This Week in Wood » Skills

A Learning Opportunity

glennth — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:39:44 +0000

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 by a blog post over at Giant Cypress regarding this program that we have plenty of learning opportunities via blogs, podcasts (both audio and video). I’m a big believer that learning woodworking techniques of any sort can help you understand more about woodworking and make you a better woodworker. If you like power tools, folks like Marc Spagnuolo’s The Wood Whisperer are a great resource not only for their own content but also the links to others related content. In fact, a video series that Marc posted was the initial motivation for me to try my hand at building guitars. If you like hand tools, then folks like Bob Rozaieski’s Logan Cabinet Shoppe is a fabulous resource. There are more than I’m willing to list out there that fit into power tools, hand tools, are many with a combination of both.

Shannon’s School is an especially useful source. It is a subscription service but is well worth it. He’s produced a ton of content for this first semester and the content is very detailed. If you have ever purchased a DVD from a source to learn something, I’m sure that you have found it useful and worth the money. Well with Shannon’s School, you get more detail than the average woodworking DVD can even think of putting on their DVD. In addition, Shannon supplements the school’s video’s with chances and Q&A to clarify things that may have confused you.

Shannon offers 1 semester at $100 and a full year at $150. I will be a member as long as my budget can support it and Shannon keeps producing great content. I recommend you do the same.

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A Learning Opportunity

Guitar 4 – A rosey beginning

glennth — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 01:56:54 +0000

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 my own rosette.

I’m partial to wood and in fact, I favor solid woods. This kind of dictates my first attempt at a rosette of my own. I have some lace wood and some ebony. The lace wood is a bit of a cheat since I bought the ring pre-cut. The ebony, though, is a big old block that I can make my own rings out of. I plan on having an inner ring of ebony, middle ring of lace wood, and another outer ring of ebony. The ebony looks a big like zebra wood in spots but it should still be interesting.

In the picture, you can see the ring of lace wood and the big block of ebony. Next, we experiment in cutting out the rings of ebony.

Miter Plane

glennth — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 21:53:27 +0000

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 to cut a finer cut that I generally leave them for their normal work load. I’ve been jonesing for a miter plane to solve this problem.

In addition, a miter plane also is designed specifically for the task of shooting a board so has a proper hand hold. I’ve done a bunch of shooting in one day and the awkward grip on a jointer or jack plane can give the weirdest blisters.

Here is a picture of my Lie-Nielsen miter plane. As you can see the design has a very box shape with exact 90 degree sides to bottom giving a very stable platform for running along the shooting board for precise cuts.

In the picture below you can see the nice grip for holding the miter plane against the edge of the shooting board. I really look forward to my next application of this and my shooting board.

Rosette for Top

glennth — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:07:38 +0000

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).

Setup for this is critical. You need to create a small circular groove centered around the sound hole that is slightly less thick than the rosette itself. You have to be careful and not go too deep on the sound board. Those of you who read my blog get to see the positive results and the negative and with this particular element, you get to see both at the same time.

I spent 2 days working on setup. I only get a limited amount of time each day so I’m not implying that I spent 20 hours doing setup (though perhaps I should have). I probably spent 5 hours on setup with some trial and error. I used plywood to set up the depth of the cut and the tightness of the fit. This was both nerve racking and time consuming. I was very happy with the end fit on my sample plywood. This worked with both of the rosettes.

Now I needed to apply this setup to the real top/sound board. I carefully located the center of the sound hole. I then started routing the groove using the previous setup. I discovered that I had one problem where the router bit would dive into the sound board and create deeper grooves than I wanted. Unfortunately one part of one groove went through the sound board – that’s bad. After I got finished with the groove, I found that it was too large. I’m still not sure how it got too big because I had hard stops on either side of the groove based on my earlier setup exercise. I’ve glued it in. I’m going to attempt to dye some epoxy and put that into the gaps. I’m hopeful that this will still give a nice appearance. Below is a picture of the result before any epoxy (can’t do that until I get some dye – road trip!). The gaps are actually more even than the picture makes it look so…

On the second one, I reset the stops and because the inner side of the first one fit pretty well, I started on the inside of the rosette groove and eased my way to the outside until I got a tight fit. While this was time consuming, I did get a good fit. I did still have problems with the router bit digging into the sound board and also went through the sound board in a small spot – again very bad! Below is a picture of the result. As you can see, I’ve got a nice tight fit.

For both sound boards, I will need to patch the back after the sound hold is cut.

I still need to explore different techniques on cutting the rosette for any future guitars. This process was not perfect and I need to eliminate the router bit digging into the sound board and find a more precise way to determine the actual groove size for the tightest fit.

