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Hello,

I ordered some SM reverse kerfing, both mahogany and basswood. Up until now I've been using the LMI stuff, but standard not reverse. The SM reverse kerfing came in 16" lengths and the description on the site indeed says it takes 8 pieces to do a typical guitar. This surprised me as I was under the impression that reverse kerfing it's much more difficult to hide the seam and you want to have one single piece for each side of the rims. I typically will spritz the kerfing and form it to the outside of the body mold to kind of pre-bend it.

I haven't looked closely at this yet, but just butting the pieces together might look bad. Maybe there is something interesting to do with the side struts to align them with the seams of the kerfing?

Just curious if you use SM kerfing what your experience has been.

Thanks!
Brad

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I recently bought 4 pcs. of reversed kerfing from LMI and they were full length. I have broken them in the past and a square butt joint is pretty invisible.

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

Thanks, Brad. I'll give it a shot tonight and see how it goes.


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Going around the back edge inner most waist curve using RR lining generally will require spit and aa joint to keep it flush and on track.



There are butt joints all over the place on an acoustic guitar -- it will only look bad if you do a sloppy job. $02

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Indeed.


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I use a rubber eraser with 220 to sand the linings. Just put a bit of titebond on the crack and sand over the top. It will pretty much disappear.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I'm guilty too but sometimes I wonder if we worry too much about cosmetic issues, particularly inside the box. I doubt many guitar players would look inside the box and notice an unsightly butt joint in the reversed kerfed lining. Many would not even notice that the linings are reverese. Heck some wouldn't even know what the kerfed lining is for or that it can be made to look nice and clean.

I know sweating the details is part and parcel with the handmade instrument thing but at some point we are just doing it for ourselves.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I was just thinking, the only time I have ever looked into my guitar was when my pick disappeared.

Al Carruth kept telling the story of how some buyers would use a jewler's loupe to look for imperfections, mismatched seams, finish blemishes, etc.. I always thought that I'd never want to get to the point where I would feel I couldn't just rip it out of their hands and tell them to go somewhere else.

I know there have been some amazing examples of extraordinary work here, and I am often awed, so more power to those of you who do that level of detail. I just hope I never do... unless it adds $20 to the agreed upon price.

Hmmm I used to always cut the ones that came in full length because they were easier to deal with. At 16 inches it will probably be behind the waist curve anyway right?

Point taken. But the thing you all are forgetting is the effect on tone.


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Use reverse kerf all the time, usually in sections 5 or 6 inches as I try to follow the curve of the pre-shaped rims.
Angle the butt joints to keep them neat (I use the belt sander), titebond in the joint, sand over them when finished like Steve said.
Just keep any joints away from the waist to be "round the corner" when viewing through the soundhole.

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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.

I've bought the stewmac stuff before...its identical to this >> http://www.grizzly.com/products/Kerfing ... rizzly.com

except its twice as long as the SM stuff...at one point I had grizzly and stewmac stuff on hand. I lined two pices of SM lining up to the one grizzly piece and the difference in length was about the width of a single cut.

I started making my own linings eventually though. Definitely worth it.

I think maybe there is a place for this..... But it seems to me that this place is somewhere down the line after setup, intonation, fretwork, and neck set are Just right. But not everybody agrees with me.

I guess one thing to keep in mind is that people pay a fortune for old guitars which are a mess inside. Glue blobs, gaps, saw marks.... So there are a lot of people who aren't bothered by this if the narrative is right.

Then.. There are a lot of people who don't even know a guitar has an "inside"

Lol.. Once - I bought this used low budget (<$300) guitar... I was the 3rd owner and it was about 10 years old. I was looking inside to try to figure out why it sounded so boxy. Saw something stuffed down in it. Took the strings off to find a crumpled up Chinese daily newspaper that had been used to mask the soundhole during finishing. Not one page mind you - about 15 newspaper pages and it filled up almost the entire lower bout. It still sounded like a cheap Chinese guitar after I took it out.. But it did sound better.

Another cheap guitar had the linings glued to the rims - but the linings missed the top by about 1/8" all the way around. This guitar was made in the early 80's and I stumbled on it last year - so 30+ years old.

The moral is... There are people who inspect every single thing and people who never even look inside.

Being new to all of this I tend to weight what I think is "important" based on the amount of time the documentation / video spends talking about said subject. I don't have another point of reference. Another example is the shooting board thread. There is so much time devoted to discussing the shooting board and other methods that I felt I had to do more than just run it through the power jointer. Feedback from folks here is that would be fine.

That's why these forums are so important and why we should all send Lance some money. You can quickly get opinions and clarity on a subject that would take years to form on your own.

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There is no argument that there is a small return on the time invested in cleaning up the inside of the box. However, I don't like the inside of my guitars to look like an old Gibson. It's a craftsmanship thing about how I build guitars and it doesn't really matter if the user will see it or not. That said, there are some who are much more picky than I am.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

You could shoot the ends with a plane until no light was visible in the joint. Might need to make a jig...

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Pat