Acoustic Dreadnaught -wip

[justi227]

After completing an acoustic guitar with my older brother, decided to tackle one by myself.
For mine I bought New Guinea rosewood back and sides, NG rosewood neck, huon pine soundboard. Maple back bracing, Sitka soundboard bracing.

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Gluing the back together, and front soundboard together
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Bending guitar sides
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Shaping back braces to back curve
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Gluing back braces
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Gluing neck and tail blocks then put in mould.

[kamusur]

Looks good Justin n thanks for sharing the build with us all, keep it up.

Steve

[steamingbill]

Looking good, nicely organised, well done.

What are you using for a heat source inside your bending machine ?

Bill

[justi227]

Thanks guys for the comments very happy with how it's going so far

As for the heat source we use two large 150W flood lights. Provide easily enough heat and are wired through a dimmer switch.

[justi227]

A few more pics of the progress
Has been a little slow due to that annoying thing the HSC
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Picture of gluing the linings of the guitar. Krefeld linings for the front soundboard and just bent linings (using side bending jig again) for back linings.
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Cleaning up the glue
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The setup for the router guide to router out a trench for the back strip. The router has a 16mm screw in guide,hence the trench for the router to follow. Cut is 10mm wide x approx 2mm deep
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Te back strip glued in and trimmed to length. Back strip is WA Sheoak. Still needs to be sanded flush.

[Cliff Rogers]

[justi227]

Haven't updated for a while as progress is slow but I got a couple of days in the shed and achieved a lot
was able to get the back bracings notched into the sides and the back glued on.
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Then I glued on the centre strip bracing to strengthen the back seam
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Then I used the Dremel to router out the channel for the rosette than sanded the rosette flush with the top and moved onto the soundboard bracing.
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Soundboard bracing done in particular order so makes shaping easier. Cross brace first, then tone arms and finger braces, then traverse and upper face brace. Not done the traverse yet.
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So I started to do the neck while I was waiting for bracing glue to dry.
Cut the angle and spliced the neck, glued on the headstock veneers, doesn't the grain look magnificent on the veneer .
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[stevemc32]

Top stuff, looking real good so far.

[justi227]

Moved onto preparing the fretboard. It is made of Australian mulga. The board was thicknessed down to 6.5mm thick and made square, the fret positions were marked with aid of a fret ruler. Using the set square and a chisel the lines were scribed for fret positions then cut using fretting saw.
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So then once the glue had dried for the soundboard bracing, I went back and finished shaping all the braces and glued the bridge plate in place.
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Soundboard was then glued on
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Following that it was unclamped and the front and back trimmed relatively flush. This was done with the Dremel with one of its small routing bit. The plate attached to it was something I made to use as a fence/guide.
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Truss rod channel was then routed and the neck given its general outline shape
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[Blackstar1099]

Very nice so far. It looks like you're following Chris Wynne's DVD set which is what I used and it came out great.

[Roger Hoodoo]

Really looking good mate.

[justi227]

Cut out the rough shape of the headstock
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I then attempted to bend my sheoak bindings. Boy was sheoak a mistake, bending them was a massive PITA to say the least, snapped 9 in the process of obtaining four bent bindings. But i did get there and got the channels cut and bindings glued in. Probably should have cut the channels deeper. They look good but dont think ill be using sheoak again.
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Once they were done it was scraping and sanding them flush with the sides then cutting the dovetail for the neck
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Then gluing the neck in. I overcut the dovetail on the neck quite a bit and didnt quite get the best fit i wanted when getting it down.
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[justi227]

Attached the fretboard, levelled it out, and put in the frets
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Attached the bridge
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Then it was a final sand then finishing the guitar with 5 coats of Danish oil and a few coats of wax. I'm absolutely stoked with it, it sounds amazing.
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