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After my last posting it was suggested that I submit a build thread so here it goes. For those that read my last posting I have become interested in lowering the costs of my builds. Many readers could relate with my new philosophy and many respectfully disagreed, which was to be expected. My intention of this thread is not to sway others one way or the other, it is just to document my journey building in a new way. Enjoy

1. I have always used published plans on my previous builds and as liberating as it would be to build without a set of plans I cannot bring myself to take that leap just yet. So last night I drafted a few drawings of a guitar I plan on building. I would say it is losely based on an early Torres, with a 650mm scale.

I've been thinking about what wood combination to use on this build. While searching the web I came accross an interesting database of woods that includes Specific Gravity, Hardness, Bending Strength, and Elasticity. This was very interesting to compare the more traditional woods used in luthery to the local domestic woods I plan on using. The link is www.wood-database.com.

Looking at the data on spanish cedar/cedro it has an average dry weight of 30 lbs/ft3, Basic Specific Gravity of .38, Hardness of 600lbf, Bending Strength of 11,640 lbf/in2, and Elasticity of 1,338,000 lbf/in2. I was surprised to see that the three domestic woods that were closest to this were Cherry, Poplar and Fir.

This morning I glued up a neck blank using a board of Black Cherry I had in the shop. The neck blank used about 3 bdft which is going for $4.00 bdft here in Minnesota.

$12.00

Sounds like a good plan. I look forward to an update.

Is it worth having a build thread room or a "blog" area?

Good to see that you didn't listen to the naysayers Chris!

I've got a few sub $200 builds, one looks it another is fair and the one that came in at $161.00 I am quite proud of.
Can't wait to see what you come up with.

Steve

Totally looking forward to the progress of this 'budget build'. Saving some bucks and still getting a quality build is a goal I work on regularly...though it can be challenging, at least it isn't expensive to make a mistake.

These threads are very valuable to me. I am pretty much a beginner and very curious to see how other people do it. I recently started a blog about what will eventually be a headless archtop. I am a little worried about looking like a fool to the world, but I guess we all start at zero.

I really like your low cost angle.

With the neck wood chosen, I now had do decide on the sides and back. It is funny how at certain times in life things just fall into place. As I was driving into work this morning I passed a local golf course that had cut down a whole lot of trees this past weekend. I could tell right off that they were black walnut. I gave the groundskeeper a call and explained that I build acoustic guitars and that if he had any short logs that the saywer would not take, I would be very greatfull to purchass a few. He went on to say that the shorter pieces were going to be split into firewood and I was welcome to take whatever I wanted and not to worry about buying them he was happy to see them used for something other than burning.

Now ten years ago I wouldn't have thought about using these logs for a guitar, they are wet and are sure to warp, twist, check and ultimatly be a waste of time and energy. That was until I read a book by John Alexander, Make a Chair from a Tree: An Introduction to Working Green Wood (1978). This book really opened my eyes to working with the medium of wood and how I was always fighting with the seasonal changes of wood instead of embrasing it and using it as a benifit to my woodworking, sounds Kind of zen like dosn't it. If you have never had the opportunity to use a wedge and froe to rive a billet of wood I would highly recomend it before you pass on. I still am amazed at how easily a very large timber can be split straight and true using such a crude tool. After choosing a billet about three feet long I split it into wedges about 1" thick which will need to dry a bit before refining them further. Another great benefit of riving wood is that your always going to have quartered stock. A side note on using green wood is that it is very important that there is not twist in the log, most trees spiral as they grow and some spiral more than others. This will cause the split to follow the twist and your wedges will not be as thin, which in turn will make more work later on.

I will discuss more on this topic later on.

Running Total $12.00

Today I was able to cut the v-scarf joint for the headstock, shape the heal, and hammer the first veneer on the headstock. I highly recomend the book, Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking: A Step-By-Step Guide to Essential Woodworking Techniques on veneering with hide glue. I can't tell you how I stuggled with veneering until I read this book. One of the benifits of hammer veneering is no clamps, cauls, or fancy contraptions.

Hoping to get the neck completed tomorrow.

Made a trip to the lumber yard today to search for brace wood and possibly a top for this build. Living in Minnesota we have no shortage of spruce construction lumber. I was able to search the ends of stacks for spruce which has little difference of color between early and late wood growth, it sticks out fairly well from the pine and fir in these large stacks. I found quite a few 2x10's that were rift sawn and a couple that were quartered but had the pith in the center. I picked out one of each and made sure I neatly restacked the lumber.

