This Week in Wood

Fretboard binding

glennth — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:19:18 +0000

When I look at guitars, I see many things. When you look at fretboards, you see them plain or sometimes with binding. I do think the binding gives the fretboard a higher end feel and look so I thought that I would try to do some binding on my fretboards. I wanted to experiment with a different look. Most bindings are some white man-made material which gives a stark contrast with the ebony or rosewood (most common fretboard woods). I like the contrast but since I’m using bloodwood to accent other places on the guitar, I thought I would use that.

I first needed to saw down strips. I’m big into hand tool use as you all know but I still have a bandsaw for ripping and that is what I used. I have a 5/8″ blade which is good for nice straight cuts. Once they were cut, I needed to plane them smooth for a great glue joint. I used a low angle smoothing plane and got a nice finish surface.

I did enough for all 3 guitars. Here is a shot of what it might look like.

The picture even gives you an idea of how it will look against the body with the light color bench which is similar to the light colored spruce of the top. I’m excited to see what it will look like on the neck and attached to the body.

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Fretboard binding

3 Guitars – bolt and nuts

glennth — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:46:22 +0000

After a lot of chisel work to get successful dry fits on the mortise and tenon neck to body joint, it was time to work on the actual mechanical fasteners for the necks.

First, the barrel nut holes were pre-drilled in the neck blank before the tenon was created. I’ll have to work on better precision drilling as the holes were not very straight or square. Fortunately though these holes still worked after some trial fits. Next, I verified the center of the tenon and found the center line for the barrel bolt holes. This mark gave me the location to drill the bolt holes which you can see in the above tenon.

The next step was to locate and drill the holes for the bolts to pass through the block at the top of the interior of the guitar body. You can check older posts to see these block being placed when the guitar body was being built. I elongated the holes to allow me to have some adjustment both side to side and up and down for the neck.

The above picture doesn’t look much different than the dry fit pictures but I have fitted each neck, created the nut and bolt holes, bolted on each neck, adjusted each neck for center line and angle until I have the perfect fit. I do have some fine tuning of the neck shape but this should be minor work.

Next post should be about working on the fretboard in preparation for gluing it to the neck.

3 Guitars – dry fit

glennth — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:15:54 +0000

Today, I spent 3 hours or so working on the fit of the necks to the guitar bodies.

The goal is to have a tight fit from the neck wood to the top side of the guitar body and also achieve the desired angle on the neck so that a straight edge will give us the desired gap at the eventual location of the saddle and bridge. I’m pretty close with all 3 bodies. I may want to adjust it a bit more after I bolt on the necks for the first time.

The next steps will be working on the fret board. I’m thinking about trying to bind the fretboard on at least one of the guitars. Often the binding is some man made material that sets off the ebony fretboard. I’m thinking about going with bloodwood which will tie it into the other accents on the guitar.

Guitar 2 – Neck Fittings

glennth — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:53:21 +0000

Today, I started fitting the neck on Guitar 2 (the first of 3 that I’m working on).

In previous posts, you read about my neck jig. While I was able to use it for creating the mortises on the body (slots which receive a tenon/tag), I was not able to use it on the neck for Guitar 2. The channel for the neck tension rod was slightly off center (maybe 1/16″ or little less) and the neck jig requires it to be the center point. So, I decided to cut the tenon by hand. Since I’ve been moving to more and more hand tool work, this really wasn’t that daunting.

It requires the use of marking knives, chisels, rebate planes, hand saws, rasps and sand paper.

You can see the tools in the background. It’s still rough but I will refine it as I get the neck angle adjusted.

You can see the neck dry fitted for the first time. The center lines line up correctly. Based on this guitar I can already see areas to refine if I build more guitars. In this picture, I’d like the cutaway return to line up better with the width of the neck at the point it joins up with the body.

I still have to drill the holes that the bolts will go through in both the neck and the body. Right now, I’m pretty pleased.

Mortise for Necks

glennth — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:58:17 +0000

On my way to attach the necks to the bodies for the guitars I’m building, I finished all the marking and now it’s time to start cutting wood.

First, I needed to cut the holes that will be in the tenon on the guitar necks and will house the barrel bolts so that the necks can eventually be bolted on.

My challenge in cutting these holes was keeping them square. On the 3 necks, one was always very square and the other one, not so much. Need to continue to work on technique.

Next, I needed to cut the mortise on the bodies which will receive the as yet to be cut tenons.

The mortise was cut in many passes. I spent quite a lot of time making sure the guitar bodies were lined up with center marks and square to the jig.

