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This is my first foray into classical guitar building, and I quite enjoyed it. Robbie O'Brien's Youtube tutorial on classical bridge making was exactly what I needed to take the mystery out of making the bridge.

The specs are as follows:
-Curly maple back and sides, sitka top
-Jatoba rosette, binding, and end flash
-Laminated Cedro Espino neck with curly maple center stripe, reinforced with carbon fiber, bolted on mortise and tenon
-Cativo fretboard
-Zapatero headplate and bridge
-Gotoh tuners, and corian nut, saddle, and tie block strips
-575 mm scale
-12 7/16" lower bout, 8 1/8" waist, 9 5/8" upper bout
-3 7/16" - 3 3/16" body depth

This is my 8th guitar, and is for my son Andrew, who just turned 4 years old. Thanks for looking!

Cute as a bug!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Nice Lincoln! Another lucky kid. I wish I had seen Robbie's bridge vid before I did my last one. Hard to keep track of all those great O'Brian videos.

"mini classical", or, 6-string ukelele?
i love it, i had to BEG for a junker steel string till i was about 12.......

That's very cool. Just a design question - why the flat wide heel on a classical?

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Thanks, everyone! I enjoyed building this one, and I'm actually playing it more often than my regular guitar right now.

Jim, I started doing the wide, flat heel on my steel strings after playing a jazz guitar with a similar heel, and noticing that I had access to about one more fret than I did with a larger heel, even without a cutaway. I also find it easier to account for the neck angle, and I have an easier time shaping the heel, because I can set up my tablesaw to cut the heel to width. Then when I shape the heel, I can use a router with a 3/8" roundover to make the initial shape, and just fair the curves into the rest of the neck with a rasp or spokeshave.

In addition, I figured that since I was doing a bolt-on classical neck anyway, I might as well do something else to make the purists cringe.

Very nice Lincoln!!

You may have a lot a reasons to make a heel like that but I have one reason not too. It looks clunky. Your guitars are getting to the point where they look professionally made but that heel is holding you back and preventing you from moving to the next level.

I am not talking about the style of heel. A wide heel can be made to be very attractive. But yours is too big and it looks like it just came off a drum sander with little additional shaping.

Thanks, Jack and Barry.

Barry, when you say too big, do you mean too much meat on it, as in it should be thinner (carved closer to the body)? Is the roundover adding or subtracting from the design? I think that the picture of the heel was at an angle that made it look bigger than real life, and that did not do it any favours, but I'm open to suggestions nonetheless.

I do appreciate all comments, and especially the ones that help make my next guitar better.

if it doesn't look exactly like every other classical ever made, some people are just gonna trip.....
i think the traditional triangular/wedge shape might be to mitigate heel cracking, which classicals seem to like to do

Very nice. Looks like an early Christmas for OLF kids this year

That is a nice little guitar, your son should be happy with it, I hope that he plays it!

I get what Barry is saying about the heel. I see this issue on so many guitars from early builders, I don't usually point it out unless the situation is, as Barry observes, that it becomes an issue holding the builder back in their development. The heel needs to be carved with an eye to is as sculpture: shape, proportion, scale, fluidity, etc. I like the square heels, but they are difficult to get "just right" I think that the Selmer guitars are the go-to example of a square heel that got it right.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

So, from a design and proportion perspective, how is this one?

Granted, it's an OM, but I do want to get your thoughts on this. I don't feel like taking the neck off the little classical and reshaping the heel, but I might if it's really too ugly. Part of the reason I left it a little bigger is that the whole neck was an experiment, and the wood (cedro) was really soft.

I'm truly grateful for your input.

Looks OK from the photo, but the photo does not show very much. I wouldn't worry about this particular one, given the player and his concerns. In the future, if you're concerned about structure, a lot of it can be internal to the guitar body.

_________________
Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Way to go Lincoln! You're really putting them out!

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