Rough brace shaping

Today I spent a couple of hours in the shop working on the top braces. I decided that I wanted to go with scalloped braces instead of parabolic. The reason for this is that I want to loosen the top up as much as possible with this being such a small top. One thing I did on the scalloped braced Twin was to measure out the peaks so none of them are in the same circle radiating from the center of the bridge plate. That guitar sounds incredible with a lot of low end 'boom'. I decided to do the same on this guitar. I spent some time laying out the centerlines of the braces, marking where I wanted the peaks to be located and then shaping. I started by cutting the edges to a 45 degree angle to create a triangle shape to the center of the brace stock. Once that was finished I roughed out the scallops. This made a huge difference in the tap tone giving it a very long ring. I haven't finished the braces as of yet because I didn't have the bridge plate glued on. Tap tuning without the bridge plate is useless as the plate will make a difference. I glued the plate on and will finish brace shaping next session.

Here you can see the location marks for the scallop peaks.

The top after rough cutting the braces. They still have a lot of work yet to be done but this already makes a big difference in the tap tone. Right after this I glued the bridge plate on.

Bracing and profiling....

Although I didn't post this week, I did get some time a couple of evenings this week to work on the guitar. I spent the time making a back reinforcement strip and gluing it down, chiseling out the brace spots in that back strip, sanding the side profiles, and gluing down the remaining braces. Lastly I made the bridge plate out of maple.

Here is the center reinforcement strip glued down and clamped in my go bar deck. I used some scrap quartersawn redwood for the strip.

The top with all of the braces glued down.

In between glue up sessions I spent time sanding to rims and kerfed linings to the back and top radiuses.

I also made a hard maple bridge plate. I wanted EIR but I didn't have a piece to use so I am settling with maple.

Before gluing the back braces down I chiseled out the spots in the center strip.

Finally I glued down the back braces.

Wow, has it really been over a month....

It is hard to believe that it has been over a month since my last update. As I have mentioned in previous posts things have been quite busy around here and something needed to give. Unfortunately that has been guitar work as well as practicing. I feel quite guilty whenever I look at my guitars and my shop knowing that all of my wood is sitting there collecting dust, and all of my hard work practicing is slowly going down the tubes. Fortunately, it looks like things are beginning to get under control and I might just get to spend more time building and practicing before long. Spring has sprung around here and the shop isn't cold anymore so I can now get up there and work during any free time I get without having to get temp's up to a comfortable working level. I have also been able to run the de-humidifier for the last two weeks which was able to get the RH back down to a workable level. When I got up there yesterday the RH was 44% which is almost perfect. Today it was a bit lower because I forgot to turn the air conditioner off last night and it ran all night sucking water out of the air. It was 39% this morning but that is okay. I would rather it be a bit too dry than too humid.

I was checking some other blogs and noticed that my buddy Ted has come off of his building vacation and is starting a new guitar by creating a lot of dust building radius dishes. Ted, I know all about that dust mate. I was covered from head to toe in dust when I made mine! Anyways I figured that seeing Ted get started again was the kick in the pants I needed to get going on mine.

So, where to start. That is exactly what I was thinking when I went up there yesterday to pick up where I had left off. I had rough cut the top braces several weeks ago so I figured that was as good a place to begin as any. I am doing a couple of things different on this one as an experiment. First, I am using a modified 'A' brace under the fingerboard extension instead of the popsicle brace that is typical, or the A braces I used on the Twins. I spread the 'splay' of the braces a bit so they don't hit the truss rod access hole and I put two diagonal braces across from the A brace to the transverse brace to provide more support to the extension. I am a bit concerned that the redwood top could possibly split along the edge of the extension so I wanted to provide just a bit more support there. Since the stiffness of the top above the soundhole doesn't affect the sound much I figure these two pieces of wood shouldn't make much of a difference in tone. The other thing I am doing different is that I am trying to keep the top above the soundhole flat instead of radiused. On all of my other builds I have radiused the entire top via the braces. It makes for a nice looking top, but it also introduces a bit of complications to the neck set particularly the fingerboard extension. I am attempting to keep the radius of the top to below the soundhole so the extension will sit more flat on the top. Martin does this and I figure that if they do it, there must be something to be learned from the technique.

