This Week in Wood » Training

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:

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Guitar Building – 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.

Small Epiphany – Dovetails

glennth — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:33:57 +0000

In my daily (ok, not daily but nearly so) practice of hand cut dovetails, I came together with a finished practice joint that was very tight. I still had one small gap (I’ll talk about that in a bit) but the sides were very tight.

In the cutting of the sides of the tails and pins, I’ve been struggling with keeping the cuts parallel and plum. I’ve also struggled with how close to the marking line to cut. I think that I’m starting to understand the required technique. I feel like placing the blade so that one side touches the edge of the marking line (from the inside of the material to be removed) is the best place. Also, I’ve found that using a square to make sure the marked line for the sides is perpendicular to the bench top works best. I’ve done this several times now and have got increasingly tight sides where it’s not too tight (too tight splits out the dovetails). I’m very pleased.

Now as to the gap, this is from the chisel line. I’m still struggling with how to chisel out the wood to the marked line. I haven’t found a similar epiphany for this. I’ll keep at it and hope to find the thing that gets me the tight and great looking joint. I’m open to any suggestions from any readers.

Unremarkable Shop Time

glennth — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:00:57 +0000

I know that I haven’t been posting recently. My problem is that the time in my shop IS happening but it’s kind of dull and tedious (at least from a blogging point of view – I’m actually enjoying the time).

You see, my situation mandates that I have a strongly adhered to budget for my hobbies. By my situation, I of course mean that if I don’t have restrictions on my behavior I will soon become the poorest person in the state of Washington with the most woodworking tools. That would of course also mean I don’t have any money for actual wood to do any woodworking. In fact, I’m living with some of that behavior right now. Over the last several months I bought a few tools and am now waiting for my actual budget to catch up. On April 1, I again have some money to buy some wood for my next project (a standing laptop desk for my guitar area – see previous posts).

In the mean time, I have been using some scrap wood to practice dovetails and mortise/tenons. I had some poplar, pine, and oak. I have on average spent an hour in the shop most days each week. It’s allowed me a lot of progress. My progress is of course great interest to me but may not be to any who read this.

I’ve been learning lots of things. For instance, marking lines to follow is crucial. In the past, I’d grab the nearest pencil and make my mark. Now I grab a mechanical pencil, sharpen it, then make my mark. Also, I’ve learned that while all the videos and articles and even classes on making dovetails (and this also applies to tenons) show how easy cutting things by hand can be, they leave out a crucial cautionary note. Cutting is easy but keeping the curf of the cut parallel or even better exactly on the marked line, is quite challenging. This is in fact, the heart of all this practicing.

I’ll keep working on all this skill building practicing and by the time I get to April, I will be more confidant in my abilities to produce a great piece of quality furniture.

Re-sawing by hand

glennth — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:17:14 +0000

As I move more and more of my woodworking to using hand tools, I have to try and experiment with different elements and techniques of hand tool applications. My latest attempt is re-sawing boards which is most commonly done with band saws.

I have an increasing collection of saws. I have a bow saw that I bought a long time ago (when hand tools were really just a glimmer in my eye and I was still power tool bound) and thought that this would be a great tool to start re-sawing boards with. I found this wasn’t the case. I’m not sure that it’s due to an improper tool choice as it may be to incorrect technique. I found that in using the bow saw, that the blade was hard to keep parallel to the face of the board. It wanted to turn (probably with the grain of the board which was not entirely parallel to the face) and I couldn’t get a straight cut.

After that attempt, I moved to a western style hand saw. Specifically a 26″ rip saw. This worked much better and I was able to get a nice straight cut.

After the board was re-sawn, I planed it smooth and it looked pretty good. Here are some shots:

I think this is a good sign as I keep moving forward with improving hand tool techniques.

Dovetail practice

glennth — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:29:35 +0000

Just a quick post. In addition to the mortise and tenons, I have continued on with my dovetail practice. I hope I’m reaching a significant milestone because I cut one of my best dovetails yet. It was tight (except for one small corner) in all places. A joint like that would be one that I could be very proud of in a real project.

Mortise and Tenon

glennth — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:13:56 +0000

I decided that I should mix some Mortise and Tenon practice amidst my dovetail practice. The real reason, is that I have done machine cut mortise and tenon but not very well. Since this was a different technique given that I’m cutting them by hand, I was hopeful that I could do much better.

I used my new sharpened mortise chisels along with my new hand brace. I’ve read that some people do the mortise entirely by chisels and I’ve also read that some folks use brace and auger bits to get the bulk of material out. My first attempt at using the brace was a fail. I had a center line to center the bit on but my first attempt was off. It’s not really possible to put it back on center once a hole is started. My second attempt with the brace was better but still off. I used an awl to mark the center line and was only barely outside of the center. I suspect this second time was not keeping the brace level and plumb.

So after these two fails, I used just the chisel. WOW, that was the way to go. I was able to keep with in the lines and it didn’t take much effort to cut the mortise out. Of course, I’m getting really good at sharpening so I can attest that the chisel was very sharp. I followed the technique to ease up on the shoulder marks. Using this, the walls of the mortise were nice and square. I was very pleased. I did learn that a goose neck chisel would be very useful. I had a tough time cleaning out the bottom. I know the bottom doesn’t have to be as nice as the walls but I still wanted the mortise to it’s finished depth.

On to the tenon. I used the mortise to mark the tenon. I did my rip and crosscut cuts. I found though that I didn’t make one of my rip cuts deep enough and it caused me to go way to deep on a crosscut cut. Even with this, I tried the mortise and found it was fat (whew!) so I was able to pear it down to fit nice and snug. Though with the too deep of cut, the tenon broke off on the final fitting.

I will try and do this again and see if I can take some pictures for the next posting.

More dovetail practice – oak

glennth — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:20:15 +0000

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have taken a path to practice hand cut dovetails. In the first round, I worked with poplar.

Now, I’m down the path of using oak. My first attempt (back before Thanksgiving) was a disaster. I had forgotten how easy it is to split oak and I did split the oak when I tried to force together joints that were too tight (by quite a bit).

Today, I took the lessons of my previous attempt and to it slow and didn’t use force on either cutting the dovetails or fitting the dovetails. Getting the joints tight enough to not have gaps seems harder with oak but after a little patience, I succeeded in a decent first attempt.

I’m using a Lee Valley/Veritas dovetail saw. I think my biggest issue is cutting a square/straight cut. I am having to adjust them by parring them down and that does not give me the best fit. I will keep working with the oak and hopefully, this practice will be able to be applied to other hard woods as well.

Any readers who have had more experience and success that have any advice, I would love to hear from you.

Dovetail Practice – an update

glennth — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:09:24 +0000

OK, I’ve been practicing…and practicing…and practicing…and…

Here are some of my test samples:

I’ve tried both tails first and pins first. Pins first is frustrating. I find that I make many more errors with pins probably due to assumptions and skipping steps. For instance, when I make tails first, I mark the waste before I cut. I forget this step a lot so after I cut pins and then mark out the tails, I cut on the wrong side of the mark lines. Very aggravating. I’ll stick with tails first.

The results are better but I think after the first few, progress slows down. I get fewer and smaller gaps now. They are mostly due to saw cuts needing to be straighter followed by straight chisel cuts. These test runs have been done on poplar. I will start test runs with oak soon.