Official Luthiers Forum!

Laminated my first neck. Hog, Maple, EIR, Maple, Hog. Glued up with Epoxy in 3 stages, cut rough shape on my bandsaw and used my new japanese rasp to smooth it out and remove epoxy squeeze out.

_________________
Bobby Masten

Zpoxy fill of second guitar.

_________________
http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

I put strings on this one last week.




I'll be stringing this one up later today or tomorrow.

_________________
I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

aarrrghhh! So I think I learned something. When removing reverse kerfing to inlay your braces, saw cut each individual strip before removing with a chisel. Trying to remove more than one at a time produced this. My question is what is the best repair? The piece that came out will not fill the spot it left. Tried with some CA and it not only wouldn't hold well, it didn't fill the tear completely.

_________________
Bobby Masten

Hey Bobby,
Do you plan on binding this guitar? It doesn't look that deep. I'm sure when you route the binding channel it will take care of it.

I'm planning on using EIR binding that is .250 tall and my back is around .095. This tear out measures .210 to cover it. Won't I be a a tad short of being flush with the back and covering the tear out?

_________________
Bobby Masten

Nice work all...

I assembled an electric guitar that I designed and built. It is a cross between a tele and a ES 335. Double P-90 type pups. Played it and will now proceed to finish. I am thinking a blond would be nice.

_________________
Ken

Bobby,

Well if your back is .095" thick and your binding is .250" then the binding will be about .155" deep into the sides. Your gouge is .210 leaving a difference of only .055" put some purfling lines in and you should still be fine.

frustration.

where is center?

what is flat?

is this square square?

I'm going to pour a pint, watch this bears game, and get back to it next week.

_________________
rono

Started finishing on a 2'x2' Luan test panel. Did first pore fill with Z-Poxy last night.

Also, yesterday I glued the veneer I inlayed onto to the neck and trimmed it flush with the headstock shape.

_________________
Formerly known as Adaboy.......

My son is in the shop building a new mailbox post for my house. I'm at work

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Just planed flush the top binding on my 9th

_________________
Build log

My shop better be quiet. I'm at Festivals Acadiens et Creoles in Lafayette, LA kicking up a cloud of dust and taking a long weekend off. Daughter's band played a set on the main stage yesterday. Couldn't be more proud.

Polish polish polish. And then the muneca sticks and leaves a scruffy spot and it's a big pain to smooth it back out, and then it usually sticks somewhere else during the smoothing out process. I think it's mainly when I get a spot on the guitar too wet, either by overloading the muneca or going over the same place too many times without giving it a couple seconds to dry. And too much pressure seems to make it stick harder when running over the wet spot. But not enough pressure leaves more sticky spots. And that's even using plentiful quantities of walnut oil. Tricky business, this is.

So far I've got 2 sessions on the sides, and one on the back. Sides still have some wet oil on them, but I think the finish itself is getting pretty shiny. Back is still fairly dull. Session 1 on the top starting as soon as I finish typing this post.

Pore filling was also a pain. Hopefully I can speed it up next time. About 15 hours of work just to get it mostly level And mahogany pores aren't even very big.

Also, I don't think I had the bridge and frets done last time we had one of these update posts, so here's a closeup of the bridge and a shot of the whole thing with neck and bridge set in place, just before the shellac spit coats.

Now the question is... am I really patient enough to resist gluing the bridge and temporarily bolting on the neck and stringing it up before polishing the neck?

I'm starting to bring one to the finishing stages. A smaller 12 fret slot head. Koa back/sides, euro spruce top, walnut trim.

_________________
Evan McCartney

Production at last! Got rolling this week on a Sitka and Sapele 12 string SJ. Actually got started last week, but after snapping both sides bending on my pipe, I spent the last week building a fox bender with cutaway ram. Works sweet!

Got the sides bent and blocks in, profiled the back and got the kerfed lining in.



Got the top and back joined, cut all the brace stock to size, and did this rosette(Thanks for the lesson at the open house John Hall)



Now gotta research how to get some black stains out of the sides. Seems even with craft paper wrapping my sides, the couple spots of rust bleed on my slats bled through. I sure the tap water I used didn't help.....

_________________
Rob

I've had a fun weekend. Made a mistake installing my backstrip, but didn't let it get me down...


Finished making a set of braces and glued them in place...



