Thread: Acoustic build no 1

Whoa, looks fantastic.

I'd love to have a go at French polishing one day but I don't think I'll make my first attempt on a guitar. Something nice and flat would probably be a bit easier to start with.

Nice job!

The last pics I put up were the first stages of the polish job, as a general rule I reckon the filling of the grain takes three goes, shellac sink's in over a few day's,so three bodying up jobs required.

On a guitar it's such a small thing to work on ,45 minutes three times should do it,15 minutes for a cut back , and half an hour for another body,then it's on to the finishing up.so I have given it two goes so far, the first pictures are after the first body.

I went in to work today and made basic jig for the tuner holes, ground a drill to do the bush for them,made a test pyramid bridge out of pine , and stained it black,took pics of the interesting bit's, and at the end of the day found that my darling 15 yo daughter did not replace my cf card after I let her use my camera.

cheers Rob

Did this first jig for the tuner holes but got it wrong somewhere ,so tried a more simple approach
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Re ground a drill to do the bush,the end leads the bit down the first hole,it steps out to do the cut
Attachment 158075

I did a rough sample of a pyramid bridge in pine, then painted it with black spirit colour and used the heat gun to dry,I want to refine it a bit ,may do a second try with cherry before I try ebony, was thinking of doing the slot with a scratch stock,which would have been the old way it was probably done,and may be the fastest if I dont have the right bit for the router.

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Cheers Rob

It,s been a while , Had my hollidays then had to get used to working again ,and Today back on to the guitar,

Ever since I got the fret board down and started doing mesurements , I started to see a problem with my bridge plate position,
I wanted a traditional 30s to 40s Martin size, or close , I dont know the right size I just made it look the same,but got the position wrong , to far forwad,

I had a template of the position and bracing and when I figured the right bridge and saddle position I could see the bridge pins were going to come through, way to close to the back edge of the bridge plate.

Last night I finally decided to take it out, I was doing a fair bit of reading on how to do this hair raising blind procedure and the main ways I had seen it done were to clamp in an Aluminium caul, and then take it out with a bent chisel, what I didn't like about that was mine has an arched top,and also I didn't like the idea of having the hot metal up against the side of my X braces.

Last night I saw a picture on Stew Mac of a hand held heating caul for bridge plates,but I could not find a descriptoin of it or a price? That type of caul was the way to go ,with a curve to it it could be rolled , made to short it could be slid left to right and kept of the X braces and I wanted to make my own any way,

I used some of those cheap Chinese chisels mainly because they had handles fitted
but found they were better with no handles,

Any way with two heats the plate came out clean, I put black texta dots to show where the pins would have come through.

Two hours to make the tools fifteen minutes to take the plate out .

Putting in the new one should not be to hard,and I hope to get it right this time

cheers Rob

You should be a tool and die maker, very ingenious. I can't believe you were able to bend that chisel, I have a few Japanese chisels that are laminated and would think they would come apart if heated enough to make that bend. Glad you were able to sort things out. Nice polish job you did there

Hi Mike,Oxy Acetylene get's the heat up, I hope to get the new bridge patch in tomorrow and get stuck in to finishing this guitar off,cheers Rob

G'day Rob,

Good to see some further progress, not much left to do now.

Hi Steve, yep almost there, Hows the bed going ?

The nut on this guitar is 46mm,or 1"13/16 string spacing at bridge is 60mm, 2"3/8
and the fret wire is the Stewmac 155,width 2.03 mm crown 1.27mm

I got the new maple bridge plate glued in ok ,
this is checking before it went in.
Attachment 161878

16 " radius to the fret board first roughed in
with a no 7 bedrock Stanley,then sanded
with one of those StewMac aluminium 18 inch
long fret board radius sanding blocks.
Attachment 161879

Went through the grades down to 1500 grit, hows
the reflection off the Ebony ? can only see it when
down at the low angle, dirty job sanding Ebony.
Attachment 161880

Drilled and glued in the MOP dots with 5
minute two pack mixed with some black
oxide colour, then sawed the fret slots down
a bit more like the book said.
Attachment 161881 Attachment 161882

Check the depth of the slots with this radius
gauge, fiddly as job ,tripple checked, had to
use magnification to see what was going on,
got to use the bender for the first time,I got
this one off ebay, came from Hungary,I think,
great little tool
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Attachment 161885

I glued the frets in with hide glue mixed with black oxide
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cheers Rob

Looks great Rob,

Did that that hide glue come off the 1500g sanded fretboard easily? That's one thing I'll be doing on the next one is sanding the fretboard a lot finer prior to fretting.

