Official Luthiers Forum!

Since I spend so much time, figuring out how to do my next step, I decided to do three guitars at once, so I could just repeat the step for all three guitars. I’m building one for myself, one for my daughter, and one for my son.

Some more pics

Here’s my powered radius dish sander. Worked like a dream. Lot of dust, but very easy. Just need a dust mask and hold the rims there.

With doubled up sides and solid kerfing, this really would have been a lot of sanding.

Very nice work Thomas and it looks like you have a very cool shop too.

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

Thanks, I converted part of my shop into a woodshop

Nice work, I like the inlays on the top.


Steve

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Is that curly Mahogany for the fronts of 2 of them. It is stunning. All of the wood choices are good.

It seems that you have it figured out. The blue rings around the sound holes tie them together. Modern building always looks neater. I guess my building just needs to not bypass the fixing up ALL THE WAY part.

Is the inlay flooded black epoxy?

_________________
Why be normal?

Looks great Thomas. Do you add side reinforcements/bracing at all? I've just always done it with spruce braces as Benedetto's book has influenced a lot of my building techniques.

Two are all Mahogany and the third is Brazilian Rosewood with a Spruce top.

The inlay is Ebony. I glued two head plates together and cut the rosette inlay first, then from the center cutout that was left over, I cut the crosses inlay. I also used some of the excess to cut the inlay for the neck block on the Brazilian Rosewood guitar.

I added side reinforcements to the second guitar, which is the one with marbled Koa. On the Koa guitar with the Crosses and the Brazilian guitar, I laminated the sides so I didn't add any side braces. The sides are very strong and a crack would be stopped by the inner layer. The Brazilian is .087 thick with a .093 East Indian Rosewood inner layer. The inlayed Koa guitar sides are .100 thick with a Mahogany inner layer that is .080.

I made a mold to hold the sides and glued them together using epoxy. I bought large vacuum storage bags on amazon and put my vacuum pump on it instead of the included hand pump.

My "kerfing" is Spanish Cedar.

It took me a minute to figure out how to bend the purfling around the side of the guitar. I put it in the sink for a few minutes, then taped it to the side form I made.