minutes
on "HI" (Hello!) it was barely warm. It gets there eventually. I have the blisters to prove
it. I let it heat up at the "HI" setting, and then backed it off to 6 (it's marked "LO", then 1
through 6 and "HI", so 6 is the second highest setting). I set up the iron on its side so
that the wide parts were on the two sides and the sharper curve was down. In section,
the iron is egg-shaped, and the pointy end of the egg was toward the floor. I ended up
doing almost all the bending against the blunt end of the egg.
By this time the wood was dry on the surface on both sides, so I dipped it in the water
for a few seconds and went back to work. I thought I was focusing too much on the one
point, so I went a little to one side and the other of the pencil mark and rocked and
pushed until I felt a bend starting. This was a mistake. The waist on this guitar is a
pretty sharp curve, and I needed to get most of the bend focused at that pencil line. I
found this out later when I tried to get the lower bout to come down to the line.
It takes some pressure to get a bend into the wood, and you have to not worry too much
about tearing or cracking the piece. Otherwise, you are going to rock or slide it back and
forth until it scorches without any bend getting into the piece at all. In the first photo of
the bent sides you can see scorching on the piece above and to the right, and almost
none on the other piece, which I did second. You can learn by doing! The scorching is
there on the inside of the waist bend as well. I hope the scorch marks will scrape out. If
not, they will be a little mark of history. When bending the waist on the second side, I
found that the pressure can be applied sooner and more strongly. The bend will still start
gradually and then almost suddenly the wood will be supple. I can only speak for
excellently quartered and straight-grained rosewood at this time, but by the time I was
finished with the second side I was applying considerable force at each point and never
heard a tear or crack. It's a matter of getting a feel for it, which, for me anyway, didn't
take very long.
While the waist bend needed to be done almost entirely in one place against the iron, the
upper bout bend is less pronounced, and needs to be introduced a little at a time as you
slide the wood along the iron. I found that it worked best to apply pressure while
rocking back and forth for just a few seconds, then move over maybe an eighth of an
inch and repeat. Do this only three or four times and check against the template. If you
get ahead, you may over bend further along the curve.
The long, changing curve on the lower bout was almost more difficult to bend than the
tighter curves. The best method I found was to be very careful not to get ahead, but to
work one short section (about 1/2" at a time) until it would lie right against the line in
the template. Any time I tried to work a longer section I found that I had overbent out
along the curve.
The wood dries visibly as the process goes along, though internally it remains quite
damp, as you can tell as soon as it cools a little. To prevent scorching, I tried to dip from
time to time whenever I worked a section long enough so that it looked dry.
That's about all I learned from this experience. It took about four hours to bend both
sides, much of which was pondering just how to do it or correcting overbent sections.
The side material was about 5-1/2" wide, and the widest point of this guitar is 4". If I
were smart, I thought, I would have cut it before bending. But with my big hands, I'm
sure the extra width saved me from burns on the bending pipe. As it was, I only got two
burns that developed blisters. Anyway, I cut it down after the sides were assembled to
the soundboard. I'm glad I wasn't dumb enough to try to saw it bent but unattached. As
it was, sawing it off wasn't too big a chore. Plus, it left me this nifty inch-wide piece
bent exactly to the same form as the sides. This piece came in handy for the next
operation, which is to mark and trim the side so it slopes down. Cumpiano and
Natelson suggest using a piece of paper for this. However, a sheet of paper would wrap
around to make a continuous slope along the side -- as if it were cut when the material
was straight. What's wanted is a slope that is straight relative to a projection of the side
against a flat surface. What you want is to see a straight line as you look from the side
of the guitar. I puzzled this out for a while, then used the off cut from trimming the
sides flat.
I've marked and cut out the back, leaving a half-inch safety margin all around. It will
have to be trimmed right down before gluing, but the arched bracing is going to change
the dimensions slightly, so the back will be marked and trimmed at the last step before
gluing.
Cumpiano and Natelson simply instruct you to mark the outline and cut it out at this
stage. However, you need to be aware that because the sides are sloped, the outline of
the back differs significantly, and in a complicated way, from the outline of the top. You
can't just mark it up with your template, because you will have a big problem, even if
you leave a half-inch margin. I marked the back up by turning the box over on it and
tracing around it, rocking it to make contact with the entire edge as the pencil moved.
A cross-grain strip has been glued down along the center joint as reinforcement. This
could have been a cutoff from the soundboard stock, but LMI includes a strip in its
boxed materials, so I used that. I've saved the cutoff from the back material to make the
bridge patch on the next instrument.
