Sanded/leveled the sides, sanded the back, cut it out, glued it  and clamped it. Progress!

I’ll start gluing some nice braces in tomorrow, maybe start making the spruce top.

Today I leveled the edges of the shell and installed the first set of stringers where the top will attach.. I’ve gone on ad nauseam about the benefits to longitudinal rigidity from using steambent stringers, as opposed to the kerfed softwood linings mass producers use; I won’t belabor the point except to note that this set of steambent stringers is white oak– even more rigid than anything I’ve used in the past.  I also bent the stringers from thicker stock. I had to use big clamps to get them to mate up with the Ovankol sides.

I am pleased with the result. Tomorrow I’ll add the second set of stringers to where the back attaches to the shell.

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Below you can see the steambent stringers dry-fit into the shell.

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On another note, the CNC machine is progressing… slowly. I ran a test job today with a waste piece of pine and it ran fine for awhile– until vibration caused the cutting bit to loosen and drop deeper into the workpiece. I had to hit the emergency stop button PDQ or it could have wrecked the cutting bit and scored up the cutting table (again). I am not sure the router I am using has a good enough bit holder to use in this application. The CNC machine has been a lot of struggle for, so far, no return. Good for the character though I suppose.

Step by step… tomorrow I’ll do the linings.

Looks pretty symmetrical to me, the new forms I am using are helping matters along.

I trimmed the sides so there will be taper, back to front on the instrument, and then glued in the headblock. The neck will be bolted to this, by and by. No more work on this guitar for today: tomorrow, I will glue in the tailpiece block.

Go a lot done today. I bent up the sides for a new guitar — Ovankol, which is related to Rosewood, but is not endangered– and glued up the back.

The bending went “OK” but not perfect. Some minor cracking on the inside bend at the waist, which I believe I can repair, but may rule this one out as my tour de force guitar. I don’t think I had the heating blanket set high enough– I’ve never worked with bending Ovankol before. I found some nice backs in Cherry in my wood stash, which bends beauifully and sounds great, so maybe I’ll zip around this afternoon and source some cherry boards to mill up for a set of sides. It never hurts to have more than one guitar in the pipeline.

The last thing I did, since the shop is nice and warm and good for gluing, was glue up the Ovankol back. First I plane the edges where the 2 halves go together, closely enough that when I hold them up pressed together to a light I can’t see light through. Then I glue them in the jig below.

The trick is, you set the 2 halves together so they form a triangle, then clamp wedges on each side of the 2 halves. You apply glue and then (first removing the support stick) press them flat. The fact the edges are stable means the 2 halves exert pressue on each other. You clamp it down with a gluing caul and let it dry. Done.

As long as the planing was done right, and none of the clamps move, you can’t even tell there’s a glue line there.

So I find I have more time on my hands than I’ve had in decades… as I have joined the millions idled due to COVID and I no longer have a day gig for now. But I spend my mornings looking for paid work and I can spend my afternoons in the shop.  Building guitars is great for the soul.

I have big plans. I am going to make my best guitar ever, and it’s going to be the real deal.

I have upgraded my guitar-side-bender, and I have built some forms to hold them in shape while I attach the sides to the end blocks and insert linings. The guitars should be considerably more symmetrical now. 😉

Lastly I am FINALLY going to get the CNC machine working. I am chewing through pine 2X4’s, finding faults with the machine and the program that runs it… but one fine day, soon, I will be able to rough out a neck and have it ready for final hand shaping. If you look at the video, turn off your speakers: it’s not a pleasant sound.

The Minnesota Nurse’s Association put out a call for unopened N95 masks and gloves… those poor people are trying to deal with the pandemic without protective gear.

I found some unopened in my supply cupboard. It’s nothing… but it’s something.

Stay safe out there people.

I have been remiss about posting, not that anybody reads this or anything, but anyways here’s another I built.

It’s an acoustic guitar with one passive humbucker pickup, and a bolt on Stratocaster-style neck. You can see the big honking neck block that the neck bolts into:

The internal bracing is ladder-style, much like that of a Maccaferri Selmer gypsy jazz guitar, the idea being that I wanted it to have punchy attack and short sustain. I even used a manouche-style rosette – albeit rotated 90 degrees – to make it conjure up that kind of look. Cedar top on this one so it wouldn’t be too bright-sounding.

The idea here is to create a jazz box you can play without amplification, with a very familiar hand-feel to people who play Strats and Telecasters as a rule, but with the option to jack in when you’re on stage.

This was the second guitar I’ve built that I used a water-based lacquer on. The stuff looks good but you need to rotate the guitar body in 3 dimensions while it flashes off, otherwise it runs down and forms drips. I am thinking about a way to make a machine that will rotate the body while I spray it and continue to rotate it until it’s really dry. I like the finish, even though it’s tricky, because I am dead-set against any more chemical exposures.