Body – first steps

glennth — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:58:27 +0000

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 do this next time) and I had the sided pre-bended (this is because I don’t have any bending equipment and was not quite ready to invest in these tools).

Today, I began working on the heel and neck blocks. I had to shape them and size them to their final dimensions. The neck block joins the side where the sides are essentially flat. That makes the neck block a rectangular piece of wood with the edges facing the inside of the body at a slight angle. The wood has the grain direction in the same direction as the sides so that glue up gives us long grain to long grain which is the strongest bond. The heel block is slightly less thick that the neck block (the neck block is where the tenon fits into from the neck to the body so it needs to be thicker). Also the heel block has a slightly rounded back so that it can join the sides where a slight curve is.

Next steps required taking the center of the form on the bottom of the guitar and trimming the sides to meet flush. At the top it is a little more complicated since I am doing a cutaway guitar. Since the neck block is already it’s final dimensions, I find the center on it and the form at the top of the body and mark out the side on the side of the guitar with the cutaway. The side without the cutaway is trimmed at this mark (meaning that guitar side goes under the location where the neck attaches to the body). The side with the cutaway required some additional bending (or maybe re-bending if the side went out of shape a bit).

Not having a bending iron, I took a dowel and an iron (used for laminations on edges) and wetted the side and bent it. I only needed a little bend and then I trimmed the edge so that I could get the side with the cutaway to join the other side where the neck block ends. Unfortunately, this worked but I got a slight crack. I will try a little super glue to see if I can fix it. If that doesn’t work, I have some maple that I can make a thin patch with and work from there. I’m hopeful this will work and no one but me (and those of you who read and remember this) will notice the repair.

After gluing the heel and neck blocks I remove the multitude of C-clamps and admired my work.

Here is a quick picture of the crack. As you can see, it’s not from edge to edge so I think it will be a simple repair (maybe more hope than anything but we’ll see). It is on the inside of the guitar side and is not visible on the outside though I can feel something from the outside.

Guitar Building – Last Class

glennth — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:34:15 +0000

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 up using a shim and lowered the saddle by sanding the bottom off a bit).
Tension strings.
Tune strings.
Using a straight edge, monitor how string tension deflects the neck.

Over the next 2 weeks, I will do a lot of steps 8 and 9. I may have to adjust the truss rod a bit.

My last step (I hope to do today), is glue in the peg for the strap at the bottom of the guitar. Overall, it sounds pretty good. I do believe I will make a second guitar in the near future. Here are some pictures from my last class:

Finish Update

glennth — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 03:51:57 +0000

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 are awesome while the sides and back are ok with the top being the uneven color.

I’ve mixed up 2 different shellac mixes. The first is platinum at a 1 lb cut and the second is amber also at a 1 lb cut. I’ve been reviewing techniques on french polishing and feel fairly confident that I can do this and get a good result.

I hope to begin the process tomorrow. I have to get quite a few coats down before Friday night. I want to glue the bridge Saturday morning. That should put me in good shape for my last Guitar class which happens a week from tomorrow.

Guitar Building Class – 4 of 5

glennth — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:51:16 +0000

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 try to repair these areas. One was a bit of tear-out created during the scraping process. The tear-out happened on the back which is made from a veneer product. We used a wood filler/putty and tinted it to match the veneer. Here is a picture of the pre-fix. The post fix makes it nearly invisible.

Next we put the inlay in on the 12th fret and the inlay dots on the various fret including on the side of the fretboard. It turned out quite well as you can see from the picture below (this is before sanding and polishing the fretboard).

Next was sanding and polishing the fretboard. This took the longest as we were trying to get a very flat surface between the nut and past the 12th fret (beyond the 12th fret wasn’t nearly as critical for playing though I got to the 14th fret before the fretboard thinned out). The polishing was amazing and got a very smooth and shiny fretboard. Next was installing the fret wires into the fret slots. I bent one and positioned another incorrectly but with a little work, this all resolved itself. Here is a shot of the process.

The last step was to attach the neck and position the bridge and saddle. I needed to mark the position and then put some blue tape down so that the guitar body is ready for finishing. I’ve ordered several different shellac flakes and some pore filler that should arrive in the next few days. Here are a few shots of the positioning.

I’m going to use some of the burl stock that I used for the head stock to create a cover for the truss rod adjustment nut and also to cover the heal of the neck base giving a little additional character. We have 2 weeks before our next class so I need to get the body (and preferably the neck too) finished before the next class. After the body is finished, I also need to glue the bridge down (Eli loaned me the bridge clamp). That will leave the last class to attaching the hardware and the strings and then tuning up the guitar for play of strings, sound, straightness of neck and any other last minute adjustments.