I bucked the lumber into 24" pieces and then began to rive the wood. Spruce splits so nice. The rift sawn lumber actually yeilded a higher amount of bracewood, because your splitting perpendicular to the growth rings the narrower quarter sawn lumber usually split at an angle which left a wedge shaped piece, so most of the quarter sawn stock ended up in the fire pile.

I could have used part of the quarter sawn 2x10 for a few tops but I was a little concerned on the run out that would occur when I resawed them into blanks. I think I'm going to look at cedar for the top on this guitar anyway.

As you can see I have enough brace wood to complete maybe 30 guitars, and this is from two pieces of construction grade 2x10s, at a cost of $4.60 each. I'm not sure what type of spruce this is, if I was to guess I would say white or possibly black, which seams to be the most common here in Minnesota. After planing a short piece it looks exactly like the sitka were all so familier with.


Running Total $16.60

Our kids had a sleep over last night so I was stuck in the shop, Dads not cool to have around when friends are over. Just as well I got quite a bit done. Finished the neck and I am pleased with how it turned out, I will post photos later today.

I did want to mention that I ordered some cedar for the top, not from an online Luther supplier, but from the local lumber yard. I once read that you could get nice soundboards from cedar shakes. Since this is an experiment in frugality I thought I would check this out for myself. What I discovered was a bit disappointing. First off the bundle of shakes were $58.00 and are meant to cover 20 square feet of roof with an 12 inch exposure. Cedar shakes like anything else comes in different grades, with "blue label best" being what the industry classifies as true quartered, hand-split, 100% heartwood 3/4" to 1" thick and 24" long, sounds pretty good so far.

At pretty much the same price as one AAA top I could get maybe 50 tops, or so I thought...

When the cedar arrive it looked really nice, lots of 8" wide clear cedar shakes on the top. A quick look at the ends showed that they were nicely quartered with very tight growth rings. I really thought I would never have to buy another soundboard for the rest of my life.

Now for the bad news, although the shakes were close to 1" thick on one end the other tapered down to maybe an 1/8", making it next to impossible to saw the piece into two pieces in lengths long enough for a standard top. However when the lumberyard gives you lemons make lemon-aide. I decided that I had all this really nice cedar I might as well see what I can to with it. I cut the shakes down to 21" which cleaned up the ends. This made it possible for me to pick out pieces with similar color and ring spacing. After mixing and matching about a hundred shakes I ended up with maybe twenty 3-4 piece tops, some have tighter grain than any master grade soundboard I’ve ever purchased with an astounding 40+ rings per inch across the entire piece. Most of the tops were around 20+ rings per inch.

Up to this point I would have never thought about using 3-4 piece tops, and to be honest It still does not feel right. Maybe after completing this guitar I will change my tune, but for now I’m going for it!

Chris-
Don't worry about using slightly mis-matched and/or 3/4/more piece tops. Apparently Torres did it all the time!
So you are in good company with that!
Lots of ideas on sourcing cheap materials came up in the MIMF $100 challenge, which you have probably seen.
http://www.mimf.com/cgi-bin/WebX?14@1.hxpcaPHkF1z.0@.ee6c2e0
For me, making an 'average' guitar with very expensive woods would be a disappointment, doing the same with budget materials is satisfying.

Cheers
John

Here are the photos I promised. Sorry the lighting is a little off.

Chris-
The neck is looking good-nice clean work.
If you are really not keen on the multi-piece top, I'd just get a decent but cheap Englemann spruce or WRcedar top and use that.
You can get acceptable tops in the $20 (or less) range quite readily if you look around a bit.
Cheers
John

Chris;
That head angle looks pretty steep for a classical .
How many degrees is it?

I really like this thread !
Mike

_________________
Mike Collins

Chris;
That head angle looks pretty steep for a classical .
How many degrees is it?

I really like this thread !
Mike

_________________
Mike Collins

I like your idea on building with less expensive materials. I'm just begining my first guitar but I've grown up in the woodshop making furniture. I have been wondering about materials that are imported because they are more "stable" or have some other characteristic that's desirable. Are they really better than our domestic woods or is it mostly tradition? Been considering a cherry neck myself.

Didn't I tell you I'm building a lute. Your absolutly right, the headstock is at 15 degrees, with string angles at 20, 22, and 26 degrees which is a bit high for most makers. I personally like the asthetics of a steeper angled headstock and I don't think it plays that big of part in the tonality of the instrument, maybe a bit more string tension. It must be that "left brain" mode of building guitars.

Thanks for the feedback.