The cuts turned out great. The were nicely centered and square. I’m pleased enough to cut the other 2 bodies.

Now you can see the 3 bodies with their mortises.

I’ve still got a lot of work to do. I’ll need to locate the saddle on the bodies and then figure out the angle before cutting the tenons.

Neck – time for marking

glennth — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:23:08 +0000

I’m currently working on neck attachment for the 3 guitar builds in progress.

In the picture above, you can see the fretboards laying on the necks. I had to do some hand work (saw, chisel, plane) to square up the location on the headstock where the nut butts up against it and is wedged between the headstock top piece (bloodwood) and the fretboard (ebony). That was most of my work today as I wanted it square and have the proper location.

Above you can see that the 14th fret on the fretboard (marked with the blue tape), lines up with the mark (light pencil) on the neck.

Above you can see the neck also has a center line for use with the neck jig (see previous post for my test cuts).

Lastly, I marked the center line for use with the jig and positioning the saddle during jig set up.

I still have to drill 2 holes in each neck for barrel nuts which will be located in the tenon.

First, test the jig

glennth — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:07:33 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, it’s time to work on fitting the necks on my 3 guitar bodies.

The jig is built and ready but before I take a router to my guitar bodies and necks (which have hours and hours and hours of work in them), I needed to test the jigs out.

What you are seeing above, is a test cut on a test body (just a blank piece of wood that I glued up to approximate the thickness of a body). The mortise on the actual body will be about 7/8″ deep though this cut was just a test so I didn’t go that deep or measure the depth at all. It will have a rounded edge of the mortise that is towards the bottom of the guitar body but will not go as deep as the bindings.

In this shot, you can see the test neck (again scraps glued up to be about the same dimensions as the neck) clamped in the jig. As you can see, the rounded tongue of the tenon faces the bottom of the neck to match the body of the guitar. The length of the tenon will be 7/8″ though again this test cut was just to see if the jig worked.

You can see a quick shot of the fit of the tenon into the mortise. It fits nice and snuggle, not requiring any hammering nor is it loose and wobbles. The fit is tight along the walls of the mortise included the rounded edge.

Next steps include marking centers for both the bodies and necks and then cutting the mortise and tenons. I will pre-drill for the barrel nuts that will go into the neck so that it can be bolted onto the body in the final assembly.

Time for the Neck

glennth — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:49:53 +0000

Back to work on my guitar builds. It’s time to work on attaching the neck.

Everything that I’ve read about attaching the neck indicates that it can go very wrong if not planned out properly. The neck requires a specific angle so that a straight edge (representing the strings) is a specific distance above the saddle and bridge) and a very specific location on the neck has to match both a certain fret (the 14th) and match the joint at the body.

Based on Robbie O’brien’s recommendation, I’ve gone with the LMII Neck Jig.

On my Neck Jig, you can see the test blanks for the neck (left), and body (right). We are seeing the neck jig from the body side. I’m going with a bolt on mortise and tenon. After verifying setup with the test blanks, we clamp the body and route the mortise and then turn around the jig and clamp in the neck, set the neck angle (remember all the stuff we are looking at) and then route the tenon. Any refinements will be done with chisels and planes,

Here are the 3 bodies and necks, ready for work.

Progress

glennth — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 17:32:55 +0000

Over the last 2 weeks, I glued up the binding and purfling on the edges of the guitar. I broke them up into 4 quadrants (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right). Usually, as I progress the quality of my work gets better but to be perfectly honest, I think I did the best job on the back side which is where I started. I’m working on clean up now which involves scraping and sanding (I imagine if I had the right plane, that I might even use planes but I haven’t found one that works great on this kind of clean up).

Below is the guitar with the binding and purfling glued up. You can see the glue left overs (I always use too much glue and I really have to work on that). The back top corner (where the cutout joins the location where the neck will be attached) has a nicely mitered corner while the top still needs to be improved. I’m not sure how I’ll do this and I may wait till I finish the neck joint and fix it just before I bolt the neck permanently in place and before I finish (probably going with french polish).

The next two pictures show the binding after I’ve cleaned it up.

The first one below, you can see the nice contrast of the purfling that I chose. The inner is a dark (mahogany color?) wood. The middle is blood wood which gives a super read and will match the headstock. The outer just before the maple binding is ebony (though I think it’s just ebony stained).

The second one below, you see the maple binding with the dark (again mahogany color?) wood edge on the lower side.

You can just catch the bottom end where the blood wood edge is placed.