And lastly, Eli was proud of the work his students were doing and showed off my head stock and other elements of my guitar and my fellow student’s guitar. Here is a picture of Eli capturing the moment.

UPDATE: When I got home from this class, I found the heal of the neck was cracked. I glued and clamped it up. I’m a bit surprised as I didn’t see this crack when I left. I’m pretty sure the glue up will leave it in good shape.

Guitar Building – Pre class work

glennth — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:48:56 +0000

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 (though it was actually from the binding glue up and removing the tape clamp). There are a couple of areas that may need to be filled though maybe that is just a pre-finish pore filling solution.

I also needed to bore out the holes for the peg hardware. That was very time consuming with a hand borer but turned out nice. Along with this, I had to bore out the strap peg hole at the base.

I needed to then clean up the headstock. This turned out especially nice.

Last thing was to work on shaping the neck. At the suggestion of Eli, my instructor, I measured spots (1,3,5, 7, 9, & 12 frets) on a guitar I already have and like the feel of. I then worked with sanders to achieve those measurements. I got within 1-2 hundereds of an inch and a nice rounded shape for the back. I’m pretty pleased with the results.

I feel like I am very prepared for my class tomorrow. I believe that some of this work is why Eli thought that this 4th of 5 classes was the longest of all the classes. We should be positioning the bridge which I should be able to tape the postion so that I can finish the body. I’m going with a french polish strategy. Eli suggested that the neck should be finished with oil (gun stock oil to be specific) so I’ll probably try that. I want to review some guitar building books and videos on finishing before I finalize the neck finish though.

It’s good that I am prepared for the class. Kathy wants me home promptly so that I can take Xander (my eldest) to his first sleep over camp. Should be a fun Sunday!

Guitar Building Class – Binding & Purfling

glennth — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:40:30 +0000

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 got to try the Festool trim router which is one of the only trim routers with a micro adjust which is great for the adjustment to get binding depth correct. I think I’m going to save up for this and get this for my next guitar.

The next step was to do a very minor trim on the binding. The binding consists of a very small piece (white in my case) glued to a thicker piece (black). The white needed to be smoothed out to be flushed with the black piece.

It took all 3 of use to do the work of glueing the binding and purfling on both the guitars. It was kind of stressful because the purfling was prone to tangling. The clamp was painters/blue tape. Here is a shot of my teacher Eli and the glued up body.

Eli, generously, allowed me to get a new piece of figured wood for the headstock. I get another try at that so that is part of my homework. We also need to ream out the strap mount on the bottom of the guitar and the hardware holes on the headstock.

UPDATE: After 2 days, I took the tape off. I think we may have used too much glue (it was very toxic smelling and I used a respirator when using it – apparently it’s model making glue) as the glue under the tape was not quite dry. Also, I had a piece of the veneer on the side near the bottom come off when removing the tape. I repaired it but it looks like a repair so that’s a bit of a bummer. I’m going to let the guitar set for a day or two to see if the glue dries so that I can scrape the binding/purfling.

On the headstock, I prepared it and glued it up. I’m not sure the glue up was a great job. I may have to do some filling on it. I’ll know later when I remove the clamps. The figure looks great so I’m hopeful for this to turn out.

Guitar Building – Homework

glennth — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:49:46 +0000

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, the other wood would have been spectacular!) so I’m pretty happy with the recovery. Notice that I have added some shaping (an ogee?) to the top of the headstock. Here is a shot:

I also decided to shape the bridge. The bridge had some shaping done to the lower edge. I refined it a bit. I also added a slight curve to the top edge to give it a different look that should compliment the headstock. Here is a shot:

I showed Mitchell (youngest son) what the guitar was starting to look like by dry fitting the neck to the body and setting the bridge on the body. Here is a quick peek:

Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on

glennth — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:27:08 +0000

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 of the clips after I made them and then installed on the underside of the desk.

I did have to create access holes for tightening the screws in the clip. I’ve made grooves for the clips to travel for expansion and contraction. Here is a picture of the desk with a stool for size reference. I’m pretty pleased with results. My next part of the project is to make the drawer (and of course, make it fit and look good). I intend to have half blind dovetails for the drawer front and full dovetails for the back.

Fretboard glueup

glennth — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:55:13 +0000

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 allowed us to test fit and fine tune the top shape of the guitar neck (making it flush with the top of the guitar). If necessary, this would have also been where we adjust the fit of the neck, it’s attach angel, and it’s centered/alignment. My fellow classmate had to make an adjustment here but my guitar parts fit quite well.