The back braces are arched more than the soundboard braces. The widest brace here
gets 1/4" off the underside of each end.
The back braces are shaped similarly to the soundboard braces, though they are on the
whole larger and stiffer.
Why am I showing these cauls in the middle of fitting the back to the box? Since they
must straddle the braces to contact the soundboard snugly, they need to be made before
the back is put on, so that they can be test-fitted and adjusted. This would be hard to do
through the soundhole!
The ends of the braces are marked along the outside of the sides, and cut off a bare
eighth of an inch inside that mark so they will (with luck) contact the side material or
come close, at the very least coming under the notch in the lining. This adds some
strength to the back in resisting stresses or blows tending to push it in.
Once the braces are trimmed and fit into the notches, the back is set onto the sides and a
new outline is traces on it. The back will need to be trimmed right down to the outline
of the sides, because the method of attaching the back can break off any overhang.
And that's as far as I got this weekend. I had hoped to get the back on this weekend, but
real life happened. The trimmed braces fit into the notched linings quite well, and I was
able to get a good tracing of the sides onto the back for the final trimming...and then all
that's left is to strap it on! Tune in next week.
Most of the work on this page was done May 7 and 8, as I got sick during the week and
really couldn't do anything the following weekend.
After the outline of the sides is marked on
the back, the waste is trimmed to within a
sixteenth of an inch of the line. The box is
cleaned out and the box and back are set
up for a last photo opportunity. I hope I
haven't forgotten anything! You can see
my signature and the date scrawled into
the lower treble side of the soundboard.
I bought some stuff at a surgical supply store that I thought would work in lieu of strips
of inner tube, inner tubes being scarce these days of tubeless tires. It was a thin elastic
material about six inches wide, intended for use in exercises for physical therapy. I cut a
third off the roll, making it a two-inch strip, and tried wrapping the back down to the
sides without glue and everything seemed quite alright. When I got the glue on,
however, and started to wrap it again, the material kept breaking, to the point where I
gave up on it with the glue sitting there drying. Plan B was nylon rope. I think this
worked out well -- though as I write this the jury's still out, since the box is still tied up
like this. Because the rope wouldn't cover every inch of the back the way an elastic
material could, I added a couple of clamps just tight enough to bring the back edge into
contact in the two places on the upper bout where it was a problem.
I used the basic Dremel router base as a starting point, removing the fence from its
mounting as with the circle-cutting setup. I used the screws that hold the fence mount to
the rail to attach a piece of 1/4" plywood to which was mounted the "finger" that will
bear against the guitar side. By keeping the finger pointing perpendicular to the tangent
to the curve of the guitar's side at every point, a consistent depth of cut is maintained.
This is easier than it sounds, especially if you slept through high-school geometry.
Here you can see the second ledge and the nib left by that routing. To remove this nib I
place the ruler along the cuts on either side and score the wood several times with a
knife to establish the back edge, then clip it off with a chisel into the end grain. This bit
is too small to use a chisel freehand with, as I did the first nib above.
The first job today is to set up the neck attachment. Two holes for the bolts are located
by measuring from the top of the soundboard and from the top surface of the neck, so
those two surfaces line up. Where the binding crosses the neck mortise, it makes a little
rim that the neck tenon is going to have to accommodate. You can see a little mismatch
on the height of the two pieces of binding; this will be covered by the heel of the neck
when it is attached. I scratch my head over how this mismatch occurred, since the
binding rests on the routed ledge, which should be the same depth on both sides.
Here's the ledge on the guitar box itself. The purfling ledge looks wide as the ocean
while I'm routing it, but it fits just right.
Can you see the slight gap about 1/3 of the way from the right edge? That's the only
place it happened. On the back, I got several such gaps between the purfling (the thin
black-white-black veneer strips) and the binding (thicker rosewood strip with a maple or
holly veneer strip glued to one edge. Because it's all very dark, I hope to fill these gaps
with dark brown lacquer burn-in stick. When it comes to "finiting" I'll show that
process.
You can see here where the routing went
through the side material in a few places and revealed the inner lining.
These are the three elements of the binding/purfling that I'm using. The two photos
show the top view and side view of the same three strips. The strip on the left is the
same black-white-black wooden strip that was used as part of the rosette. It's the narrow
purfling used on the back of the guitar. The center is the herringbone strip that's used as
purfling on the soundboard and the strip on the right is rosewood with a thin line of
maple or holly or some other white wood. This last is used as binding on both the
soundboard and back. The scale is marked in 1/32" increments
Here I've marked the fret at 158.6616 mm from the nut. Just kidding. I aim for the
nearest quarter of a millimeter, since my scale is marked in half-millimeters. Just a little
nick with the knife at this point, and then take away the scale and use the engineer's
square to mark a fairly heavy knife cut straight across the fretboard at each nick.