I got all of the braces ready and glued the upper braces using my go bar deck and kept the top flat. Once those were dry, I put the top on my radius dish and glued the X braces on. Once those are dry I will glue the finger braces and tone bar.

I have had some good reviews on the Twin guitars. My daughters have played them a lot and shown them to friends and other players. All of them have raved about how good they sound and a couple have inquired about me building guitars for them and what the cost would be. One player asked my daughter how much I would charge to build and she guessed a price quite a bit higher than I was thinking and the response was "It is worth every penny". I have two people who are very interested even after hearing what I would charge for one like the twins. Who knows, I may get my first commissioned build this year!

Here is the 'new and improved' A brace design. Note that I put the intersecting point of the A just outside the neck block. On the Twins I put that point just inside the block. This was a little problem as it interfered with the truss rod adjustment hole. I added the two angled piece to give a little more support for the fingerboard extension.

Just another angle of the braces. All of the pieces are notches into the transverse brace and the angled pieces are also notched into the A braces.

All of the braces sitting on the top. Remember this is a parlor sized guitar so I am going with a single tone bar.

I cut out the sound hole with my dremel and circle cutter.

Here the top braces are glued and clamped in place on a flat surface.

The X brace was glued on the radius dish.

I also cut and radiused the back braces. I am use a typical ladder brace pattern on the back.

Hopefully my activities in the shop will increase as will my blog updates.

Got some shop time......

Yeah, I know I said I would be better at posting. Well, things are still quite busy and to be quite honest, it is hard to get motivated to go into a sub-freezing shop to work on the guitar. It takes a good half hour to get the temp up to a decent working level and the humidity level in my shop has been too high to do much. Once the shop temperature gets above freezing consistently, I will be able to fire up the de-humidifier again and hopefully get back to work.

I spent a couple of different days in the shop and as of now I have the rosette done, the side braces on, and the top braces cut. Instead of writing everything I did, I took pictures that I will show instead.

Here is the Ziricote rosette ring after sanding flat and before routing the channels for the perfling strips.

If you look, you can see that I routed with the bit splitting the redwood and ziricote. This gives a nice clean edge on the ziricote. The wood was very hard to cut originally and get a clean edge. This method works well to get a nice clean edge. I used this method on the last 3 guitars and I really like it.

The outer channel cut and the strips temporarily put in to see how it looks.

Both channels are routed and ready for the perfling strips.

The perfling strips glued in and ready to be weighted down. The joints are on the left side of the picture which will be hidden under the fingerboard extension.

Here are all of the side braced cut and ready to be glued in.

Here is the rosette sanded flat and wet with naphtha. I am happy with the look.

Here are the top brace blanks cut and the X brace notch has been cut.

Here are the side braces glued in place. I ran out of clamps when I glued in the first batch so that is why the last 4 are clamped in place. The others are dried.

More kerfing and a rosette started

First things first. WHOEVER IS SPAMMING MY COMMENTS WITH LINKS TO CRAP WEBSITES PLEASE STOP! YOU HAVE BEEN REPORTED!

I feel better now.

Okay, I know that I promised that I would post last week after getting back to work last Saturday. Well I didn't get a chance to work on the guitar until Sunday after church. I started by removing all the clips holding the kerfed linings on the top edge and fit the kerfed linings on the back edge. I glued them up and got them clamped in place. I then turned my attention to the top. I needed to lay out the sound hole location based on the 12 fret short scale design the guitar will ulitmately be built to be. It took some work figuring out the actual measurement but I finally got it. Hopefully it is right! I laid out the brace locations on the inside to make sure that the sound hole is actually in the right spot. It is kind of scary trying to lay such an important part of the guitar with no plan to work off of. All I had to use was a plan of a short scale 14 fret guitar and a plan of a long scale 12 fret guitar. After comparisons and some math I was able to figure out the actual center spot for the sound hole.

