sMg Guitars

December 16, 2008

Larry,

I spent several hours tonight with your guitar.  I know every nook and cranny (how trite is that!).  I have wired my workshop for sound, and as I sat diligently sanding with 600 grit, bringing everything down to baby butt smooth, I had Django Rheinhart on the CD player and it was about as good as it gets.  Good because the music was excellent and the results were equal.  Your neck (not your neck) and your body (not your body) have become the smoothest most glorious objects which leave me wanting only to stroke and stroke.  There’s nothing more lovely.

I examined and became familiar with every curve and surface as I sanded, and I know your guitar like no one ever will.  There are gaps and blemishes and ripples which are so small and indiscernible that only I will know them.  I say this only because, if you or I were to examine our own present guitars, these things would be there, but we wouldn’t see them.   Only the one who spent hours sanding and checking and cleaning and sanding, would recognize these small communities.

It’s really a nice collection of excellent wood.  It’s not a guitar yet, but it’s going to be a great guitar.  I’ve been doing the tap tap tap thing trying to imagine the sound it will make when finally the strings are on.  It’s soon.  I know your patience has been tried, and as new age as this may sound, and as many apologies as I can make in advance for saying it, this guitar has determined its’ own pace as to when it decided to be completed.  It currently has given me the directive to get my shit together and wrap it up.  It’s hours away from being played.

December 14, 2008

I ranted earlier about sharpening and burnishing my cabinet scraper.  I remember using a properly burnished scraper and how quickly it worked fairing the binding on the body down to the sides.  I couldn’t get a good burnish reestablished and I was contemplating abandoning guitar making and resuming drinking.

After reviewing several interweb instructions, I resumed and got a good burnish on the scraper.  Let me tell you right now, a well burnished scraper is worth its weight in brazillian rosewood.  It curls off the binding and purfling smoothly and quickly, and I even took time to burnish again before I was finished, which is not behavior typical of Mr. Me.

One site recommended cleansing the scraper in dry ice bubbling in acetone:

but I soon realized it was bogus.

Now the body of the Koa Parlor is ready for fine sanding and finishing.  I’m entertaining the possibility of abandoning KTM-9 and trying nitrocellulose.  My wife has agreed to let me try, but she’ll let me know the second she get’s a whiff and makes me stop.

December 14, 2008

Much dismay over the amount of sanding I need to do to get the KTM-9 lacquered OM Maple ready for buffing.  I sanded with 800 grit until I brought on a premature bout of arthritis.  No progress seemed to be made.  I wasn’t getting down through the “orange peel” no matter how much I sanded.  I went back to 600 grit and the difference was remarkable.  So I went over the neck and body with 600 and got amazingly close to removing all the orange peel and was quite encouraged once again to go on.

Here’s Hulk after the 600 grit go around waiting for further sanding.  Behind is zebrez, the zebrawood resonator guitar body.

I need to build 2 or 3 16 degree sanding blocks to tackle the fretboard.  As it is maple and needed a lacquer finish, I sprayed with the frets in, and need to get between the frets with the sanding blocks to smooth up.

(You might notice that the pictures are a bit larger, I’ve compressed less, and like this resolution better.)

The headstock is sycamore, which I’ve learned is closely related to maple.

I spent some time this weekend collecting the parts I needed to complete my buffing station.  No one seems to carry motor pulleys, but found what I was looking for at Stone Hardware.  Only remaining “thing” for the buffing station is a clamp or spring to pull the motor away from the arbor to tighten the v-belt.

December 8, 2008

Here’s Larry’s guitar just begging to be polished.

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….

December 7, 2008

Sometimes, things get in the way of progress.  Sometimes it is more important than building guitars.  This time, it’s the new speakers for the kitchen.  After seven thousand hours, I have finally installed the new kitchen speakers, and…they sound soooooo nice.  I’m listening to Steely Dan, and I’m almost verklempt.

Here they are….

So, if you sit back and carefully listen, you may hear total bliss…or not.

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.

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.

December 1, 2008

While preparing the drill press platform for Safe T Planer work to bring down sides and back prior to bending and joining I finished the headstock veneer and did a little neck shaping.

Got some inlay off eBay.  Here it is laid out on the fretboard.  I’ll probably stick with traditional dots on this one.

December 1, 2008

Finished applying lacquer.  Located guitar in isolated place to cure.  It’s been sitting for one week, and tomorrow I can begin sanding through to the final buffing.

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.