During my wife’s (Kathy) last hair appointment, her hair dresser asked her if I would be interested in some old tools. Without hesitation, I said yes. They arranged for the next time to do the exchange. It turned out that the next time would be just before our vacation to California which also coincided with [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Hand tools’
Back on Sides!
I had a crown done on Monday and surprisingly it made working on my guitar challenging. Today (Thursday) is the first day I’ve gotten back into my shop. Today I had several small things to do and thought they would fill up my time. First, I had to trim the ebony accents on the wedge [...]
Decorative Back Strip
I began working on the back today (after a misfire yesterday when I realized I didn’t have a router bit that I needed to do the work I wanted to do). For the back, my first step is to find the center of the back and create a groove for a decorative strip of wood. [...]
More Body Work
A guitar front and back have slight curves to them. Remembering back on some physics classes where we studied sound waves in relationship to surfaces, I’m guessing these dome shapes predominately give the resulting sound from the guitar more volume. It is possible that they also give it some resonance and other acoustic characteristics. I’ll [...]
Neck – Shaped and Thicknessed
Well, actually I have finished shaping and thicknessing 2 necks. The first step on shaping the necks was using a draw knife to begin shaping and thicknessing the necks. In using the draw knife, you quickly figure out grain direction and how to best approach the neck to get the least amount of tear out. [...]
NEW – Shaving Pony
In reading about how guitar makers and luthiers shape their necks, I came across many approaches. My favorites involved draw knives, spokeshaves, files and rasps. In using these hand tools and get the shape that feels the best to the fingers, you still need to hold the neck and that requires a shaving horse. This [...]
Back on track!
After the damage, I started thinking about how to use the damaged neck. After some thought, I reached the conclusion that attempting to fix the headstock would give me some skills (or at least a first attempt at skills) at repairs. Even if I wasn’t satisfied with the results, I could use this repaired neck [...]
Headstock Laminations
Part of making a guitar neck can be creating a certain look for the headstock (where the tuner machines are for tuning the guitar). For this guitar neck, I chose to go from the maple of the neck (which is a light colored wood) to a dark wood (ebony on one and mahagony on the [...]
Sticking out 2 Necks
OK, I’ve moved from issues to being in good shape. The glue-ups of both necks turned out great. My next step was to thickness the headstock. I used hand planes to do this. Given that both necks are maple, it took awhile and I had to monitor grain direction to make sure we had smooth [...]
Scarf Joint – Attempts 2 & 3
In an update to my last post I told you all how the joint of my first attempt did not turn out. Fortunately, I ordered an additional Birdseye Maple Neck Blank so I could try it again having learned that I need to verify the joint on both sides of the neck. I also ordered [...]
Luthier Tools
I’ve been planning (after finishing my first attempt at guitar building) to build a second one. In parallel, I’ve been putting together the tools that I would need along with the wood that I will need for the 2nd guitar. I’ve been getting the tools from a few different sources. I’ve gotten a FesTool trim [...]
Standing Laptop Desk – Finished
After a lot of work, I have finished my Standing Laptop Desk. My intended purpose was to house my laptop for use when playing, learning, improving my guitar playing. While installing, I was actually able to reduce the furniture load in that corner of our living room (well, it’s more of a music room than [...]
Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)
While I was working on the guitar (see previous post), I’ve had a nearly completed desk in my shop. It’s been quite handing with having another surface to place tools, work items and such on. However, it’s been nagging at me to get it done. Well, this week I was able to get BACK TO [...]
Guitar Building Class – 4 of 5
Sunday I went to my 4th of 5th guitar building class. As I stated in my previous post, I did a lot of pre-work so felt that I would be ahead of the game and that turned out to be true. I discussed a few minor imperfections with Eli, my instructor and he helped me [...]
Guitar Building – Pre class work
As I stated in the previous post, I was working on cleaning up the body using hand scrapers and various non-powered hand sanders. After all the scraping was done, I turned to the hand sanders. After 3 solid days, I finished and am very pleased with the results. I had one area of tear out [...]
