sMg Guitars

July 13, 2009

Slowly, three guitars are staging toward the spray booth.  I could have forged ahead and started applying lacquer earlier, but thought I’d wait for my family to leave town before I infected them with the fumes from spraying.  So I’ve been working simultaneously on getting three guitars prepped to go into the spray booth at the same time starting Monday, July 20th (Carol’s day after departure date).

Guitar 902, the mahogany topped parlor for Carol (and me!) just needed frets installed and a final sanding and cleaning.  Last night, I installed the frets.

The fret dimensions are a wee bit larger than I have worked with in the past, so we’ll see how they fare through the setup and then “action” phases.

April 21, 2009

Oooh, I’ve been lax in posting.  But progress is being made.  I have spent quite some time working the neck joint and getting the neck angle right and fine tuning the fit between the neck and body.  I also installed the neck bolt inserts and aligned/enlarged the truss rod access hole.  I think I’m close to the end result.

Also, I glued the fretboard on and began trimming the joint between the neck and the fretboard.  Next step is to get the neck a bit thinner.

Spent a lot of time bringing down the surface to a baby butt smooth state.  I still have some discernable gaps between body and binding that I need to devise a fill for before (or after?) I put down the first lacquer coats.

April 15, 2009

The parlor with the mahogany top is really shaping up well.  I sat and pondered (yes, I ponder) last night and seriously questioned how all this came about.  How did I get to the point where I could actually construct a thing as nice to look at as this.  And, which will eventually sound (approximately) what I want it to sound like.  My sister, Cyndy, embarked upon a serious artistic journey wherein she has produced art that surprised me.  Surprised, because I never thought of us (myself and my sisters) as possessing quality artistic capabilities.  But there she went, creating and putting out stuff that I had no clue where it came from.  Whatever that muse was that was in my sister I think lives, partially, in me too.  I don’t claim to have one tenth of the artistic talent of my sister, but I think whatever it was that gave her that gift, rubbed off on me.

So, here’s what I was looking at when I had this self indulgent moment of pride in what I’m creating.

April 5, 2009

This weekend yielded very little progress.  I spent many hours in the workshop staring at my tools, staring at the workbench, sitting on my stool, listening to American Roots, and trying to unhinge myself to do some work.  Eventually I started back by restaining the Zebrez to fix some glue spots, then getting into working on the neck and fretboard for the parlor.

The parlor is really a nice little guitar.  It has lots of contrast and as I bang on the box, it gives some sweet resonance.  Girdis warned me that it may be a bit heavy on the top, and the bass may be lacking.  I’ll try and sand the box aggressively and bring down the thickness slightly in an attempt to boost the bass.  We’ll see.

I installed the neck heel laminate (maple, ebony, maple) and did some trimming.  I cut the fretboard to the neck dimensions and see that the neck is still a bit wide.  I can certainly work toward a narrower neck as too wide is easier to compensate for than too narrow.  The neck plus fretboard is at 26mm, which I will have to bring down to 22mm if I want the lean mean neck I’m striving for.

I may have mentioned the fretboard scale is not equal to the scale defined in the plans, but the bridge location will account for the difference.  It’s not much, so I’m not concerned with the variance.

It’s quite a stunning guitar.  Once I get the neck width and thickness dialed in, I’m ready for the finish work.  I’ve got the binding/pufling trimmed down to where the sides are square and the BWB is exposed nicely.  I’m going to use very small paua dots for the fretboard, which I’ll have to order, to keep the look simple and uncluttered.  I’ve decided to NOT bind the fretboard with ivroid as I’m thinking it already has enough contrast and appropriate decor.

April 2, 2009

Spent a few hours in Ron Girdis’ workshop this evening.  He helped me with burnishing my cabinet scraper (the best little tool in the toolbox).  I continue to work on improving my binding skills, and the aggressive scraping I’m doing now is due to not quite getting the bindings fitted properly  the first time.

I scraped away, and am getting closer to a nice finish.  What follows is the guitar with generous swabbing of Naptha to give it the appearance of a finished lacquer.

March 28, 2009

Got the complementary back binding installed on the Parlor.

There’s lots of scraping to be done to get down to level with the koa/BWB/Curly Maple binding.

March 22, 2009

I’ve been paying most of my building attention to the new Parlor, which has, up until today, been for ME.  But as I progress and show it off to Carol, she becomes more and more covetous (one having covet).  She has been picking up guitars (of which there are a few around the house) and playing.  I haven’t heard her play in years, and it’s (dare I say) cute.  She likes the parlor size, and now she’s enamoured with the flavor of the parlor I’m building.  She wants it to be hers, and I’m more than happy to make it so.  Plus, she claims I can play it whenever I want to, so it’s a double bonus.  First, I make my wife happy, and second, I still in almost every way, have my personal parlor.  Oh me, life is beautiful.

I installed the top binding/purfling and the sycamore (maple relative) headstock veneer.  I always thought I would add some red to the binding, headstock and butt graft, but the more I looked at the guitar with the blonde binding, headstock and graft, the better I liked the contrast between the koa/mahogany and the accented binding.  I’m going to keep it white.  And, I’m going to add  some flair (oooh, I hate that word) by trimming out the headstock with some purfling which was originally going to be the back center strip.

I declined from inserting a back center strip to give the back a full koa treatment without any interference.  I will decorate with purfling around the top and back and (a recent decision) the headstock.

It was after I installed the top binding and purfling that I started thinking about the back purfling and headstock purfling.  I did the headstock, took a close look, and decided that the back will also get the purfling, and the maple/sycamore will remain unstained.

The back will remain “clean”, yet will have the same binding and purfling treatment as the top.

I worked carefully to get the purfling on the headstock aligned and bent properly, and I think it turned out nicely.  I’m a little concerned about the edges being of pliable material, but I’ve coated in CA glue to give it some strength/substance, and hopefully the combination of this and the lacquer will give it sufficient hardness and strength (but only results will tell).

So here it is in its prelim form, with a hint of what it might look like when finished.

March 18, 2009

Got the body assembled, back and top glued on.  Next step is binding/purfling.

March 4, 2009

Used Mr. GoBar to attach top to sides.

March 2, 2009

You can never use too many clamps.  I use a guide pin to keep the veneer pieces from shifting around when gluing to the headstock.

A long standing problem for me is getting the body as it wraps around the waist area of the mold to meet the mold.  I’ve tried a new waist clamp to address the problem.

I’ve installed all the kerfing, and I will release from the mold to see if the shape is retained as I don’t think I can get these spreaders out of the guitar once the back and sides are on (very small soundhole).