Official Luthiers Forum!

Been a while , so I guess I will kick it off here !

Can anyone guess what has Happened here

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

inadverdent skunk stripe.

Looks like you are installing one of those special 8" reverse truss rods that go in from either side of the neck.
Or, you didn't have the router bit tightened eough, and it raised itself through the neck. Is there a prize for the correct answer.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Thats what it ended up being

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

You could be on your way to a 'Signature Neck'. Better call the patent office!!!

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Well you could always put LED lights in it and call it a custom feature... Maybe have them change color and flash to the beat.

Sorry you had to go through all the work to win the Doofus award but we all have our "geratric" moments...

Bob

A little paint should fix it.

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

B&B. Bondo and a burst.

Looks like the old cut twice, measure once.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Might as well saw it down the middle, add a strip of maple, reglue, and reshape!
No need to waste the wood.

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

That is a great idea Chris!

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Results, Pink Ivory to match the bindings

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

That actually looks nice!

I thought it was a design innovation to increase loudness by decreasing energy robbing mass... You lost $500 in value by "fixing" it.

NOW you tell me ???

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Nice recovery!

I recently thicknessed a very nice Adi top about .025 too thin after neglecting to zero my Dad's old caliper before I started. Might be able to keep it as thick as .100 now. More likely .090 or 95. I suppose I could experiment with a thin, lattice braced top?

Was in a hurry, had to fix dinner or something. That kind of rushed approach has led to botched finishes, substandard joining jobs that needed to be fixed, uneven bridge pin holes....lots of stupid stuff, and I'm only on #6 .

Now I never, ever go into the shop to sneak a task in while in a hurry to get somewhere else. Along with my personal, minor travails, my friend jointed off the ends of his fingers thataway.

That looks very, very familiar.... I did the same thing myself on #1! On the bright side, I recently set up the guitar again, and it plays and sounds better than when I'd first finished it...

Taller braces, double X, no?

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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.

"Taller braces, double X, no?"

Every mistake is an opportunity to try something new, or something like that. My good friend sanded through the veneer on the corner of a fine table, and after some consternation inlaid small ebony squares at each corner. Now a commonly requested feature of his work. Go figure....I may find "my" bracing pattern before the saga is complete

Very Somogyi-esque .

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sweat the small stuff.

I've done that twice - both times the router bit rose up. After the first time I was tightening the bit collar as tight as I could but apparently that wasn't enough. Now I cut the slot in several shallow passes rather than all in one go. So far, so good.

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

.090" isn't unusable at all for something as stiff as adi. Especially for a large guitar, according to my building style.

The most important thing is to use a bracing pattern that supports behind the bridge. A large bridge plate can be part of that, possibly softwood with just a small hardwood pin plate to keep the weight down. Though if the guitar is 15" lower bout or smaller, then weight is unlikely to be an issue.

Next, use a larger number of braces than usual so there are no large spans of unsupported plate, which are squishy and seems bad for tone to me.

The other thing to do is interconnected bracing, so the plate is never left to fend for itself. A regular lattice is naturally interconnected, but you can do it with normal X bracing as well, by notching the X to fit over the ends of all the smaller braces. Lot of work, but opens up more possibilities in bracing design.

Here's the 15" lower bout Indian rosewood top I'm currently working on. About .070" thick or a bit less. Similar stiffness to spruce of the same thickness. It's still very stiff with the bracing like this. Probably will shave a bit more after I get to the open backed box stage. The doubled soundhole braces are probably a bit overboard, and definitely not necessary at .090". The tape bits are just side brace location markers.



And a harp guitar, also using interconnected bracing but without the large bridge plate. The top on this one is about .100", but stiffer than most redwood. It's over a year old now, and holding up nicely. This pattern would probably work well for your .090" adi if it's a 16" lower bout. May only need 2 fingers each side (this is a 12 fret neck with a high waist, so the east and west quadrants have more area to cover than usual).

hmm. Compare that to minimal bracing in say a Tacoma chief. Completely different direction. The meticulous notching looks nice but is it necessary? I don't know much about harp guitar design either. Thanks for those pictures. It is always interesting to see how others evolve their bracing.

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

Yeah, the Tacoma bracing is an interesting one. I'd love to peel the soundboard off one of those and weigh it. That pattern of only 3 braces seems like it would work well if the plate is very thick, but at the size of a bass, it would be very heavy, and thus very quiet. But then, acoustic bass guitars do have a reputation for that, don't they?

As for whether the notching in my thin plate bracing is necessary, I say yes. In the traditional style, we still talk about needing to get plenty of overlap between the bridge wings and the X brace. That's the same thing. It's just that none of the other braces have as much of a structural role in the traditional style. Plus when you carve down to zero, the remaining plate thickness is still pretty stiff.

That said, I'm also interested in the opposite direction... getting almost all the stiffness from the plate itself, with very minimal bracing. Here's one variant I've done, which has the two big cross braces of the traditional classical pattern, but the bridge is the only brace in the active area. Sounds great.


So the direction I'm heading now with my building is that small instruments should get most of their stiffness from the plate, and large instruments (or ones with dense soundboard woods) should get most from the bracing. Sort of a mass-constant style. Small instruments need extra mass or they become harsh, large instruments need low mass or they become quiet and boomy.

spent the money, time, and effort to put flamed maple bindings with b/w/b purfling on top, back and sides, only to have left the bindings too proud of the sides, resulting in most of that pretty maple laying on the floor in shaved curls. I think my learning point here is to cut the binding channels just before I'm ready to install the binding. Cutting, then letting it sit for days allows the wood to swell a little bit, and the shelves get too small.