David's Guitar Building: Notched kerfs, back braces and curly shavings.....

Yesterday was a nice day so I got all my outside chores done, did some computer work for, well, work, and then got to spend some good quality time in the shop working on the SJ. The first thing up was taking the top out of the go-bar deck and start the unpleasant job of cleaning the glue all over it. As I mentioned earlier, I used hot hide glue for the first time so with the rush of trying to get things clamped down before the glue skinned over, I kind of made a mess with the glue. I need to get better at working with this stuff! Anyways, I took a bit of time, some damp rags, sandpaper, and a dull chisel and cleaned the glue off. Once that was done I tapped it. It sounded dull. The braced needed a lot of work to get the tap to have a ring to it. But before I started working the braces, I decided to get the back center brace glued down and drying. I got that all set up and in the go-bar deck (this time the glue up went a little cleaner!).

I then spent quite a bit of time carving and sanding the top braces. I got it to ring with some sustain, but I am not sure that I am happy with the tap tone. I took a lot of wood off of the braces so I am a little afraid to take any more off for fear of weakening it too much. However, I am very tempted to shave some more off of them to see if I can get a little more sustain out of the taps. I'm not sure yet. I need to look at some other tops to see how much I dare remove before I take anymore off. I am also kicking the idea around of maybe doing a 'hybrid' brace shape. Right now they are parabolic shaped, but I am strongly thinking about actually scalloping the X braces yet keeping the parabolic shape throughout the scallops. I am not sure yet.

Anyways, after that was done, the glue was dry enough on the back center strip for me to go ahead and cut out the sections for the back braces. I cut those out, rough shaped the braces and glued it up. Again, this was a lot cleaner as I am getting a little better working with the HHG.

The last thing I did was to notch the kerfing for the guitar top braces. This is one thing I have not been good at. Every time, I end up breaking kerfing teeth, and the slots end up being too wide. That is one of the reasons I decided to use reverse kerfing on this build. This time I decided to take my time, double check everything and cut very carefully with my Dremel and a down cut spiral bit. I also decided to cut the notches a little small and then ease my way to the correct size. It worked great! I have the X brace notches and the upper transverse brace notches cut and they look beautiful. They are not absolutely perfect, but they are a darned site better than what I have been getting. It pays to be patient.

My practicing is going well. I have been diligent about getting some practice in every day. Some times it is only for a half hour or so, but it is every day without fail. I have read and heard over and over again that it is much more important to practice every day even if it is for a short time, than to skip a bunch of days and then try to make it up with a monster session. I still am having a tough time transitioning from chord to chord but I am getting a little better. It is really difficult. It could be that I really have no interest in strumming chords. I really want to learn to finger pick as that is the kind of playing I like to listen to. I never can see myself sitting around a bunch of people strumming while we all sing so strumming chords seems like a waste of time. I know it isn't because chords are so important in every style of playing, but for now I find them boring. I am having a lot more fun picking songs on individual strings and that is what I spend most of my time doing. That is probably why my chord transitions are taking so long to learn. Oh well, I will keep plugging away!

I have also been thinking about build #5. I am tossing around the idea of either building a small parlor guitar, or building some other style incorporating a cut-away. I have never done either so I still have some thinking to do. It is usually around the time I get the body closed in and the neck underway when I decide what to do next, and get the parts ordered.

The top straight out of the go-bar deck. Yep, lots of glue cleanup to do!

The back center strip glued up and in the go-bar deck.

Although the center strip looks like it is off center it isn't. The next picture shows you why it looks that way.

If you look at the center sapwood edges, you can see it has a dramatic slant to one side. That makes the sapwood almost 1/8" off center on the inside but dead center on the outside. You can see my pencil reference lines on the outside center line and the end of the center strip. I figured I would rather the sapwood be dead center on the outside and let it look slightly off on the inside where nobody will see it anyways. This picture is also a great illustration to me that the end grain lines do not book match like this \\// like I thought they would. When I thought I had messed up my top, I was looking for book matching end grain. Someone on the OLF told me that they would not do that rather they would be like this \\ \\ if they were truly book matched. This picture proves this fact.