Once I had that done I dug out all of my rosette blanks to see what wood I wanted to use with the redwood top. I settled on Ziricote. I like the dark brown striped coloring with the redwood top. I have several pieces of Ziricote that I can also use for headstock veneer so I like the idea of matching the two components. I cut the rosette ring with my Dremel and circle cutter, routed the channel in the top and glued it in place. I will sand it flat tomorrow and then I will route around the inside and outside edges to inlay a black/white/black trim around it. I think that will give it a nice classy look. I have done my rosettes this way on my last 4 guitars and I really like it. I do the solid wood part by routing the channel for it. Because of the hardness of Ziricote, the circle cutter does a fair job but it puts imperfections all along the edges of the rosette. I like inlaying it in the top first and then re-routing around the edges, just skimming the actual solid wood piece which gives the edge a nice clean line. It also allows me to do the rosette in 'phases' instead of trying to get the solid piece and 6 strips all glued in at one time. This method just seems to work better for me.

So tomorrow (or next time I get back in the shop!) I will sand it flat, route the inner and outer channels and inlay the strips.

The rims with the second set of linings clamped and glued.

This is the brace layout. Note that there is only one tone bar. Because of the small size, a single tone bar will allow the top to vibrate a bit more freely. It should give a bit more low end tone.

The rims with the clamps removed and the insides sanded clean. I still need to do the side braces. Yep, I forgot them before doing the linings. I wanted to use cloth but now I will use wood.

Here is the first stage of the rosette glued in. It is a nice stripy piece of Ziricote. I like the contrast with the redwood. The B/W/B trim should give it a really nice look.

FINALLY, back in the shop!

Yep, that's right I found some time to get up in the shop today and do some work on the '0'. I have been extremely busy with work and I started selling books online in January. I was expecting the book sales to be spotty and slow at first and would build up gradually over time as my experience progressed. Wrong! I listed my first 125 books on a Sunday afternoon and by Monday night had 10 orders. Sales have been strong every day since that day. Needless to say I had to hit the ground running, learning all about shipping, packaging, and stock replenishment very quickly under the heat of battle so to speak. Things are going well and I feel now like I have things somewhat under control. Those first few weeks were crazy though. As I have mentioned before in this blog, my ultimate goal with guitar building is to hopefully one day start a business building and selling custom guitars. I have been spending a lot of time and money towards that goal and I feel like I am progressing nicely. The pitfall however is it costs a lot of money to learn the way I have been doing it. I finally decided that if I am to continue towards this goal, I need to find a source of additional income to pay for it. That is where the online book selling comes in. It is a venture that produces income quickly and it is something I can do outside of my normal work hours. Now that I am getting a system down, it is also a venture that can be done and still allow me time in the shop as well as provide money to buy tools and wood as needed. The big advantage I have is that my father is an online bookseller so he has been a huge help getting me up and running. It is nice to have someone who has 'been there-done that' who I can bounce questions off of. All through the middle of the book selling learning time, I decided that would be a great time to get a new computer. Anyone who has changed computers knows what a pain in the neck that can be. Getting everything moved to the new machine and getting it all running smoothly is a chore. I got it done and was able to get everything working again. I still have some websites that I have lost the passwords from and of course the cookies that hold them are buried somewhere on the old computer. Things will smoothen themselves out in short time though.

So for all of you who frequent my blog, and wondered if I dropped off the face of the earth I apologize for the sudden lack of activity. For all the forum readers who wonder where I disappeared to, now you know. I am still reading and posting, but I just haven't had the time to dwell in the forums as much as I normally do.

Anyways back to guitar stuff. I spent a few hours last week making some reverse kerfed linings and then bending them. I used my fingerboard slotting jig and the fret slotting blade in my table saw to cut the kerfs. I taped all 4 blanks in the jig and cut the slots all at one time. It was a pretty easy and uneventful task although I think it is worth spending the few dollars per piece just to buy them from a supplier. Mine work, and they look okay but they take a lot of time to do and they don't look as professional as a pre-made set does. Today I took them out of the bender, cut the top pieces to length and glued them in. My plan is to get the back ones glued up tomorrow.