Didn't I tell you I'm building a lute. Your absolutly right, the headstock is at 15 degrees, with string angles at 20, 22, and 26 degrees which is a bit high for most makers. I personally like the asthetics of a steeper angled headstock and I don't think it plays that big of part in the tonality of the instrument, maybe a bit more string tension. It must be that "right brain" mode of building guitars.

Thanks for the feedback.

I thought I would turn my attention to the sides this morning. The split billets have been stacked in the corner of my shop for about a week slowly losing moisture. I tend to keep dying lumber in the shop area for two reasons, the first is it tends to dry a bit slower which seems to prevent deep end checking and the second reason is that it adds humidity to the shop. The billets are still very wet but have lost about half their weight in just a week.
I am working on the piece that will make up the two sides which is about 8-10” wide and 36” long. The hardest part of this step is coming up with the best way to secure the billet as you are working. I’ve tried all sort of clamps, ropes, vises and other contraptions to hold it in place but have found a few blocks clamped to the bench and a wedge under the work seems to work best for me. With the billet secured I went to work with a scrub plane. On a typical board that is dry I would use this plane diagonally across the board however with this billet as wet as it is I find that a more perpendicular approach works a bit faster. I have the cambered blade set for a heavy 1/16” shaving which works surprisingly well. This would be a very daunting task if the wood was dry.
After planing the first side flat (or relatively flat) it was time to flip the work and bring the board down to ¾”. Again working perpendicular to the grain, the wood peeled off without that great of effort. With the two flats complete I trued up one edge and cut the board to 30”
I will give this board another week or so to loss a bit more moisture before working it any further.

Chris,
Just wanted to say that I am really enjoying your thread! Keep it up - it's quite inspirational.

Cheers
Rick

It was time to work on the soundboard. First the cedar shakes were planed to approximatly 3/16” which gave me a good look at the grain and color of each piece. After deciding which pairs to match I jointed and candled each joint. I joined the two plates with hide glue using a simple rub joint, no clamps here.

Chris,
This is great, I'm a new builder and don't have a lot of money to invest.... I love the idea of building a good quality guitar for a reasonable price. I called my local lumber yard today and I’m going to check out their cedar shakes tomorrow.
Thanks, and keep up the good work

Jeff

With the soundboard underway I wanted to turn my attention to the rosette. I have found a very useful tool to help with the design of my rosette, it is Google sketch up. I find it very easy to design a rosette to scale and figure out angles, dimensions, and color schemes. Sketchup is a free download from Google.
I am in the process of gluing up the blocks of veneers which will be used in the rosette. I was thinking about using purchased veneers for the blocks but being that the goal of this project is to keep costs down I used small scraps from around the shop. It was easier than I thought cutting the strips needed, and with a few passes of a block plane the veneers were ready for glue-up.
Slightly thinned down yellow glue was used for the blocks which works well, however while this thinned down glue is more than strong enough for a rosette it does seem to be very susceptible to separating when exposed to high humidity so I’ve been storing my finished blocks in a small plastic bag.
After the blocks have cured for at least 24 hours I plane them square. My eight year old calls these shavings “clown shavings”, which I cannot think of a better name. These colorful clown shavings put a smile on my face every time I make them.

Sometimes a bit of humility is good for the soul. Today I was having some electrical work done at our house. When the electrician entered the shop he was really interested in the guitar being built on the bench. We talked about how the instruments are built and the materials used. I even offered to show him how I glue up the soundboard, since I was at the point to join the two plates. He watched as I jointed the two mating pieces and candled them. He watched as I heated up the hide glue. He watched as the glue was quickly spread across the joint. He even watched as the wax paper I was using under the wood wedge it’s self into the joint. I remained calm and told him what had happened and if I act quickly I could add more glue to the joint and the hide glue would stay pliable. So I quickly separated the two plates, added more glue to the work (probably a bit too much), and proceeded to try and get these two pieces together all the while trying to look like an experienced and knowledgeable luthier. I could tell that I would not be satisfied with this joint and it resembled more like one of those sticky fly paper traps than a beautiful cedar soundboard. I told electrician that this is not how this usually goes and that I needed to separate the two plates and start over after the glue dries. He smiled and went about his work while a scraped the gelled glue from the cedar. Life is funny like that, you start to think you’re getting pretty good at something and out of nowhere it puts you in your place. What I learned today is that I will have to keep an eye on that wax paper from now on and never let an electrician watch you glue up a top.

Chris-
Been there, done that! in one way or another is the story for most of us, I think!

Keeps us from 'getting too big for our boots', as my Grandma used to say.
Great story- thanks!
Cheers
John