Next was shaping the top of the fretboard. The top of the fret board has a slight radius to it so we used a properly radius sanding block to get it shaped correctly. The bottom of the fretboard also had to be flattened. Flattening the bottom of the fretboard was easily the most unpleasant sanding I’ve done in quite a while. The fretboard is thin enough that holding it was difficult. I managed to sand off three small spots on various fingers. Ouch!

Once this work was done, we needed to de-oil the fretboard so that glue would work. The fretboard is a rosewood which is a very oily wood. This took a lot longer than I thought. Also the acetone was not good on my newly created injuries (see the sanding discussion). Double Ouch!

Lastly, I had to fit the truss rod and make it flush under the fretboard. This was quick work.

Now it was to the glue up. We test fitted everything one last time so that we could make small adjustments to the fretboard alignment giving us a good position with relation to the sound hole.

Here are the end results:

Here are a couple of quick shots of the shop classroom at Woodcraft in Seattle (nice set up):

Next week we are working on binding and purfling. I’m looking forward to it.

In the mean time, Eli (our teacher) gave us some thin wood samples in case we want to give the headstock a different look. I’m going to give this a go. Not only will I be giving this a laminant treatment but also I need to shape the headstock (it’s very rectangular right now). Eli also suggested that we try shaping our bridge a bit so I may try this too.

Guitar Building

glennth — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:32:05 +0000

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 kits used in the class, they needed some re-glueing of the braces – minor). The sides and the back are a laminated wood (ours was a light colored outer veneer, the site says is Sapele). The top is solid spruce. The other parts look adequate but are probably not the highest quality. All in all a decent value for a $260 kit (price through the class at Woodcraft).

My hopes are to learn a few of the basics of luthier. With this kit, I get to learn about attaching tops (and bottoms though indirectly since the skills are similar); attaching the binding a purfling (which may give a hint at how to do the sound hold and other decorative elements on the back and heal side); working and shaping the braces; building a fret board including fret wires, nut; attaching the bridge; setup and tuning the guitar. With this class and kit, I DON”T expect to learn bending and shaping the sides; attaching the binding around the sound hole; shaping the neck; applying finish to the guitar.

In our class, the first step was to find the position of the top onto the assembled lower body. This required finding centers on the top and body. Once this is done, we can mark the positions of the braces and the rough outline of the body on the top. Next comes shaping/scaloping the bracing. The 4 points of the x-braces and the 2 points of the top brace will have an equivalent notch in the support/bent bracing the goes around the tops of the sides. The remaining points of the other braces get pared down to the top before they touch the sides. The scaloping of the the braces have hills and valleys and the kits come with a template to do these. In scaloping, I found it a little challenging with the grain changes. I believe that I got a pretty smooth result but it took quite a while (you can see some bad pictures at the bottom).

The next step was to rough cut the body using a band saw. I learned 2 things. First, I need to replace my band saw blade. Second, WOW! it is sure easy to cut softer woods. I eventually want to build a guitar using only hand tools (for this step, it might be a bow saw).

Next was cutting the matching notches for the x-brace and top brace points (6 in all). The teacher recommended a double sided skew chisel and this did make things easier than standard flat/single sided paring chisels. With a few attempts at dry fitting, I needed to make a few adjustments with the notches and the end points of the bracing.

Last for this class was glueing the top down. This required 25 or so clamps (see the picture for the style of clamps). It was important to focus on a few key points including the waist, the widest point on both top and bottom and both the heal and neck locations. One last point was using a straight board to clamp just above the sound hole (see picture). This ensures that the location above the sound hole will be flat so it can receive the fret board.

Overall, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun (good instructor).

Ultimately, I hope to build a guitar from the ground up (maybe not quite so far as harvesting my own wood) and doing it with only hand tools. There are suppliers of luthier grade parts that should make this a challenging but fund experience.

Frame Glue Up

glennth — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:55:28 +0000

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 going with.

Overall the frame is square and stable which in a desk frame is what you need.

I still need to work on the drawer rails and the drawer itself. I’m going with wooden slider rails with a groove in the slide that matches up to them. Also I’m going to push the fates and try a half blind dovetail for the drawer front. This should be real challenging.

For the top, I’m planning to reflect a coffee and side table in the same room. The coffee and side table have moulding pieces around the field of the top. The moulding is simply angled on the bottom (thick at the field and thin on the edge). I’m going to do this by angling the outer edges and do it without moulding. I’ll use hand planes to get the angle that I want. I’ve already glued the top up but still need to square it up and smooth/flatten the top.

Notice that from the dry fit, that I’ve added the front lower drawer rail and the lower middle support cross member. I was thinking about adding another member going from the lower middle to the lower back but the frame already seemed very stable and strong so I didn’t feel it needed it.