sMg Guitars

June 11, 2010

Carl comes to visit on the 25th.  I have been the great pretender for too long.  His guitar will be ready when he arrives.  No excuses.  I made a giant leap toward that goal today by knocking down that finish to a glorious sheen.  The buffing wheel does wonderful things.  I have learned, though, that there’s only so far that buffing wheel can hide incomplete sanding.  And, I have learned how complete I must sand in order to buff to my desired finish.

I have also learned the importance of grain filling.  As I tend to finish on the light side (too much lacquer effects the sound, yet too much lacquer hides all blemishes), I can see every leftover crease, unfilled grain-ule, and divot from the sharp edge of the bench vise.  Grain filling is that step before finishing where you level off the surface with a filler, and with most tropical hardwoods, there is a bit of open grain.  Since I don’t rely on the final finish to fill the grain, I must be much more diligent in my grain filling step(s).  I will not, I repeat, I will not proceed to the finishing step until every grain has been filled and leveled.

Now, the guitar in question, Carl’s Koa Parlor, does have a very interesting “grain feature”.  The finish is not glass smooth, but accented with the natural grain of the wood.  Visually it is pleasing (unless you want glass), but tonally, it will be for the best, as the lacquer is just enough to protect, but not enough to deflect from the sound the wood wants to make.

After buffing, I dry set the neck and checked the neck angle and masked the area arount the end of the fretboard where it will be glued to the top.  The neck angle on this guitar is much closer to my preferred than any previously.  What that means is that no matter how diligent I may be determining the neck angle, after all comes together and it’s time to install the neck, it’s always a little steeper than I planned.  This guitar, a victim of multiple neck angle experiments, is much closer to ideal.

Strypeeze is used to remove the lacquer from the top where the fretboard will be glued.  The following picture is a product placement, from which I have been handsomely compensated.

Once the goop has been carefully scraped away and neutralized with water, the neck can be glued to the body.  I use a mortise and tenon bolt on neck, but the surface of the guitar top is glued to the fretboard for stability.  This means that in future neck resets, only the section of the neck attached (glued) to the top needs to be heated and relieved.

June 10, 2010

A lot of time this week has been spent on the building of a router table.  I have a router table that sat in my garage (the room for all my power tools) and was made of MDF which sat directly under the largest leak in the garage.  Needless to say, there are several leaks in my garage (circa 1910, cracked concrete, mostly below ground level).  All sorts of effort has been made to stop the leaks, but none successfully.  I’ve resigned myself to draping plastic garbage bags over all my power tools.  The MDF router table was unusable as it bulged from all the absorbed water over the past year.  I used it as a template and constructed a new one out of 3/4″ birch ply finished with lacquer.

I’ve been aware for some time that a router table with certain jigs is used quite a bit in luthier’s shops.  The first use is to radius bracing.  By building a jig that holds the brace blanks and has interchangeable radius templates, one can quickly and accurately radius braces and tonebars.  I’ve designed the jig, but haven’t constructed as of yet.  My design will allow for any width of brace and any radius that I have a template for (right now I have 40, 28, 20, 15, and 12).  I use 28 for the top and 15 for the back on my current guitar models.

I’ll post a few pics of the router table and jig once complete.

June 10, 2010

I masked off the guitar body to avoid getting fret shavings on the finish or in the soundhole.

The first opportunity is to use a file to level the frets with each other.  Fret 5 and 14 were the highest, so I filed to and between them until I started to see filing marks on the frets in between.  Next I drew the file across all 20 frets attempting to create one continuous flat surface across all frets.  Once I was close, I bevelled the ends of the frets to a 45 degree angle and removed most of the overhang for each fret.  I went back and dressed more until the frets were essentially flat.  I still had a wee bit of clearance between the straightedge and frets 1 and 2.  A quick truss rod adjustment brought those into a tolerable distance.

I’ll dry install the nut, saddle and strings before crowning and polishing the frets.  This will allow me to set the correct string height and check for any fretting problems which need further filing.  Once (and it’s usually two or three) I have the proper setup, I can go back and crown, dress and polish the frets and install the nut and strings permanently (don’t forget to install the label after blowing out all the crap in the box Stephen!).

Install the strap peg on the heel, give it one last polish on the buffer, and this guitar will be done!

June 10, 2010

After the neck block extension came out of the clamps, I was able to trim it down and flush it up with the original block.

It is now a wee bit oversized, but I’ll trim down the height just before gluing it to the sides.

I trimmed up the ebony headstock veneer after it too came out of the clamps.  I level sanded the neck where it glues to the fretboard, remeasured where the 14th fret should land and traced out the heel curve, then sanded it out with the spindle sander.

I also sketched in the eventual thickness of the headstock and the taper for the back of the neck from the headstock to the heel.  After installing a new blade in the bandsaw, I’ll cut to the sketch lines in preparation for initial neck shaping.  I won’t shape the neck until I receive the headstock inlay, as routing out the inlay channel will be easier to do with a squared headstock secured in the vise.

June 9, 2010

I augmented an OM neck block to accomodate the larger size needed for a dreadnought.

The added piece is oriented with the same grain direction.  It will be trimmed to match the dimensions of the existing neck block.

Spent considerable time flattening the top of the neck and the headstock.  Installed the ebony headplate and will trim down flush with the mahogany once glue sets.

I’m waiting for a designed/constructed headplate inlay.  I’ll determine the headstock shape based on the inlay design.

June 9, 2010

I’ve ordered a 3 degree reamer to properly set the bridge pins.  While waiting, I have shaped the nut and saddle and will dress (level) the frets, then install strings to do final setup adjustments.

June 9, 2010

I may have already mentioned this, but the neck is ready for setting.  Just a little more sanding of the body and a nice polish.

June 8, 2010

Well, the final steps are looming.  The neck is installed, the bridge is installed and the next step is to shape the saddle and nut and level the frets.

June 8, 2010

All components to make Guitar 1001 have been secured.  There are a few design issues outstanding, and can be made later in the process.

Started with constructing the neck from the neck blank.  I will use a stacked heel and reverse attached headstock.  I glued and clamped then chanelled for the truss rod and the graphite support rods.

May 25, 2010

Taped off the area where the lacquer needed removing for neck gluing.

I use a lacquer stripper then scrape away with a razor blade.  This surface needs to be brought back down to raw wood for gluing the fretboard to the soundboard.

Once the surface is prepared, glue is applied, then the neck is bolted on and clamped.

Next, position the bridge and similarly remove the lacquer to allow gluing.