This fretting saw came from Stewart
MacDonald. I've adjusted the side rider to
the depth I want the slots plus the
thickness of the blade of the engineer's
square, so it stops cutting downward when
the slot is 1/8" deep.
Here the trimmed fretboard is being glued to the neck. The thick caul on top is 3/4"
plywood. It's intended to insure that uneven clamping pressure doesn't introduce a curve
into the assembly.
This block is clamped to the tenon to
provide support for the overhanging part
of the fretboard during the fretboard
radiusing and fretting operations. Here's
where the photos get pretty thin. For a
better description than I can craft, see
Cumpiano & Natelson. In brief, the
fingerboard top is shaped so that a smooth
curve that results in a difference of about
1/16th" between the sides and the crown
is planed in all along the fingerboard.
Because the fingerboard is wider at the
body end than at the nut end, this results
in the shape of part of the surface of a
cone, with the fingerboard running straight under each string. C&N recommend final
sanding after the frets are installed for beginners, but say they final-sand first, and are
careful when installing and shaping the frets. So I say what the heck, I'll sand down to
320 grit before the frets go in, and if I screw up I can always re-sand.
Installing the frets goes smoothly -- again, not much to photograph about this process.
Frets come in a four-foot length of t-shaped wire, and you can cut off a piece and gently
tap the lower part of the T into the fret slot. Or, you can hold the end of the wire to the
slot and tap it in, and then cut it off. After fumbling around with the first process for a
while I settled on the second. You cut it
with a strong pair of wire-cutting pliers --
it's pretty thick and it takes a good strong
squeeze.
The process of carving the neck was one of my favorite parts of this project so far. That
may go some way to explain why I didn't stop and take pictures between the beginning
and end of the process -- it was too relaxing and too much fun. C&N have a very good
pictorial series on this process, words for once having failed them to explain the carvin'
o' the neck. I'll have to wimp out and refer you to them for the pictorial steps. If you've
been following along, you'll probably be relieved that I haven't snapped in excruciating
detail!
This shows the heel cap glued on and partly carved to match the heel profile, and also a
notch I've cut into the heel tenon to accommodate the binding running along the back
underneath the heel. Here you can also see one of my many klutz marks, a chip out of
the edge of the heel that's going to show when the guitar is assembled.
This came out rather well, and I'm pleased with the shape. I had a bit of trouble
visualizing it in a vacuum, and I didn't like the style of transition pictured in C&N, so I
referred to other guitars I had around the house to get a feel for how to shape this. It just
needs a little touching up here.
Shellac applied with a pad is a very old, traditional finish for musical instruments. It
makes a very thin and flexible finish that will not scratch white and which can take a
high gloss. Shellac is either an excretion of insects that attach certain South Asian trees
or an excretion of the trees attacked by the bugs or a combination of the two -- there is
some controversy. The stuff is non-toxic; in fact shellac is approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug administration as a coating for pills and candy.
The pad in the picture is made of an old sweat sock rolled up and wrapped in a piece of
a cotton tee shirt. The pad is called a fad or a pad or a muñeca or a tampon or a sock
wadded up in a piece of tee shirt. The shellac comes in solid flakes that must be
dissolved in pure grain alcohol (you can use denatured alcohol, but I really don't believe
in using denatured alcohol -- all it is is alcohol with poison added to it to make you
throw up if you drink it. I know I'm not going to drink it (and what if I did?), and I have
no children in the house, so why bother?). I got a glass jar and filled it about an inch
deep in shellac flakes (I got 'em from Woodworker's Club/Woodcraft) and put in
alcohol up to an inch and a half. I shook it and put it away for a few days, shaking it
whenever I thought of it. When I went to use it, I put it in a (brand new) mustard
dispenser so I could easily charge the pad with controlled amounts.
I've taken a little family vacation, which has kept me out of the shop for a while! I'm
back in the shop as of July 1, and bodying up the finish. Finishing has been a long,
frustrating, but edifying procedure. It hasn't come out as well as I'd hoped, but I think
next time it will come out better. There were effects that I can't explain, and some
mistakes that I do understand. I'm glad I went with the French polish process, if only
because I know I haven't inhaled anything toxic while doing it.
My first mistake
resulted in the
white flecks you
can just barely see
to the left of center
on this picture, very
short lines of white.
This is pumice
trapped in the pores
of the rosewood
back. I should have
"cleared" the
pumice by mixing
it on the pad with
alcohol before just
starting to rub it in.