I received a package of some back and side sets I ordered from an online auction this last week. I get a set of striped Maple, Pauduk, African Mahogany, and Canarywood. I also got a mahogany neck blank. My wood stash is growing nicely. I have purchased a lot of Lutz top sets from the same auction over the last few months so I now have 10 back and side sets with 4 more sets coming, 20 top sets, and 8 neck blanks with fingerboards. I also have one Lutz billet that can be sawn into 3-4 top sets as well. It is nice to have some wood to choose from when designing a guitar. It is also a lot of fun to tap the different tops and listen to them ring.

Here are the 4 pieces of reverse kerfed linings I made before bending.

The bender all set and ready to go.

All 4 pieces got bent at the same time.

Here is the rim thicknessed down to size and roughly radiused.

The next four pictures are of the new back and side sets I got. This one is the striped maple set. I dampened it with naphtha to help show the stripes.

The African Mahogany set

The Canarywood. This picture doesn't do the set justice. It is very yellow in color.

The Pauduk. Again the color isn't quite right. The real wood is very orange/red in color. I am a bit nervous with this wood. It is very brittle stuff and I have read a lot of horror stories of people trying to bend it. I think I will hold off until I have a lot more bending experience before trying to build anything out of this set.

Here is a picture of my wood stash. There are 10 back/side sets, 20 top sets, 8 neck blanks with fingerboards, and a ton of rosette blanks. The plank sitting on the table to the right is a Lutz top billet.

The Kerfed linings fresh out of the bender still wrapped in kraft paper.

The top linings glued and clamped.

Sorry I have been .....

a bit remiss in updating this blog. I have been crazy busy and just haven't had any time to work on the guitar this last week other than spending some time profiling the rims to the needed width, and then sanding them on the radius dishes. I am waiting on a couple of parts to arrive, but really that isn't holding me up. What is holding me us is work and online book selling. It has just been crazy. Hopefully I will get some shop time this weekend. I also have a small cheap classical guitar that my daughter's friend asked me to do some minor repairs on. It really is a piece of ...... well you know what.... but it gives me a little repair experience. Unfortunately the neck is very much out of alignment and it has a Spanish heal. I have no experience at all with them and I won't even attempt to re-set it. Fortunately I can make a new saddle, level the frets and get the action back down to a playable level instead of about a mile above the frets like it is now. It is a garage sale special so really no harm....no foul on this one. The girl who owns it can't play and just wants it cleaned up, new strings, and fix some chips. I figure if I can get it playable that is better than it is now.

Sorry, no pictures tonight.

Glued in blocks.....

I didn't have a lot of shop time today but I did get the neck block finished and both glued to the rims. I also got the back and top sanded down to thickness. The top is .122" now and I figure I will have it down to .115 for final thickness, and the back is sanded to .085". I went down to .075" on the twins and it felt like I went a bit thin on them. They are solid, but they can be bowed back without too much effort so I wanted to stiffen this one up a touch. I went a lot by feel on both the top and back this time. I did a lot of flexing, especially of the top to get a feel for stiffness. When I felt the top starting to loosen up, I stopped sanding.

Here is the neck block ready for gluing. Well almost ready, I gave it a coat of shellac before gluing. Again, note the fancy edges. :)

Here are the rims being glued to the blocks.

Making blocks...

Today I decided to make the neck and tail blocks for the 0. This is when I realized that I didn't really have any wood to do this with. Well, that really isn't true, I just didn't have the wood that I was accustomed to using. After digging around in my scrap box, I was able to scrounge up a piece of Sapele neck wood that will make a nice neck block, and I have lots of 1"x6" mahogany planking that is suitable for the tail block. I was able to cut a single piece tail block, but the neck block was a touch too short for the overall length I need. Not a big deal as I have had to shim pretty much every neck block I have made so far. I glued up the neck block to a shim and set it aside to dry. I then shaped the curve of the tail block and knocked the edges. Typically I have cut the edges with a 45 degree angle. While that looks fine and works, I decided that I wanted to dress this one up a bit so I grabbed a decorative router bit and knocked the corners with that. I like how it looks and I think I will continue to do that in the future. It is purely a decorative touch, one that almost nobody will ever see but I like it.