It’s a nice guitar. I think somebody is going to like it. I like it.

I picked up an EKO Rancher XII today… and by ‘picked up’ I mean when I bought it I almost got a hernia. The thing weighs 7+ pounds. It ws made in the 1960’s or early 70’s.

I have been looking around for an inexpensive 12 string for awhile and playing a bunch. I can honestly say this 50 year old thing is the best sounding and best playing 12 string guitar I tried out over the last week. The only thing is, it shouldn’t be. Everything is wrong on this guitar and yet it all conspires to make it just right.

It’s a 50 year old 12 string. Guitars warp insanely or just collapse after 10 or 15 years of fighting all that string tension. This one has no warpage and the action is perfect. There are cracks in the lacquer and normal scuffs. Otherwise it’s fine.

The top is not solid spruce or solid cedar or solid anything. It’s plywood. Plywood sounds bad, as a rule. Plywood usually sounds dead, bcause glue doesn’t resonate. This sounds great though. The notes are articulate and airy.

The neck is bolt on. That’s rarely done in acoustic guitars. It can affect sustain. This guitar rings all day long, though. There’s also a little shim underneath altering the angle of the neck,  so the neck isn’t even in full contact with the neck block. This should also adversely affect sustain. It doesn’t on this guitar.

Other weirdness: It also has a brass I-beam running through its entire length. I guess that’s why it’s heavy, and also why it survived 50 years without twisting or taco-ing.  The trapeze tailpiece also helps the guitar’s integrity– the top is only fighting down pressure, not torque or pulling. So the top hasn’t collapsed.

It has a ‘zero fret’.  People have looked down on zero frets for decades. This one works fine, the action is low as can be and does not buzz at all.

The saddle and nut are made of aluminum. I’ve never seen that. Nobody uses aluminum.

The saddle adjusts with 2 big screws that twist into brass ferrules in the body. Very poor practice as a rule. The saddle should rest on the full width of the bridge to tranmit vibration into the guitar’s top. This one only transmits the sound through the ferrules. It’s wrong;  This guitar makes it work.

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At some point, somebody recoated the lacquer with some thick clear stuff, of the kind you use when you want to put a deep, thick coat on a bar and inset pennies in it in a tavern somewhere in northern Wisconsin. By rights, this thick lacquer should kill any resonance the plywood top has. But it doesn’t.

While I was shopping for inexpensive guitars, I did play expensive ones to get some idea of where price and sound intersected with these. This thing is a joy to play and sounds better than an 1800.00 Taylor 456e I tried, a Larrivee 12 string that cost 2400.00, 2 different 500.00 Guilds, and a vintage Harmony Regal. This one cost 300.00. SCORE!

This thing just shouldn’t sound good but it does. It’s a wonderful guitar. I’m adding a Fishman under-saddle pickup and then it’s going to play out sometime.

Guitars are magic and sometimes it all comes together when it shouldn’t. When the magic happens, it’s worth taking note of.

I put the bridge on the guitar today. Because accurate bridge placement is crucial to making sure the guitar plays in tune all the way up and down the neck, it’s something you need to get right the first time.  I have a trick.  I don’t think anybody else does it this way.

When I install a bridge, it’s actually almost the last step in building the guitar. I’ve finished the body, except for a patch where the thing gets glued on. To determine the exact spot the bridge needs to lie, I’ve dummied up some temporary devices.

• I temporarily attach a trapeze tailpiece to the guitar so I can anchor the strings.
• I actually string up the low and high E and tune them up to pitch. Notice, the bridge is not secured to the top at this stage except by string tension. The two little blocks you see are to make sure that the string spacing is correct at nut and saddle since everything’s floating free.
• I test the tone with the open strings and tune them with an electronic tuner to be precisely E (low and high). I then fret each string at 12 and make sure it is exactly E, but one octave higher. I can adjust the intonation by moving the bridge fore and aft, until it is dead on with both strings. I won’t accept even a penny’s variation.
• I also slide the bridge back and forth across the belly of the guitar so the strings lie correctly athwart the neck.
• When I am satdfied the bridge is EXACTLY where it needs to be, I box it in with painter’s tape.
• I take the strings and trapeze off, and drill 2 tiny holes whee the bridge pins are going in at the 2 E strings.
• Using glue, 2 wood screws, and clamps, I glue the bridge down.

That’s it. Any variation in intonaton that i find during final setup can be addresed by beveling the saddle one way or the other, strng by string. This mounting method is accurate enough that I find I have no issue with the final tweaks.

The area the bridge needs to attach to is unfinished.

The trapeze is just held on with a nylon loop around the strap button.

Once I’m satisfied with bridge placement I block it off with painter’s tape.

Clamps and screws exert respectable gluing pressure.