After a bit of time re-establishing the routine with getting kids to school and doing homework with the kids, I got back in the shop. I had left off finishing the install of the binding and purfling on guitar 3′s body. I had done a little clean up and wanted to finish that up. I [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Sanding’
Guitar 3 has been bound!
Today, I’ll show you a little about how I improved my binding and purfling install. Below you can see that the first half is finished. Before finishing the 2nd half, you need to square up the ends so that you can get a flush joint. In my case, I usually overextend the glue joint for [...]
Progress Check Up
Today, I shaped the 4th Guitar’s neck. As you can see, I’m using my Shaving Pony to shape the neck. The critical elements include the thickness of the neck, the smoothness (how if feels sliding up and down), comfort of the shape (roundness or radius of the back of the neck). I obtain the thickness [...]
It can’t be… It’s a new Post!
OK, we’ve been doing a slew of projects over the last 3 months or so. These projects were small and large projects that we’ve been putting off doing on our house. We had to repair some drainage. We remodeled 2 bathrooms. We painted the outside of the house. I did a whole bunch of painting [...]
Guitar 4 – Time for braces
It’s time for braces. In this case, it’s not about straightening teeth but about providing structure and tonal improvement to a guitar top. Bracing a modern steel string guitar top has a couple of key elements. The main is called the x-brace and spans the bottom bought of the guitar (this is where the guitar [...]
Guitar 4 – Rosette Install and Glueup
When installing a rosette into a guitar top, you need to make sure that you’ve got an accurate measurement of the guitar top. In my case, my guitar top is 3 1/2 mm thick. This means that when you cut out the channel or groove for the rosette, you need to cut no more than [...]
Guitar 2 – Shaping the Braces for the Top
Today, I began working on the shaping of the braces for Guitar 2. I am far from an expert on bracing and it’s affect on the guitar’s structure and sound quality. At this point in my luthier or guitar making journey, I am following plans and instructions from people/sources that I believe I can trust. [...]
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 body 3 – the back get’s braces
I showed all the little bits of progress that I made over the weekend in my last post. Today, I worked on taking the braces I made and applying them to the back which will be part of the guitar body 3. The first step is to mark/verify the location of each of the braces, [...]
Lots of Little Things
Today was a day where I got a lot of little things done. First, I needed to start working on the backs to attach to the sides that I have prepped. The first step is to glue a center brace down the center line of the back. Next, I had a chip out on the [...]
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 [...]
Kerfing installed – body four
I’ve decided to keep my 3 guitar’s in progress straight that I want to term them. The guitar I’ve been working on for the last few days has been body 4. This is an orchestra sized guitar with a cut away. See the previous post on how I prepared the kerfing. The installation went great. [...]
