Thread: Ozzie Built 17" Archtop

Very nice Alan, You are becoming talented.
Cheers, Bob

Nice work mate. I'll have to get one of my brothers on to this sub-forum. He's a player who hasn't yet realised that deep down he's a woodworker too.
Good stuff

Tom

Nice work Aussie, that's really impressive. Do you have a background in Acoustic guitar building ? I imagine that would come in very handy for an archtop guitar

Thanks Bob and Tom for your comments.

Fletch: Yes I have built 3 weissenborn acoustic guitar copies, 5 acoustic guitars, a few ukulele's and 1 les paul junior electric. The archie has been a great challange and will still have some more challanges no doubt before it's finished. Thanks for your comments too!

Cheers

Alan

Nice one Alan. Very impressive!!
I've got a couple of questions
1. Where is you source your Maple and Spruce from?
2. In Bendetto's book he give a couple of ways you can go about carving the back and front plates. Which one did you end up using and what was your preferred weapon?

I suppose that's actually 3 questions.
Anyway look forward to the sunburst and personally I like the way the f-holes look at the moment.

Cheers

G'day Heytman,

Thanks for your comments.

The spruce top came from a wood vender in Canada. It is AA Lutz spruce and the Queensland Maple came from a mate here in Townsville.

Both the back and top where 25 mm thick to begin with. I cut the shape out and then used my stanley block plane to go right around the edge of the shape coming in 35 mm and taking material off down to 6mm on the very edge. I then used an Ibex palm plane for the bulk of the work on both sides of the plates. I used some wood rasks and riffler files along with a scraper blade to finish off the arch. I have lots of pictures of the carve I can email you if your interested.

Cheers

Alan

Thanks for the reply.
Would be very interested in pics of the carve (pm me and I'll forward an email address)
Cheers

Better still Alan post the photos in this thread you never know one day when I become a luthier, I might decide to start building Archtops after all I am only 64 life begins at 64. Cheers, Bob

I'd love to see some of the carving WIP pics as well.

Ok, here goes. Top joined, shape cut out.

Next is to take some bulk off around the edge of the top with my stanley block plane.

Now I use the safety planner from Stew Mac in the drill press to take the edge down to a uniform 6mm. Be very carefull with these as they can get very hungrey.

Now to carve the long arch to the template

Further carving with the Ibex Palm Plane, may I say a beautiful little tool. I made a small wood handle to stop it being hard on the hand but still managed to get two blisters after three days of carving.

The wood rasp is used now to get it nice and even.

The inside carve gets holes drilled in the drill press with a stop down to 6mm

Carving, carving and more carving. Great little hand tool.

Top was then hit with the orbital sander

And the underside as well

Both the top and back are to a uniform 6mm thickness and more refining to go.
F holes cut with coping saw

Sanding sticks to get the side of the f hole right

So there you have it. I won't post the back carve unless you all want to see that too. The same proceedure as the top.
Cheers and thanks for looking
Alan

Nice job.
Thanks for sharing!!

Thanks for the photos Alan, love your little hand planes.
Makes you appreciate how much work go's into a hand built instrument and them archtops look like a lot of work hand carving.
Cheers, Bob

Lovely work thanks for the post on the carving now I how much more I need to think about building an archtop..

Cheers Steve

lovely progress pics