Tried my hand at tap tuning the bracing above. Sounded noticeably more musical and evenly balanced as I scalloped the bass leg of the x-brace and both tone bars.

Forgot to take a picture before gluing it up...

_________________
George :-)

Just glued the FB on the "rockabilly archtop"

_________________
Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Making some centerline finders and working on the elipsograph frame and tooling and fixing a head that had the peg holes in the wrong place and will inlay a Gibson logo and banner on it. I also replaced the split motor drive pulley on my belt sander and threw back a few brews.

Nice work everyone!!! My only project is at Joe White's for finishing.

_________________
"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Nice stuff here!

This is a BRW L-00 I've been working on since March, nearly ready to ship. BRW B&S, bridge and FB, white spruce top, chechen bindings, amboyna burl rosette and headplate, FP shellac over brushed Behlen's Rockhard Tabletop Varnish (Behlen's only on neck) Waverlys with ivoroid buttons












Ships out next week in its custom Ameritage.

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Six of these simple faceplate carvings going out to client today. Faceplate thickness of 1/16" didn't allow for desired 3D carving depth....but still got a design in. I prefer a 1/8 thick lamination to get good depth and detail. ALSO...2 of the faceplates were SNAKEWOOD and I had to sharpen my tools every 5 minutes when working with the stuff. Pretty...but a BEAR to carve. BR was a breeze.

Kent

_________________
Wood Creations by Kent A. Bailey
EXCELLENCE IN SCULPTURE, CARVING, LUTHIER, ARCHITECTURAL MILLWORK AND DESIGN

http://www.kabart.com

Todd, any chance you checked the weight change on the Sta-tites by changing to ebony buttons?

Thanks, Chuck

_________________
_________________

Another non guitar weekend in the shop. Still mudding the drywall seams. Getting closer though. I did take the time to drive to Sacramento to pick up a nice old Delta lathe, similar to the one in the picture. Mine is 3 years older, and unfortunately has steel leg set instead of the beautiful cast. I'm excited about cleaning it up and restoring it back to showroom condtion and then doing some turning. I'll post before and after pics in the off topic section when I get it done.

Darrin

Man, do I wish I were where you are on my OLF MJ build. I see we had similar ideas in mind with regards to doing a semi-solid mold:



Bear with me since I'm still very new at this. I feel like I'm learning a lot but the going's slow as I don't have access to many tools or time to devote on a consistent basis. I'm still working on the bending form. I'm just using a hand drill with a spindle and a square, which is also doubling as a scraper. I think it's close though:



...just a couple of uneven spots in the cross-section.


...but I figure that if it fits within the curve of the outside mold then I'm getting there:


I'm mostly worried about the fit at the waist:




Not much actual work being done on the guitar itself. Most of my tone woods are over at YJ John's place where he has all the proper tools. My top and back are joined and sanded to thickness but I still have to run them through the drum sander just a couple more times with a lower grit roll to smooth out the marks from the 80 grit roll. The sides are waiting to be trimmed to the outline on the plans.

Last week he and I dremeled out a 5" radius x .1" thick rosewood ring from some scrap to be used as the central ring of my rosette. It took 6 tries but now I have a full set of 6 rosewood coasters!

In the meantime, I'm mostly just doing prep work. You know - lurking here and bending peoples' ears about what the best way to do the next step and all. All I can really do here at home is think about what I want to do and try and come up with a plan. Being a graphic artist does have its benefits. While it's not truly a CAD program, Adobe Illustrator does have its uses:



The numbers are simplistic and likely to be off, but essentially I intend to route out the trenches for the two outer purfling strips at equal distances from the central ring which will also be bound by purfling. The central trench will be a bout .22" and I'm going to try to glue the purfling in the central ring before dropping in the rosewood. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do that though. Speaking of which, the rosewood ring is cut at .1" thick give or take. I have a little tear-out that needs to be smoothed out but it's usable.

It doesn't look I'll get much more done this week but I'm going to finish up sanding the acrylic template for the sides. I still have some extra material that needs to be carefully removed with the hand drill spindle:


I'm hoping once this is all done I can get the inlay done and move on to splitting billets and using my band saw here to cut them to rough shape. I'm really looking forward to voicing the top and bending sides for the first time though. Those look to be a few weeks off though.