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getting the money to buy the tools I need

Gluing in individual tentallones on classical builds!

(I'm cheating now and gluing in broken off segments of kerfed linings, a la Somogyi and others.)

Making sure the neck angle is right on Spanish heel builds before gluing on the back. Most recent one was dead on, but I never seem to believe it until the saddle is shaped and the 12th fret action is measured.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Lots of the building steps are tedious for me, but most of those are challenging. The part that I really and truly wish I could just make go away is trimming the overhangs off the top and back right after the box is closed. Man....I just hate that part. There is nothing about it that I find gratifying or exciting. It's just pure unadulterated tedium to me.

A quick lap around the guitar with a laminate trimmer and flush-cut router bit and the job's done, with the proviso that you climb-cut where appropriate. What's tedious about that?

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Cheers
Pete

Could you clarify what is a Proxxon Fret tablesaw?

I might get one sometimes... which model is it exactly?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Seriously though, I think the most painful aspect of guitar building, aside from fretwork, is finishing.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

For me it's finishing by far. I really do hate it. I've used water base for ten years now and I still have yet to get it just right. I'm going to do my first French polish in a couple weeks.



Just did that last night on my current flemenco. Assuming like me you do not have a tenon joint I get it real close with a chisel and rasp and then I use an arched sanding block. If necessary I'll finish it off by double stick taping a fresh piece of 60 grit to the body and a few strokes and she fits like a glove.

I don't do my own finishes, and probably never will. If I had to do my own I would probably not build at all.

Outside of finishing, my biggest trepidation is probably routing truss rod slots and accurately cutting the mortise and tenon on the neck block and neck. For some reason these processes feel foreign to me and I'm having difficulty getting comfortable doing it. I need to find a way to practice doing this without worrying about screwing up a guitar-in-progress....

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Jim Hansen

I hear you.

Robby Obriens got a great toot on routing the Mortise and tenons. Requires a bit of jig building, but looks pretty sweet. (no, I haven't built that jig yet) - still experimenting on my process.

As for routing the truss rod slot, I use a router mounted upside down in my workbench and pass the neck along a simple fence that I've clamped to the table - adjust the router a little higher after each pass (and make a mark on the neck so I stop the tress rod routing at the right place. Works for me.

Ouch -
table saws scare me. I know that vigilance is critical with all those tools, but I jsut get a bad feeling about table saws. Too many of those stories.....

Although it's my second one; the most difficult part of acoustic building is to fix a stable neck/body joint.
The neck always seems to bow to the body under string tension (mortise tenon bolt-on )

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Don't worry be happy.

Sanding and Pore filling, by far.

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Mike

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

I hate installing side dots on the FB. I end up sanding a prety steep angle into the board when shaping the neck so I don't want to do it before and no matter how careful I am centering my starting hole I am always nervous.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Proxxon-fine-table-saw-Fet/dp/B0029W0Y1C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314897619&sr=8-1

so far, i´ve enjoyed most of guitar building. cutting the peones (dentellones, tacos) is a bit tedious, though.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

You can speed up the process a lot by splitting rather than sawing most of the surfaces. Square up a stick of spruce, about 1x1 - 1.25x1.25". Cut off a square from the end, the width you want your dentellones. It will make 16 dentellones.

First, split the square in two down the middle, then split each of those two down the middle, so you have 4 little sticks about 1x0.25". Sand the split surfaces smooth, with a few rubs on 60 grit and then 100 grit (you can arch them for better mating to concave curves at this point, getting 2 for the work of 1 )

Then split each of those 4 sticks in two, so you have 8 little rectangles. Sand the split surfaces again (arching again while you're at it, if desired... see notes later). Then split each of those diagonally, and you're done. No need to clean these surfaces, as they're not glued to anything, and the split grain looks cooler in there (not that you can see it without a mirror anyway )

And now, about the second optional arching. Using flat topped dentellones on a dome topped guitar tends to crimp the top flat at the perimeter, especially around the waist when using flat rims, as is typically done in this building style. Angle topped dentellones can help support the dome, so on the split surfaces that you have to sand anyway, you can make some variable angles for different areas of the top. If you want to angle all of them a little bit, you can just change the shape of the long stick that you cut squares from to start with, so each square (actually parallelogram now) is split up like this:

But it's still handy to be able to do some variable arching on the split ones you have to sand anyway. Might even need some flat ones for the neck joint area, depending on your neck angle.

Can someone enlighten me as to what a peone is?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Notching linings for top and back braces tops my list, with a very close second going to finishing.

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

I use an extremely sharp awl to make a pilot point for my drill bit.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Yeah, true - that's a pain. I don't seem to be able to do that very precisely. My linings always seem to have gaps around the braces.

I've spent so much time trying to improve my least favorite step that I've started to like it. What step that is migrates around the guitar.

I think the greatest pain when building the guitar is playing it. I can't play guitar to save my life and so even though I build such a good guitar, I can't play it.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Nice, tight and completely flush neck joint.
Patience is really hard too.

Yes.

Sharpening plane irons and chisels, probably because I don't have good sharpening tools.

Final sanding of the body and getting it all ready for finishing is probably my least favorite task.

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