The next step is probably working on the neck joint for the 3 guitars. It will be a bolt on tongue and groove joint which should give great surface contact with the body ensuring solid acoustic characteristics between the neck and body.

Guess What?

glennth — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:21:28 +0000

Over the weekend, my wrist felt better AND I actually had or made time to get to my shop. Even more importantly, I decided to use that shop time on my eternally lived guitar making project.

Just a quick update summary: I’m working on making 3 guitars (a bit of a goofy and long story which is in past blog posts about why I’m not just building 1 guitar). I had previously built my first guitar from a kit. Currently the bodies of all 3 guitars are put together and the necks are roughed out.

Over the weekend, I resumed working on Guitar 4 (an Martin OM body type/size with a cutaway) and began step 1 of 4 of installing the purfling and binding. Purfling is usually very thin pieces of wood that are purely decorative and are between the top or back and the edge binding. The binding is the outer most strip (thicker than purfling and usually a hard wood) and is both functional and decorative. My purfling is 3 strips of a dark brown, blood wood, and ebony which is next to a maple binding which has a dark brown strip attached to the bottom of the binding.

To prep, you need a lot of tape.

Next, you get some glue and a glue brush ready and very slowly keep the 4 pieces of wood organized and glue, then tape, then tape, then tape and continue on. For me, there is always some swearing going on during the process. In fact, Kathy (my wonderful wife) walked in on this process to tell me about some awful behavior that our boys were involved with and just turned around and waited for me to finish. After the tape and glue, I add a rubber strip and wind it around the body providing extra clamping force.

This particular install seemed to go well as I was able to keep all 4 pieces organized and keep them from twisting. I’ll find out when I remove the tape and rubber hose clamp.

Now, I only have to do this 3 more times then some sanding and scraping to clean it up.

Bob must be Psychic

glennth — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:09:01 +0000

As you all saw, my previous post was about my strong desire to add sharpening of handsaws to my skill set. I’ve been reading various web sites looking for sources to add to my knowledge. I’m one of those guys that do research before diving into something. That’s not to say I don’t jump into things ill informed, because I do… at least sometimes.

Now one of my favorite video podcasts is Bob Rozaieski at Logan’s Cabinet Shop. He is exclusively a hand tool user and is one of the most thoughtful sources of information. His video podcasts are not nearly as frequent as I’d like but everyone has great information in it. In addition, he’s a frequent poster on many hand tool forums and his posts there are just as fantastic.

Well, it’s as if he was psychic because Bob has a new episode on re-toothing a handsaw. I’m about to watch it but fully expect to learn some great information when I do.

New Goal: sharpen saws

glennth — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:24:26 +0000

OK, time for take two on this post. Ecto decided to eat version 1 (it’s never done that before).

For the past bunch of years, I’ve been focused on becoming a predominately hand tool oriented wood worker. This involves learning or re-learning skills with all types of hand tools including chisels, saws, and planes. I’m not sure whether or not it’s just a natural outgrowth of this objective but I’ve also felt I needed to become more self sufficient in my woodworking which predominately means sharpening.

I’ve become a fairly proficient sharpener of blades such as knives, chisels, and plane blades. I use a Tormek T7 to obtain a nice hollow grind (I do this every so often). Then I use water stones (Norton) to get the micro bevel (this is the most frequent activity). I’ve also used sandpaper and a flat granite stone to get a nice flat polish to the back of the blades (very rare activity). All in all, I am very happy with the results.

The next step seems to me to be to sharpen my hand saws. I use them all the time so they will become dull soon (not quite there yet). Soooo…

I went to Tools for Working Wood and got a Gramercy Hand Saw Vise (along with various files and a set). I’ve got mine pictured with a small crosscut saw just for illustration purposes since it really doesn’t need sharpening yet. I think that I may head over to Port Townsend School for Woodworking and take a class in Making a Hand Saw which has a lot of sharpening as part of the class. Marilyn over at She Works Wood told me that a big part of it is working on the handle but he still gives a good session on sharpening.

Timing should be good for such a class so I’m hopeful.

Miter Saw and Box

glennth — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:46:57 +0000

Over the last year or so, I’ve been watching Craigslist and Ebay for hand Miter Saws and Box. On Ebay, they all seemed expensive and many boxes didn’t come with a saw. Also, I couldn’t tell for sure what condition they were in. On Craigslist, my real problem was that there wasn’t much available or it was a bit far for me to go check.

Last week though, I finally found one that was not only close but looked in good shape. It’s not a super old model but rather a more modern Craftsman branded saw and box. On the weekend, I went to check it out.

