April 15, 2009
I have reached out to my friend Beth and offered to make her a guitar at cost (of materials). We met tonight to begin the design process. Looks like a rosewood OM will be on the workbench in the coming days. Very excited.
The Phinney Neighborhood Center auction is coming in a few weeks, where I’ll hopefully have the chance to start building 905.
I’m beginning to wonder how many available hours there are in a day to build guitars.
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 11, 2009
Thursday evenings I am visiting Rob Girdis in his shop for some master oversight. He suggested I start a new guitar and work through the process with him for advice, alternate ways of working, etc. I have a very nice Sitka spruce top, and Ovangkol back and sides so arrived with these and my bench plane to join then thickness.
What we really did on Thursday was prep my bench plane. Although it is new, it needed a bit of setup to really be and effective tool. We took it apart, adjusted the frog, reversed the upside down cutting blade, sharpened, and then trued the base. Aside from having a properly sharpened blade, truing the base made all the difference in making this tool work for me.
We jointed the top with the plane, then joined. Rob’s jig is quite different than mine, and he has a railroad rail for weighing down the joined plates.
Off to home to work in my own shop and try the plane on the back, then join in my jig.
Lookee. That’s what a true and sharp plane can produce. Curly fries!
Note there is no backstrip. Rob suggested joining then routing out a shallow channel for the backstrip, gluing in and trimming back down to the back surface. He suggests this is a stronger joint.
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 29, 2009
Applied Mahogany Red to the Zebrawood body and mahogony neck for the Resonator guitar.
There’s a few spots where glue hasn’t been sanded out, so I’ll need to go back and bring that down to wood, then spot stain again.
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 22, 2009
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I have been busy. I’ve been spritzing Boeshield on my power tools and I got the garage cleaned and arranged and everything fits nicely. The new (used) drum sander is in place with a repaired switch, and the new oscillating spindle sander is in the shop and has already contributed to nice neck shapes.
The resonator guitar has been neglected recently, but I got back on it and set the frets, attached the neck and worked on setting up the saddle and string height.
It’s all scraped and sanded and ready for the next step of grain filling and staining (OK, after sanding @ 220 one more time).
Still need to trim back the frets and bevel, but I’m letting them settle for a day.
March 21, 2009
Once again, Tom has produced a fine documenation of my guitars. Take a look.
Go to the gallery for the full treatment.