I went to the Sydney LN Tool Event today and saw one of the Traditional Tool Group guys had a compass plane on the table, so I asked him to give me a demo. Looks like a nice little piece of equipment.

The bed is about 50% done, if it turns out nice I'll post some pics on the forum wherever they belong. It's amazing how disinterested I am in furniture projects now that I've got another guitar waiting to be started.

Reading your post Steve, I just thought ,It would have been a smart thing to wet the fretboard and re sand at 400 then 1500 before using the glue, because the water in the glue can and should in a lot of timbers make the grain stand up, but the Ebony did not stand up so I was lucky there.

With hide glue just wash off within 10 minutes with hot water, I just dip a rag in the mug filled with hot water that I had my little glue bottle in and wipe,then buff dry, I checked in the corners between the board and the frets and went over the whole board three times

The compass planes are a fascinating thing ,even to just pick up and play with and watch the gears do their thing, I dont remember if I said this before, but when ever I pick one up, I check to see the sole is not split along where it is riveted, most are not, but I did have one given to me years back that was split, I bought a body of one off E Bay and fixed it up.

Yeah I'm a little the same with the furniture thoughts, got to knuckle down at it though because it pays the bills, I showed a customer my guitar build two weeks back and He wants me to build a Ukulele for him to give to his girlfreind, first thing I said to him was I dont even know how to spell it ? so I am waiting for a book and plans and will look in to it, He in insisting it be ready by June and I'm trying to work out how long it would take to make one and what I should charge, any ideas how long one would take from scratch to finish?

cheers Rob

Saturday week I glued in the frets,I checked the fretboard Monday to find that the fretboard had bowed back 36 mm, I asked for help on ANZLF and was told to shim and clamp with heat, tried it first time and had a little improvment the second time got it perfect,I was surprised how well it worked,

So I got out my book and went on with doing the bevel to the fret ends,it said to do it at 35 deg and in till it gets a .75 mm bevel on the Ebony. I just got stuck in to it but after it was done realised another mistake had been made I did the 35 deg up from the fret board, it probably should have been done up from the plane of the edge of the fret board, the fret bevel went in 3mm, which is where I want my outer strings,

So I clamped the neck to give it a bow , heated the frets and pulled them all out, what a great mess that left, lots of chips to repair with one that got lostOh ##### I feel sick just bringing this all up again, I glued the chips down with super glue ,the lost one had a drop of glue in the hole followed by Ebony dust, then I re sanded the whole thing through the grades to 1500, at this point felt that it came up great.
re sawed the slots ,cut 20 new frets and got ready to put them in.
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This time I was better prepared with the knowlege of the first attempt,I made my hide glue way thicker and got it hot, the second frets went in ok and held ,but I could feel there was not as much back pressure,
once all in I washed off the glue and this time got a brush with hot water to finish the glue clean up, then gave it a check with a notched straight edge I had made up , and it was straight this time,
Attachment 162693 Attachment 162694
then I gave it a go over with the heat gun and clamped it to the aluminium sanding block and let it sit over night
I cliped them flush and filed by hand
then I striped the top , sanded away slight damage , wet ,cut back , sized and polished with straight orange shellac.

cheers Rob

Interesting use of hide glue on your frets there Rob. I generally just run a thin bead of Titebond along the tang of my frets. Cant see if you've beveled your slots from the photos....this helps reduce tear out if you have to yank out a fret.

Looks like youve copped a fair few problems with this instrument but have managed to solve them like a true luthier.

I did the bevel Martin, both times , It probably should have been a little bigger,I said this on another thread, so far fret board twice ,bridge patch twice and frets twice, each time it would have been shonky work to leave it,and the second attempt got it right.