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Building my first Manzer Wedge
http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=26108		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Paul Burner [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Building my first Manzer Wedge
Starting a surprise project for a dear friend - a gift from her husband.

She likes her Martin D-28 - but thinks the body is a bit big (thick).

So.... We're going to build her our larger MS body size with a Manzer Wedge.

Here's where we're starting with the Waterfall Bubinga.

This is going to be fun.
Author:  Daniel Minard [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Looks great Paul!
I'll be watching your build with interest. One of these days, I would like to build a wedge guitar for my grandson. A guitar with a good sized body that he can play comfortably as he grows.
Did you use some published drawings? Or design the shape yourself???
Thanks for posting.
Dan
Author:  cwood8656 [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Looks great Paul. I'll be interested in this one as I like the wedge idea. How did you mount your radius dish to accomplish the offset for the wedge?

Chris.
Author:  Paul Burner [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
cwood8656 wrote:
Looks great Paul. I'll be interested in this one as I like the wedge idea. How did you mount your radius dish to accomplish the offset for the wedge?

Chris.


Chris, after profiling and bending the sides, I put them into my mold as shown below. I first aligned my sides to the mold by placing the guitar's top side down onto a flat sanding dish - and made sure the mold was 1/2" to 3/4" above my sanding dish. In other words - my guitar top sticks out of the mold 1/2" to 3/4". You can see that the wedge shape needs to extend further out of the back side of the mold so that when I sanded it I didn't allow my mold to hit my 15' radius sanding dish.

Does this make sense after seeing the photos?
Author:  Hupaand [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:46 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
I spent a few hours once lining up my dishes so I could get the measurements right, and then chickened out. Is the centerline at the tail about 4 1/2" ?
Author:  Paul Burner [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Hupaand wrote:
Is the centerline at the tail about 4 1/2" ?


Right now the centerline on this is 4.425"
Author:  cwood8656 [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:02 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Thanks Paul. That makes sense. I bet it was fun figuring out the profile.

Chris.
Author:  Paul Burner [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 11:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Actually I found a tutorial online here on OLF on how to come up with the radius - it was pretty straight forward.

My only problem (so far) is that I didn't trust my measurements and left my sides quite a bit proud - so I had a lot of sanding to do.
Author:  Fred Tellier [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 12:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
It looks real good Paul, I see the pre profiling templates worked out for you, I still leave about 1/8" oversize on the template as I am also a bit chicken. My second Manzer wedge also Bubinga is in the spray booth right now. Its an OM cutaway as I found the jumbo wedge a little to big for my comfort but its new owner loves it both in sound and playing comfort.

For information the only real issue in a wedge once the back profile is defined is getting the back binding routed as you are dealing with roughly a 5 degree angle in 2 directions instead of one on a normal back. I also had to modify my binding router cradle to get the sides to sit square when I cut the top channels. They sure are a lot more comfortable to play.

Fred
Author:  lactose [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 4:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Cool and interesting. I've thought about the ramifications of the wedge and the only two problems I could think of were binding and kerfing. With the binding channel, I figure it would just be ok to cut the channel based on the side, then scrape the angle on the binding top.

As far as kerfing goes, I assume you would need to make some custom stuff so it sits on the corner properly. I am just hypothesizing. I know some of you have successfully built these. I would love to hear any non top secret details about how you do this.
Author:  Paul Burner [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 4:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
lactose wrote:
As far as kerfing goes, I assume you would need to make some custom stuff so it sits on the corner properly. I am just hypothesizing. I know some of you have successfully built these. I would love to hear any non top secret details about how you do this.


I just put in the kerfed lining and found it exactly the same an a "normal" guitar. I just glued it it a little proud and then dish sanded it just like normal.

The binding will probably be a bit of a challenge.
Author:  Fred Tellier [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 6:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Quote:
The binding will probably be a bit of a challenge


Not a big challenge once you get the sides to sit square in the cradle. I had to slightly modify my cutter shoe that rides on the back, as I cut it pushed the cutter up as it did not ride flat do to the angles of the back radius and was the worst at the cutaway and waist. It needs to make as little contact with the back, maybe 1/8" to 3/16 past the cutter. A dry run around the back will show any problem if there is.

I used Curly Maple on the 1st one and Ebony on the current one that I bent to shape in the Fox bender. It easily twisted into shape along the back, the joint at the rear and neck block needed to be cut at the proper angle.

Fred
Author:  GregG [ Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
I haven't had any problems with the binding on wedge guitars.

Greg
Author:  Mike OMelia [ Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Building my first Manzer Wedge
Nice. That looks like bubinga.

Mike

Oops: I see you mentioned that. Wonderful wood to work with.
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