This mostly went
away over the course of rubbing and re-rubbing, but there are still traces of it. This is
one of the aspects of French polishing where the authorities disagree; about all they
agree on is that you do it with some kind of shellac. Some say put the pumice in tiny
amounts on the pad, squirt alcohol on it, and then rub it on a small patch at a time.
Others say sprinkle it on the wood, dampen your pad and go for it.
Finish is beginning to have a deep shine a
few sessions after the previous photo.
Gluing down the fingerboard end so it won't rattle. The neck joint proper is not glued,
but simply held together by the bolts. Most folks who put on necks this way will at least
lightly glue the overhanging fingerboard down to the neck
After the rasp it's all the different grits of sandpaper that I possess, followed by buffing
with a little cotton wheel on my Dremel tool. I don't recommend this method of buffing,
as it is too easy to slip the little wheel off the surface of the bridge and hit it with the
spinning collet. Good thing the ebony's so
hard. Here with the appropriate chapter
and verse of the "Bible" for a
background, is the finished bridge.
I was disappointed
in the finish.
Blotchy and with
not much of a
sheen, most of the
body was not very
attractive. I know
that MicroMesh can
do the job, though,
because the
peghead came out
quite nicely --
except that the
finish wore through
at the edges. I'm
trying to analyze
the reasons for the
difference. It's
possible the
peghead was flatter
and I know I did a
better job of filling
the pores there --
something I will pay much more attention to next time. I'm reading around in hopes of
clues.
I was having trouble finding the last two items I needed, according to the sources I used:
a 3-M product called "Perfect It" and Meguiar's #7 Show Car Glaze. Both are Auto
Parts Store items, and as it turns out, both are pretty easy to find once you've found an
auto parts store. Astonishingly to me, I couldn't find such a store by simply driving
down Route 1. Not being much of a gearhead, I don't spend a lot of time fussing with
my car, and I haven't been to an auto-parts store since I moved to this town eight or so
years ago. I had a vague impression that they were just everywhere. I knew of two that
were located in places where parking was a nightmare, so I hoped to find one that was
more in my usual route of weekly chores. Due to my commute, finding one during the
week was out, and for a while, the weekends were full of social commitments.
To make a long
story short, I found
Meguiar's on the
web and used their
dealer locator to
find a dealer
located somewhat
nearby and this
weekend (July 29;
the guitar has been
strung up for a
week) found the
two items I needed
early on Saturday
morning. Using
them to polish the
polished polish
took about 45
minutes and made
an incredible
difference. There
are still flaws in the
finish that will be
lessons for next
time, but now it
shines like...a new
guitar.
Also after these
pictures were made,
I spent time making
adjustments,
chasing buzzes in
the nut and the
saddle, and
compensating the
saddle with
different compensations for each string -- you've seen the crooked saddles where the E
string takeoff is at the front of the saddle and the B string is back toward the pegs and
the G further forward, with the rest more or less evenly marching back again toward the
pegs. It made a detectable difference in intonation. I discovered that the approximately .
15 inches that I added to the scale length to get the rough compensation wasn't quite
enough. At the rearmost edge of the 1/8" saddle, the low E string is not quite far enough
away.
When I first strung it up, I let go some of the tension in the truss rod to give the neck
some relief by letting it bend toward the pull of the strings. This relief gives the
fretboard a curve between the nut and the 14th fret that allows the strings room to
vibrate. After a week now the curve is getting more pronounced, so I will put a little
tension back into the rod. A few of the frets are showing a tendency to catch my fingers,
so I'll need to re-dress their ends. Many different small adjustments to make, but overall
the guitar is easy to play and has a rich, full sound. The bridge, I think, is too thick at
3/8" -- there's very little saddle under the two E strings -- so I might have to take it
down a bit. However, this is the most humid time of the year, and the top tends to crown
up with humidity, so I'm going to wait and see what happens in the fall and winter. I
may need to make a winter saddle when the strings come down too close to the frets. A
problem with the low saddle as it is now is that the angle the strings make going over
the saddle is so small that the pressure on the saddle is lessened, which lessens the
amount of volume and attack. A too-tall saddle (relative to the top of the bridge) risks
tipping forward under excessive string pressure.
Here are some jigs I've made and used that have made some of the steps a LOT easier.
To the left is how I glue kerfing on with stationery clips; the spreaders are made with
toggle bolts and threaded rod. To the right is a hand jointer, made by placing a block
plane upside down into a fence assembly.
Above is another view of This is a guitar vise I made out of
the top in the go-bar deck some old pipe clamps.
(described at right).