Archive for the 'Guitar 901 – Square Neck Zebra Resonator' Category

Guitar 901 – Shaping neck and joining to body

March 2, 2009

Spent more time working neck shape and preparing for joining to body.

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The neck length is pretty well right, and as the strings never touch the frets, the neck angle can be 0 degrees.

Guitar 901 – F holes

February 26, 2009

Copied the f-hole shape from my Lebeda mandolin, transferred to a plexiglass template, then used to cut out f-holes on Zebrez.

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Guitars 804 805 901

February 8, 2009

Much progress, and many photos to share.  I realized that you don’t know me very well.  In fact, your image of me as a person is completely fabricated.  So here are some pictures of my face.  I try to recreate my face in all my guitars, but haven’t been doing a very good job lately.

1.  My eyesight needs some improvement.

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2.  Some say I look like my sister.

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3.  I’m actually a serious craftsperson.

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Updates on guitars in progress:  The 12 string is in the curing stage.  On Wednesday I will get it ready for a Friday photo shoot.

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The Koa Parlor will get lacquer this week.

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And the Zebrez has a neck.

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Guitar 901 – Binding applied

January 19, 2009

As I wait for the walnut sides for the 12 string to arrive, I had a little free time to work on Zebrez.  I decided to use a simple black plastic binding for both back and top with no purfling.  As I want to try a sunburst finish for the top, I felt purfling would be distracting.

The plastic binding is applied with #16 Weld On acrylic cement.  Very easy to use compared to AR glue and wood bindings matched with purfling.

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This shows the back binding after gluing and holding in place with binding tape.  Before doing the binding, I inserted a black plastic end graft piece.

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First I cut out the channel for the graft, then carved out the wood to the depth of the graft piece, then glued and banged in.

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This along with the binding install is only a few hours of work.

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Guitar 901 – Zebrez part arrives

December 28, 2008

Arrived home from Florida to find my resonator cover has arrived.  Next I need to figure out exactly how to install cone/spider/cover.

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Guitar 901 – Can’t wait for the resonance

December 7, 2008

Hello.  Larry.  You think than just because I spend so much time working on my very own personal resonator guitar that I am not spending hours and hours and hours sanding your very special green maple thingamagig.   But I do.  I do sand your thingamajig.  And I sand Iris’s thingamajig.  Both are moving toward finishingness.  I promise.  But, hey….here’s some progress on the resonator….

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Guitar 901 – Tone Ring a’comin.

December 1, 2008

Ordered the tone ring, some resonator parts and tailpiece.  Once tone ring arrives I can fine tune the depth of body.  I have the sides in the mold with the neck/butt blocks and kerf installed.  This will have a flat top and back, no radius.

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Finished building the plate joining jig.  Did the shooting board thing with the back plates, first with the plane, then finished with the 48″ level with sandpaper.

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Guitar 901 – Sides bent, in mold

November 24, 2008

The side bender is brilliant.  I finished both side bends for the zebrawood for the resonator guitar, peeled them out, put in the mold, trimmed the ends and glued in the previously prepared butt block and neck block.  Whee.

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Guitar 901 – Graduation to side bending

November 23, 2008

My next guitars, 805 and 901 will be a new set of adventures in building.  That will include thickness planing, joining, and side bending.  I was going to attempt the thickness planing with the Wagner Safe T Planer, but was given the opportunity to visit a work colleague and use his Grizzly drum sander.  After spending a wee bit of time replacing the sandpaper, we easily planed down the zebrawood sides for my resonator guitar.  The trouble began when we started planing/sanding the walnut for 805.  The zebrawood was already at 4mm and we got it down to just under 3mm with no problem.  But the walnut was over 6mm thick to begin with, and to get it to 3mm required multiple multiple passes.  The walnut, like maple tended to burn, and we killed the sander several times, trying to take off too much in one pass.  We abondoned the planing/sanding, and I’ll have to rethink using the Safe T Planer.

But, with the zebrawood sides ready to bend, and the bender ready to use, I embarked on my first bending machine session.  Prepping for the attachment of the springs between the presses and the bending form was quite distressing.  I was lucky to keep all my body parts and not poke out my eye.  Eventually, through the use of a home made hook on a T handle, and standing over the bender on a stool, I perfected the motion to pull the springed block up from the back side, position on top of the bending form at the center press, then pull down the front side spring with the T handled hook.  The bender is clamped to the bench, but the feet screwed to the bender used screws of too shallow depth, so when pulling the springed blocks across the form, I dislodged the bender from their feet.  Almost another loss of eye.  But, through slow persistence, finished the draw of the blocks across the sides and down into the final position.  It is now sitting overnight in the mold, with the blanket turned off, overnight.

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Here’s the bender before starting.  Note the clamped feet.

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One of the questions I had posed to myself was:  What order to make the sandwich?  The approach for my first bend was to try (from inside to outside):  stainless strip/silicone blanket/side wrapped in foil/stainless strip.

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