Official Luthiers Forum!

I did the same thing on my first guitar it was a three piece back because I built the back sides and neck from a really old pallet.
So it was in between the back stripes I made the hole symmetrical and spliced in a piece of the drop from cutting out the back.
No one has noticed it yet! its hard to see.

On my most recant build I routed right across the end graft where I was going to miter the side perfling.
then I set the back stripe shallow and sanded thru it

Years ago,I saw a guitar top that a builder in Hampton,Va.,who I never met,that had the soundhole bored out on the end with the LARGE bout!

I neglected to tighten the chuck on my binding router sufficiently. The cut started out at the right depth, but as it went around it was getting harder and harder to work it, because the bit was slowly coming out of the chuck and cutting lower and lower. By the time I got around to the start position I had routed a binding channel that started out at .9x .250- and ended up .9x .560! ...well, it made for an interesting gift to a friend who couldn't have afforded one of my guitars...

I was just finishing cutting out the recess for my rosette. I needed to take off a little bit more so set up my Dremel & circle cutter for one last pass. Started up the Dremel started to cut and to my horror I realised I didn't fully tighten the circle cutter and it slid about 2-3" cutting into the soundboard zig-zagging in a awful mess.

Well, as you can tell, I proceeded to calmly un-clamp the top, pick it up and smash it into a million pieces .

Aww! You should have done a "Lazy River" inlay! Sorry for your loss!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Putting an electric hand drill down on my workshop floor with a 12" long 8mm flat bit still in the chuck. As I did it, I thought 'that can only stay there for a second whilst I finish this process, or I *am* going to hurt myself.'

About 3 minutes later I walked past it, and snagged the sharp end of the flat bit in my jeans, poking a nice shallow wound in my leg, which then caused me to stumble and trip, driving the end of the drill into my shin a second time, this one nice and deep - It bled an awful lot for a relatively small hole!

Cool! Did you get a video of that. Post it on YouTube!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Oh NO Hesh!!! I miss my "Young Apprentice" enormously. He was the only guy who could always tell me where I was when I last abandoned my glasses! I never blamed him for ANYTHING. Except perhaps always dashing round with a broom, cleaning up my beautiful shavings.
How is anyone to know how busy you've been when the floor & the benches are dust free?
Good thread!

I`ve really enjoyed this post.All I have to add is that I`ve made a whole bunch of these mistakes that have already been mentioned.So why go there?
James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Well I am feeling just a tad brighter now hanging out with you guys.....

Daniel your apprentice sounds like it may be a relative of mine.....

So what's the deal - the rest of the folks here on the OLF never made a stinkin mistake?????

OK Hesh, I'll 'fess up. I had completed a beautiful French polish on a guitar and was getting ready to glue on the bridge. I carefully outlined the bridge and started to work on scraping off the finish under the bridge to bare wood. Something kept bothering me, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. I got the scraping done and slathered some glue on the bridge and about to put it in place when it dawned on me...I had the bridge facing the wrong direction, with the saddle facing the end block. Luckily I had caught it before gluing the bridge down, so wasn't that big of an issue to repair, but frustrating nonetheless.

I'm only on #3 so I've still got plenty of time to make more mistakes, but so far the biggest that I've made was probably not checking to see if the cap screw on my router bit for routing binding channels was tight. While cutting the binding channel, the screw came loose and the bearing fell off and let the bit cut deeper than it should have. Luckily I caught the mistake almost as soon as it happened, so simply adding purfling and a little splice of EIR made it virtually invisible.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

"89.67% of all statistics are made up on the spot."

Guitar number 4 ... measured for the bridge position at least ten times, then still managed to place it short 10mm ... was all ready to glue beofre I noticed it kinda looked funny, like the soundhole to bridge was too short ... hmm .. better measure that again ....

So anyway, I was lucky and got all the score mark sanded out, except for one spot on the treble side, and that ended up being covered by a tortoise pickguard .. the only one I have ever used !!!

So now I measure 11 times ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Built a 14 fret neck for a 12 fret guitar. Had it almost on before I noticed.