Ready to bend..

I had planned to spend a couple of days at the workshop getting all the bits ready to start assembly but the weather has been too hot so I only managed to thickness the sides and mark them up ready for bending.

The experience of thicknessing the back plate and soundboard allowed me to quickly get both sides down to an even 2.1mm thickness for each rib without the previous dramas I encountered thicknessing the other plates e.g. tearout, plane not being sharp.

Before and after shots.

I still have to do the final shaping of the headstock and start the basic shaping of the spanish heel.

The large gap around the edge of the rosette is bugging me so Im trying to decide on the best solution. I have a few options:

1. Add 1 or 2 rings of black/white purfling to cover up the gap.
2. Remove the existing rosette and replace with larger diameter rosette.
3. Flip the soundboard over and inlay rosette on what is now the "back" and make it the front/outside face.
4. Plug the gap with left over spruce using epoxy.


I will probably have to spend a bit of time experimenting on scraps before I commit to anything. Im currently favouring option 3.

The weather is looking favourable over the weekend (not too hot) so I should be able to get the headstock and heel block ready for assembly, sides should get bent and probably start making some of the struts.

Bits 'n pieces

After recoving from Xmas celebrations I was able to spend most of today working on my guitar.

First job was to glue and shaped the back reinforcing strip. The strip is just length of spruce offcut (cross grain ) from the soundboard.

Next on the to-do-list was to inlay the rosette. I wasnt looking forward to hacking away at my 'perfectly' flat and clean soundboard but it had to be done.

I made myself a very basic circle cutter using a small piece of pine, 1/4 inch bolt and a sharp blade. The bolt acts as the center of the circle (pivot point), marked out the radius I wanted (4.5mm) from the center of the circle, made a small cut for the blade to fit into.  It was just a matter of steadying the blade and rotating the blade around the perimeter.

After etching the inner and outer circles for the rosette it was time to start chipping out the channel. I used a 6mm chisel. I took my time, slowly slicing the spruce out. . I lightly sanded the channel and I was ready to glue the rosette.

Errr... the rosette wasnt exactly round and didnt fit my perfectly carved channel.  Fortunately when I was testing the circle cutter I had cutout a few circles with the internal diameter of the rosette. To get the rosette circular again I placed it in some hot water for 1-2mins and placed it around the plywood circle I made earlier.. To keep the rosette in place I tacked a few nails around the outer edge (not in photo).

Once the rosette had dried out it was time to glue it down.

 (photo below - rosette glued in placed and sanded flush with the soundboard. Wedge to fill the gap is on the to-do-list)

Made 2 mistakes when gluing it in.. Well 1.5 mistakes. The major mistake was it was a tight fit getting the rosette into the channel, you can see in the bottom of the photo, 6 o'clock  (below) where I stupidly just grabbed the blade and screwed up outedge attempting to get the rosette to fit. Now I have a ugly gap down there.. There are a few small chips around the edge which I could live with but the hack job at 6 o'clock is disappointing.  The other minor mistake was the gap in the rosette was not suppose to be so off center but the glue became too sticky so I was unable to center it. Not to worry the fretboard will cover it up, but it could have been disasterous.

The last task I managed to get done was to roughly cutout the shape of the headstock using the scroll saw and drill the tuner holes.

Next time I hope to finish shaping the headstock, soundboard - make and glue struts and prepare side/ribs for bending.

Becoming smoother

After a few initial mistakes with the first neck and troubles getting the plates jointed everything has been progressing much smoother lately. Hopefully it will stay that way!!!

I spent a good chunk of time using the card/cabinet scraper to smooth out the tear out on the back plate and then used an orbital sander to get the final thickness of 2mm. I was surprise how flat the surface was, only a couple of minor "hills" which I flattened out.  The back is now ready for the back reinforcing strip and braces to be glued on.

The picture below is of the outside/display face which doesnt look too bad after all.. 

I had planned to focus on the neck after thicknessing the back plate but the humidity was all over the place (40-78%) as it was a stormy afternoon. So instead of gluing the heel block, I started work on the soundboard.

It took just under 2hrs to systematically work the thickness down to 2mm, taking every opportunity to tap the plate and listen to the tone changes as its mass was removed.

My approach was to bring the thickness down to 3mm using a sharp plane, the remaining 1mm was removed using a card scraper and orbital sander. . Im planning on recording the tone before the soundboard is attached so I have a reference to work from in the future.

Soundboard is now read for the rosette to be inlayed,soundhole to be cut out and the gluing of the braces.

The next day the humidy stabilised back to its normal range of approx. 50-55% so I glued to heel block to the neck. Whilst the heel block was drying I made up a headstock template based on the Loriente design as the Robert Bouchet design doesnt appeal to me.

I didnt have time to started shaping the headstock or heel, thats for next time. I did make a jig for drilling the tuner holes - correct spacing and depth. (sorry forgot to get a picture..)

The last task I managed to get done was to create the neck relief ramp on the solera. When I get a spare moment Ill varnish it ready for the assembly process.

Necks and thicknessing.

