Purfling is a word that defines material between the binding and the top or back wood on a string instrument. Binding is a word that defines the outer most material surround the top and back wood on a string instrument. The purfling is decorative but the binding actually provides some function. First the binding provides [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hand tools’
Rip Saw Bench
Over the last few days, I decided to build another saw bench. I have already built 2 in the Christopher Schwarz style. I’ve found these saw benches to be absolutely great…except for ripping. The flared legs get in the way when ripping, especially a narrow board. So I needed something that didn’t have flared legs [...]
Panel for doors
After my last post, I had a nice fail and didn’t correctly determine the length of the rails for the doors. The old adage of measure twice and mark once only works if you have decided the length of a particular item correctly. For this project, I’m not using a plan so my determination was [...]
Tongue and Groove for Doors
School is well under way for my 2 boys (Xander -12 and Mitchell -10). The beginning of the school year plays havoc with the entire families schedules and that of course means my shop time. I have gotten minutes in my shop since it began about 2 weeks ago. Today, I was able to resume [...]
Wall Hanging Tool Chest – The Back
Yesterday, I started on the back. First step was to rough size the pieces for the back (it wasn’t that rough). I cut to length and ripped to width the 4 pieces I was going to use for the back, all with hand saws. I followed this with squaring and straightening the edges and ends [...]
4th Guitar Neck
When making a guitar, there are some elements that are put together a bit like a puzzle. For instance, the Neck. The first step in making a guitar neck is to take a long piece of the desired wood and make an angled cut. The angle is determined based on the angle that you want [...]
A Learning Opportunity
I know I haven’t posted in a bit. I have a series of house projects that I’m acting as GC on and it’s taking a lot of time. Hopefully, I’ll get back to working on my guitars by next week. In the meantime… I’m a member of Shannon Rogers’ Hand Tool School. I was reminded [...]
Miter Plane
I have a shooting board for shooting cross cuts. I still need to make a shooting board for shooting long grain rip cuts. To this point, I have used either my jointer plane or my jack plane to do the shooting. This has worked find except for the fact that I have to adjust both [...]
More Bracing Work
After the X-braces that I talked in the previous post, I needed to work on the other braces and get them glued and clamped. I’ve reviewed books and videos and have determined (especially for the x-brace) that some other shaping should be done before I glue it up to get even tighter joints. Also, I [...]
New Year – Back to Work
After awhile off from all projects to enjoy Christmas time with my family, it’s time to get back to work. First, I finished glueing up guitar 4′s back on. Now you can see all guitars in progress. On the right, is guitar body 2 which is a cutaway and has some great figure to the [...]
Guitar 4 – Alignment looks good
Today, I took the back with the braces and joined it to the sides. I first had to finish shaping the braces and then create the slots in the kerfing for the braces. All this was exactly the same for guitars 2 and 3. I spent a great deal of time during glue up getting [...]
Keeping Busy on 2 Guitars
Today, I got to unclamp the body of my 3rd guitar. The joint is very flush and I’m happy with that. I’m disappointed with my ability to align the back to the sides. This is where I’m supposed to take the center line of the back and line it up with the center line on [...]
Guitar #3 gets Sides joined to Back
Today, I worked on attaching the sides and back together. The first step is to shape the braces on the back. About 550mm from the edge of the guitar, the braces are pared down to about 2-4mm thickness. Once that is done, you determine where to cut the cross braces and the center brace so [...]
Sides are done
The sides are done for both body 3 and body 4 guitars. You can see body 3 which is the orchestra sized body with no cut away and body 4 which is also an orchestra sized body but with a cutaway. The kerfing installed nicely and I did have more glue squeeze out (meaning I [...]
No Cut Away Body – Kerfing Glue Up
I almost wasn’t going to do this post but after how simple it was, I thought I would note a few things. This (body 3) is the first full body (no cut away) that I’ve installed kerfing on. My first guitar was a kit and the kerfing was already installed. A cutaway guitar only has [...]