It was in great shape though clearly used. The owner had used it to cut trim and moldings. I have looked on Craftsman and they still have a miter saw for about $20 but it was much smaller than the one I was looking at. I also liked this as the saw was a full saw rather than a bow saw like Stanley makes.

I decided to purchase it.

At home, I tested the cutting. I’m going to have to mount it to a board so I can better clamp the saw down. I’ll have to explore clamping options for the piece as well. It worked well though and the saw seemed to be in decent shape.

In testing the saw and box, I found that having a longer saw would be nice though with the included saw, it was serviceable.

The results of the cut were spot on for the marked cut and the cut was fairly smooth and wouldn’t take much to clean it up. I’m very pleased though at some point, I may investigate getting a longer crosscut miter saw for this box.

A trip to the past

glennth — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:47:08 +0000

My wife just had some minor surgery so I’m mostly helping her out (she’s doing well!). Of course, when she needs me the most, my own body decides to throw extra challenges in the mix. I’ve developed a ganglion on my wrist. I’ve had one before when I was younger but it wasn’t a problem. This one, unfortunately, decided to develop on top of my radial nerve (that’s what the doctor called it) and so my left arm is essentially useless. I’m having enough problems just opening jars and closing zip lock bags. I don’t even want to think how bad I’d be if I went to my shop and tried to install the binding on my guitars.

So… since I can’t show any of my own woodworking, I thought I would post a couple of things from a trip my family took to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. We had a great time but when I got to the “barn”, I got to see relics from the past with how Boeing built planes when they were mostly wood. My favorite was the bandsaw. It’s wheels were huge! Notice with the power tools that they didn’t have their own motors but used a common motor and a series of pulleys and belts.

Of course, they also used hand tools extensively. Some of the shots didn’t turn out. In fact, my favorite was one where they had a partially shaped propeller that had a collection of draw knives and spokeshaves around it.

Seeing all the planes was fun but this was a great surprise.

6 weeks?

glennth — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:44:20 +0000

Has it really been six weeks since I did any woodworking? Yes it has. Life has gotten in the way of this particular hobby.

I’ve had lots of family things going on such as my Dad was diagnosed with Cancer, choosing a school for next year (middle school, not college!), 2 weeks of serious migraines, and many other things. I love getting to my shop and try to get there every day or two but I’m not one who feels guilty about not getting there unless the real reason is laziness or frustration.

I did get to my shop but I first wanted to talk about my Dad. Don’t worry! I’m not really going to discuss his medical issues but rather how my Dad has inspired me.

When I was growing up, like many boys, my Dad seemed bigger than life. He was an auto mechanic and business owner. Up until I was about 10 years old, he was quite a workaholic. We (my Mom, brother and sister) would sometimes make a trip to Dad’s work and see all of the cars and his tools. It was fascinating in that way young kids are fascinated with no serious interest.

Sometime around when I was 10, a couple of things started happening.

In the summer following my 10th birthday, my Dad offered to take me to work with him. He showed me how to pump gas, clean windows, check peoples oil and other small tasks that a pump jockey gets to do. This was an incredible time. I was hanging out with my Dad and doing grown up work. The folks coming in for gas thought I was cute and I got lots of tips. My Dad even gave me some money. This eventually turned into a real job that I did during the summer and by the time I was in High School, weekends and some night shifts. My Dad still remained bigger than life but became a real person to me.

Also around that time, my Dad bought some tools and started dabbling in woodworking. He built some garage cabinets and the 2 big projects that I remember were a bed for my brother and dresser for my sister. He also did some minor and eventually major remodeling over the years. My Dad clearly had the patience of a saint because I can remember many Saturday’s hanging out in the garage while he was working with his tools making this or that and asking a million questions as a young boy will often do.

I was even allowed to build stuff sometimes. I remember 2 projects. One was a record shelf and tv stand (with a turn table so the TV could be repositioned – this was back with tube TVs so imagine how heavy a 26″ TV was). The other was a “trunk” for a moped that I rode around as a teenager. My wife loves to tease me about it still…and rightly so. I rebuilt that box at least 3 times before I stopped.

I didn’t realize how much I wanted to do woodworking until after I turned 30. I approached it the same way my dad did and bought some initial tools (going cheap and making that mistake where eventually you have to re purchase). I also focused on plywood construction more than anything for a bit though eventually turned towards furniture that was a bit more polished.

I may have moved on to hand tools now but am still inspired by those early days where my Dad would use a radial arm saw to make half lap joints. Thanks Dad!