Official Luthiers Forum!

Today I completed prepping the lining and trimming the braces on my first build; a EIR/Port Orford Cedar 000 with 28 style appointments. I purchased the kit from John Hall and purchased the EIR/Port Orford from Brock.

As soon as I take the time to see how to post some pics, I will. Next....onward to gluing the top and back.

Marc

start rettoping

Nice kerfed lining jig there. I'll have to try that now. thanks.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

Hmmm...Well

Build me a thickness sander.

Made the banding for the Travel Guitar build.

Oh and on the full moon, me went tribal, stripped off all me cloths, danced neekid in the snow and had a nice chat with some fractalinial crystaline dudes from some other dimension in the space time continuum.

Now Fred, aren't you glad you asked.


blessings
Padma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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this topic without pic is useles!!

Fric, be careful what you ask for, you might just get it all.... LOL

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Gee fric...

didn't think you wood need to be spoon fed, sorry about that, so heres a token pic as an appeasement of your value judgment and the link to the thickness sander. Enjoy! http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=31212.




Again sorry, but we was just way too wasted to be taking pics of our sacred full moon dance rituals and be posten them here for infidel eyes to be gaping at.



blessings
Padma

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Whew!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Put the last coats on an oak parlor headed to the Podium in a few weeks, finishing the VSS oak 12 mini jumbo, finished off an F5 mandolin for a local picker and started a new Stealth mandolin for a guy in Germany. Also will start an oak/red spruce GC-6 for a guy in Ohio in a couple of weeks.

Learning to play this:
http://www.brentrup.com/page7/files/page7_2.mp3

blessings
fric

The Padma has more pictures of his sander in the turorial section.

So, I haven't set foot in the shop for probably a month now due to busyness at work and on top of that, I've been trying to draw up parts in CAD for my soon to be CNC purchase. So, actually I've been doing nothing. Virtually I've been busy.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I'm building two guitars in the shop just now, a "grand concert" in nice flame mahogany, and a size 2 tenor of IRw.
Yesterday I finished carving the bracing on the grand concert.

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008907949110

Some guitars in the works right now...

Peter Z

Sorry for the length of this post, I figured the more photos the better but I may be pushing the envelope here.
I bought this guitar years ago on eBay, the photos looked pretty good, it had recently been sold by an auction
house and those photos were the main ones included. It was not expensive, I knew it needed work, just not
this much work. So,when it came I looked it over for a while and realized what I had gotten myself into.
It was indeed an old size 2 guitar, probably a bit before styles were really well defined but close to a style 34.
It has the spruce veneer back which often indicates it will have some fairly spectacular wood on the back, usually
maple or Brazilian rosewood. This one did indeed have some pretty flashy wood. But the crack that was somewhat visible in the photos was much worse in person and the top, with it's ugly over-sized bridge, was pretty rough.
And by the time it got to me, most of the ivory binding on the top and back was off and laying inside the coffin case.
I knew this would be a project I'd have to be in the right mood for. I packed it away, waiting for inspiration.

It finally showed up a few months ago and I decided I could not longer put off the inevitable. It was time to put
this guitar back together and see what kind of a player I could turn it into. I knew that crack needed attention
and that meant the back had to come off. The neck had been reset with too much angle, forcing someone to install
a large spruce shim and some poorly adapted ivory binding to cover it.
I thought there might have been a good chance that the guitar once had an ivory bridge so that was in the works as well. Fortunately, David Warther was able to provide ivory binding strips that were an ideal fit to replace the broken and missing ivory for the back and the neck. The top binding was in pretty good shape and just needed a few pieces to fill in.

Some photos before I began, from the auction and one I took of a portion of the crack that ran down the entire
back of the guitar...



I first removed the neck and it was in pretty bad shape. Very poor geometry caused the angle issues and required
the use of the shim. The portion of the board over the top was not connected to the rest of the board. I didn't want to make a new board so devised a way to re-attach the two sections using slots and small stainless steel reinforcement pieces epoxied into the board. I also doweled the board with tiny ebony turned dowels that fit
into holes on each side of the board to add more rigidity to the repair. I did not get a good photo of those but
here's a view of the reinforcing pieces before glue clean-up. It's a bit hard to visualize, the dovetail is in the center,
two pieces of ivory which were later removed are visible (no idea why they were there) and the repaired splints.

The shim with ivory to "cover" it.


The back came off fairly easily. I knew the repair would never work with the braces in place so I carefully removed
each of them and the back easily separated into two parts. Then I started cleaning up the glue joint and removing
old glue and patches from previous repairs....


What I started with...




In the process of more cleaning...


When both sides had a clean glue joint, they were glued back together with hide glue and a reinforcement
piece of spruce was installed over the crack.


I glued the back on, rebound it with David's great legal ivory and started the french polish process...


It was impossible to hide all the damage to the top and I don't like large bridges to cover damage so I did
a little cleaning to the top, french polished the top, sides and back to add a thin layer to the existing finsh
and improve the looks a bit. Then glued the ivory bridge I made which matched the footprint of the original
bridge.

The back still shows the crack to a small degree but it's an improvement for sure.


This wood was probably a large part of my motivation to get this guitar done. It's not often that Martin
used figured wood like this, I suspect the veneer may have played a part in their choice of this wood,
but it's pretty spectacular rosewood...


That just left the frets. Someone had installed large tang frets, leaving the bar fret slots mostly intact.
I cleaned the slots and installed the last of my original old Martin bar fret stock. I came out one fret short,
my thanks to Frank Ford for sending off a piece of bar fret stock that was an exact match to the rest of the
frets and the guitar was ready to play.
So, from the incredible Jerome's

to the neck block (made in 3 pieces by the way)

it's a great old guitar that could tell a few stories I'm sure.

It was a major job but really worthwhile. If you've made it this far, you must have some interest in
old Martins, thanks for you patience.

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Bruce Herrmann
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Bruce, that's spectacular work and a spectacular guitar! You've combined two things I like very much. Old guitars(Martins and Gibsons especially, but any well made one will do) and small guitars. I have a warm place in my heart for both of them, and will own a small parlor before it's over.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Anatomy and Physiology, Chemistry in addition to a 40 hour work week. 6 AM to 10:30 PM every week night. Then I study, sleep, drink beer and attempt to see a certain girl that I like.