With my confidence restored, new neck blank in hand and lessons learnt I started out on the new neck.
Rather than using the handsaw to cut the scarf joint, this time I used the bandsaw to do the cut.

To give myself the best chance of getting a decent cut for the scarf joint this time around I made a small jig so I could clamp the neck to the mitre gauge. The final cut was very clean compared to the others, only a few rough spots which I easily smoothed out with sharp block plane.



Scarf joint complete and dual layer headstock veneers glued (ebony middle, rosewood top/display).











Made a start on thicknessing the back plate. The original thickness was 4.8mm and im currently at 3.3mm. The surface is pretty rough and will use the cabinet scraper and sanding to thickness to 2mm as I dont trust my planing skills. 



















Practiced/experimented with various tools and techniques which will be needed when I start on the good neck.  You can see in the picture on the right a chunk missing at the top of the string hole, that was cause by the power drill, used a hand drill for the others without any negative results.

 Plan for next build session in no particular order:

1. Attach heal block to neck.
2. Rough heal block shape.
3. Finish thicknessing back.
4. Start thicknessing soundboard
5. Inlay rosette
6. Varnish Solera.

A bending good time.

I had initially planned on building my own bending iron using metal pipe and heating source (propane touch or heating gun) to save a bit of $$. In the end I decided an professionally made electric bending iron would be "safer" as I was having visions of me knocking the propane torch over, burning the workshop to the ground.

(Ibex bending iron from LMI)

When I ordered the replace neck blank I also had some offcuts for bending practice sent as well.
I read and watched numerous youtube videos the bending process and I felt confident I would pick it up quickly.

A few side bending videos:
NK Forster Guitars Making a Guitar - bending sides
O'Brien Guitars - Luthier Tips du Jour - Side bending by hand
There are heaps more videos but after watching a few you get the general idea.

Heres my first attempt at bending (Tasmanian Blackwood).

I soaked the wood in hot water for around 15mins and preceeded to start bending.  After about 10mins of slowly moving/rocking the wood over the iron and keeping the wood wet by spraying warm water intermittently the end result was a nicely shaped bend with no burn marks.  The only flaw was a very small part of the grain/wood that lifted up on the outside of one of the bends which I sanded off. Im not sure if this was caused by the wood being too wet or that I bent that section too fast but it didnt appear to be a major issue.

Im very please with my first bending attempt.  I have a few other practice pieces (flamed maple, mahogany ..etc) to experiment with before I do the proper bends for the guitar.

4 becomes 2 - Plate jointing review

Englemann soundboard glued together- jointed seam is very good. I dont think I could have done any better.

Indian Rosewood back plate -  the joint is a little disappointing, a few uneven (raised) spots that I will have to plane/sand down during the thicknessing process. Next time I will have to using more pressure on the seam when glueing to get a flatter resulting seam/joint.

Also, if I had my time over again i would have jointed the 2 outside edges (straighter grain) leaving the curvy grain on the outer which would be removed when cutting the shape of the back plate. The side visible in the photo will likely been inside the guitar as the grain on the underside has slightly been symmetry and better definition.

(those marks on the lefthand side of the back plate are from the excess glue oozing between the timbre and the wax paper. again then will plane off very easily).

Some hand tools

Japanese Handsaw (new), cabinet scaper(new) and burnisher and hone guide.

 
 
3 planes that im currently using. The 2 black planes were my grandfathers not the greatest planes around but they do the job. The digital calipers are a recent purchase for this project and are very handy.










 You can never have enough claps. A small selection of claps that i have.

Straight Edges solved..

In my first attempts at jointing the plates I mentioned I used the "Shooting" method and straight edge sanding stick without success.

Guess what, both methods do work.

The problem I was having with the sanding techniques was not that I wasnt using a straight edge, rather the sanding stick was too short i.e. shorter than the length of the plates. This made it difficult to keep even pressure across the sanding stick which I believe to be the cause of the tiny gaps in the seam.

After watching the DVD again I picked up that he was using a level approx. 4ft/1m long.  So another visit to my local hardware shop to pickup a 1m level. With the extra length of the level, allowing more even spread of pressure I was able to get straight edge to joint the backplates using this very straightforward sanding method.

Whilst the back plates were gluing I moved onto jointing the soundboard.
During the week I had been searching the Net for methods of jointing and discovered that there is actually a specific plane for jointing - extra long base to track long the surface (im a novice woodworker so forgive my ignorance). I didnt have a jointing plane but I did have a fairly long plane (technical term ...hahaha) which looked similar that might just do the job.

Given my confidence had just been given a huge boost I decided to give the "Shooting" method another go this time using my "jointing" plane. Within a few minutes of careful planing as per the instructions in the book I had another acceptable joint!!!

A big lesson has been learned - I need to make sure I use the correct tools for the job or I will get unacceptable results.

A step in the right direction...

..FINALLY!!

After all the dramas and frustration with trying to find and effective method to create a straight edge to glue the soundboard and back, they are finally together! (phew )





Different angle of the soundboard being glued so you can get a view of the workshop and some of the tools I have available.