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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Skills’
Guitar 4 – A rosey beginning
On the previous guitars, I have a rosette that is simply purchased and not made by me. They are fine as far as they go. I did learn a lot about how to route out the groove/dado that the rosette goes into. I do feel it’s a bit like cheating though and wanted to make [...]
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 [...]
Rosette for Top
I’ve actually been very busy though what I’ve been busy with wasn’t really worth a post by itself. I’ve been working on installing the rosette on the tops of the guitars. The rosette is a decorative element that goes around the sound hole on guitars (you can see them sometimes on high end ukes too). [...]
Body – first steps
I purchased my wood from LMI. Most of it is their unserviced pieces which means that it is not finished in it’s thickness or shape or assembly. There were 2 exceptions. I had the back and top glued from their matchbook pieces (this was a moment of weakness during the ordering process – I won’t [...]
Guitar Building – Last Class
The last class was simple but somewhat time consuming. We had several things to do. Fit the saddle into the bridge. Fit nut between headstock and fretboard. Attach machines to headstock. Drill out holes for string in bridge. Attach strings. Readjust saddle and nut (raise height, lower height – in my case, I raised the nut [...]
Finish Update
I finished the epoxy pore filler. From a texture point of view, I believe I have accomplished the job. From a color point of view, I have an uneven tone. I need to explore pore filling more though I’m not sure I have the time to do it on this guitar. The neck and headstock [...]
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 [...]
Guitar Building Class – Binding & Purfling
This past Sunday, we worked exclusively on the binding and purfling. Our first step was to route out the rabbit on the front and back for the binding. The second step was a rabbit on the inside of the rabbit for the binding on the front side which is for the purfling (less deep). I [...]
Guitar Building – Homework
In my previous post (Guitar – Headstock), I talked about the homework that my guitar building instructor gave us. In that post (an update specifically), I told about the problems I had with the headstock. Well, I worked on my backup option and used only hand sanding to finish it. The results are nice (OK, [...]
Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on
I worked very hard and got the top flat and smooth along with square. This process really honed my hand plane skills which I’m pleased with (of course, all the work on maple means I need to sharpen the hand planes now). I decided to make my own wooden clips. Here is a shot [...]
Fretboard glueup
Today was my second guitar making class at Woodcraft. I didn’t really know what we would be working on today but it turned out it was neck and fretboard glueup. The first step was to route out the pocket on the top of the guitar top where the neck flange attaches to the top. This [...]
Guitar Building
I mentioned in a past post that I was going to take a class in guitar building through my local Woodcraft store. The guitar kits they use are from US Guitar Kits. The kits are partially assembled. They have the sides bent and the back attached. They have the bracing attached (though in the 2 [...]
Frame Glue Up
I finished the frame pieces and dry fitted them. I’m pretty happy with the results though similar to most woodworkers, I can see every error and blemish in the project and that frustrates me. I believe that I can fix a few of them after the glue up so that is the plan that I’m [...]