I spent some time making a base for my laminate trimmer that I got for Christmas that can be used for binding channel routing. I made it out of Lexan and basically it makes a thin 'shoe' that rides along the very edge of the guitar. There is a roller bearing that rolls along the side. The reason for the shoe is that with the angle of the back and top radiuses, there are some spots that the guitar will 'tip' while routing on a router table. This requires some clean up of the channels because those tipping spots will cause the channel to be narrower than required. I decided that I want to get better with my bindings and although they look good now, anyone with a keen eye or ruler will quickly realize that they are not perfectly uniform all the way around the guitar. I want to improve this aspect of my guitar building.

First off, here is the air filtration unit I put in the shop. It seems to work quite well as the filter already looks dirty and I really haven't done much dusty work.

Here is the neck block glued up and clamped. The shim on top is significantly larger than needed. The block was actually only about 1/8" short.

Here is the tail block. Note the fancy routing on the edges to knock them down.

Here is the binding unit for my laminate trimmer. The bearing on the bit keeps the bit the proper distance for cutting depth, and the bottom bearing is completely adjustable both in and out, and up and down. If you look closely you can see the narrow shelf I attached which will ride on the top or back. In theory this should work well. :)

It just dawned on my that I never posted a picture of the finished Troji. I got some 2" foam rubber for padding and glued it in. I then sanded the edges and then I gave the whole thing 2 coats of poly and called it done. Here you can see one of my finished guitars being used as a Guinea pig for testing. It works great. It holds the guitar very securely without putting much pressure at all on it.

Vacation is over....

...and it's time to get back to work building guitars. If you remember, I am going to build a 12 fret size 0 redwood and striped Honduran mahogany. In December I joined the top and back plates and built the bender mold, but didn't do anything else as I was pre-occupied with the twins. Today was the day to bend the sides. I was a bit nervous about this bend as the wood is highly figured striped mahogany and as such, it has a great tendency to want to crack or have the grain separate. I did a lot of research on the most reliable way to bend it and got to work. A couple of days ago I thinned the sides down to .075" thickness and then spritzed them with SuperSoft 2. I let them dry for a couple of days so the wood was ready. I wrapped the sides in kraft paper that was lightly spritzed with distilled water so there was some moisture to help the bend by allowing steam to penetrate, but not enough to get the wood wet. There is some mixed opinions on bending mahogany. Some say to bend it wet and hot, yet others say bend it dry, fast, and hot. I decided to go towards that dry, fast and hot method. I got the wood up to 295 degrees and started the bend. Everything went well and much to my delight, both sides came out beautifully. This was some expensive wood so I wasn't too thrilled at the idea of ruining a set of sides and ending up with an orphan back. I cut the sides to length and clamped them in the side mold. Next up will be making and gluing in the neck and tail blocks.

I received my shop air cleaner on Thursday and got it installed in the shop. I hung it directly over the table saw with the input facing the sanding and routing area. My thinking is I want the dust to be pulled up into the unit as quickly as possible. The unit is very quiet and it seems to be effective according to my highly scientific testing. I took a handful of saw dust and threw it in the air in front of the input. The dust was quickly drawn in and trapped by the filter. I forgot to take a picture today but I will tomorrow.

This is the second side after being bent. I had to shorten the base of my bender a little bit because the parlor size mold is so much shorter than the other sizes I have built.

One of the sides just out of the bender. Note all of the oil that has penetrated the paper. It is a lot easier to toss some dirty paper than it is to clean up the bending slats!

And here is a bent side. No splits, cracks or scorches.

The sides clamped in the mold.

There was one section of one side where the wood grain separated a little bit. You can see it here as black horizontal lines on the left side. Fortunately that was the only spot that this happened, and it is well outside the profile area so it is no problem. The cracks are however all the way through and I can see light through them if I hold the sided up to a window. I am very glad this didn't happen in the middle of the side!