Catching up, part 3

Here are some images from Eclecto-man's neck:











I've had a ball the last two days carving this thing. Good thing too -- there are still seven disemnecked bodies in my shop. The necks are underway, but Eclectoman's is first to get to this stage. PGM's is close in tow.

As previously indicated, Eclecto-guy is a classical player. So, I've left the board pretty wide, two inches at the nut, and I'm shooting for a 2-5/16" saddle spread. I wanted to mimic the dimensions to which he's grown accustomed. He says he can get used to anything. I believe him. Further probing (under booze) got him to confess a preference for the classical layout. But he also likes an action uncharacteristically low on a nylon string maiden. So I'm being picky about the angle to the body.

It's a total gas to get the neck shape to work out. I mean, this is the one bit of the beast the eventual player will be pressing into his or her anatomy, and in an organ peculiarly sensitive to shape. At first, this neck was too squarish; more rasping. Then, too thick near the nut; more rasping. Finer rasping. Filing. Lots of sanding. And, the heel treatment is a chance for a bit of fun. I put a long-toed shoe on the bottom of the heel.

Eclecto man, if ye hates it, I can fix.

Don't know if you can see the grain in the board and headplate, but it's pretty dramatic. The box is straight grained sapele (but pretty stuff) and will make this jewel of a fingerboard stand out.

And, if you're concerned, that's NOT the final headstock shape. It'll be much prettier, I promise.

Catching up, part 2

I've been working on PGM's guitar:





The purfling on this critter was a bear! Herringbone is no big deal, but the thin maple and bloodwood strips to set off the maple binding were incredibly difficult for me to get in place. I simultaneously tried this binding scheme on another sycamore guitar, and it didn't go so well. But, that guitar has a cutaway, and that's where its problems arose. I eventually abandoned it in favor of a simpler binding scheme on that instrument. This one turned out just dandy. For giggles I rubbed it with some alcohol, just to get an idea of what finish will do to it. The redwood gets darker and richer, the sycamore yellows a bit, but its figure takes on a three-dimensional quality. This darkening makes the whites in the herringbone appear whiter. It's all very dramatic.

The redwood top is very responsive! It's more resistant to puncture wounds than western red cedar, but is also more brittle and quite fussy to work with. But it's very pretty, and a lovely match with the sycamore and the binding/purfling scheme. PGM has ordered up a 13-fret neck with slotted peghead, a nice cocobolo fretboard with flame maple binding. I can't wait to see this!

I'm commencing to work on necks for all these bodies. Neck blocks are attached to the eclecto guitar and the tailpiece sycamore guitar.

More soon.

Catching up, part 1

Since the semester ended, and now that my shop is re-configured in a still suboptimal but more ergonomic fashion, I am quite occupied breathing unhealthy dust and super-gluing my fingers together. There are many guitars underway.


I created a second non-cutaway half to my small jumbo exterior body mold, and can now build bodies such as this. It's 20-1/2" long and 16" across the lower bout: big relative to the smaller instruments I've built so far. This is some of that killer cocobolo Todd Taggert has managed to find and sell at Allied Lutherie. It's so beautiful, I bought a second set. I paired it with a carpathian spruce top. Gorgeous stuff, feels much like German spruce to me. The grain is irregular, and it looks like adirondack red spruce to me. I just pulled the ropes off and sanded it down after binding with some sycamore. The look is very traditional, with the herringbone purfling. I am very excited about this instrument.

Here's a view of the side and the top:



Mr. Sandmoen of Flat Creek (just north of Lynchburg, home of the Jack Daniels distillery) ran a pet crematorium we had sad occasion to use several times some years back. He and his wife are super nice people, transplants from Minnesota. (Minnesotans, to me, are like Canadians -- smart, friendly, funny -- never met one I didn't instantly like). He cut five big black walnut logs for me, which I gladly dragged back to Sewanee. Finally I've gotten it cut into boards. I don't have the means of cutting back and side sets, but I can get necks out of it. I knew a guy (whom I'll call Gorthauer) who used well cured walnut for necks. This stuff is at least five years old. Gorthauer used it almost exclusively.

I also bought some of Todd's extra cool birdseye maple and bearclaw spruce. Too much wood, too many guitars to build, too little time.

But I'll give it my best shot.

Return of the Luthier

I really don't know why it is, but whenever a semester ends (and it's never pretty, let me tell you), I cannot resist the urge to luthe. I have stacks of papers to be graded, linear algebra students having trouble with 4th degree characteristic polynomials, nervous statistics students trying to break into an economics major, parties for graduating seniors, registrars with senior grades needing to be turned in so they can calculate GPAs and determine salutatorians and valedictorians....and all I want to do is bind fingerboards and cut purfling channels.

Which, is precisely the next task for this beauty:



This is PGM's guitar. It'll be a fingerstyle critter, 15" lower bout, 20" body length, scalloped X brace, sycamore back and sides, redwood top. She'll have bold herringbone purfling to match the rosette and bloodwood strips to set off the flame maple binding.

The shop is now much bigger in its reconfiguration. It still has a way to go, but is much better already. I'm loving it.

Progress postponed

Our basement is in upheaval, and, as a consequence, so is the shop. A major cleanup and re-configuration is underway. Once completed, I'll have more room and more usable equipment in the shop -- and I'll post some photos. In the meantime, duties associated with our spring semester, leading up to and including May's graduation, dominate my calendar. It annoys me that this is so, but, the annual surge in humidity we've experienced of late is bad for joinery anyway. Once it's hot and the AC is on, shop humidity will be down and building can resume.

Jack is a pig

I have a crush on your skeleton

Some of the best work I do is with the bracing. I think it's the part of the building process in which my skills have made the greatest improvements. And, it bugs me, because all that work is hidden. Now, in the completed guitar you can peer through the hole and see with the naked eye the back bracing -- at least, the two back braces nearest the neck. But that's not a big deal. The most important bracing (most important in regards to making wood sing) is under the soundboard. A dental mirror and a flashlight can render that visible -- but who, other than a dentist, has dental tools?

Well, here 'tis. I use a 90 degree X-brace, but mine is de-coupled. That is, rather than joining the two braces, my bass-side brace arches over, and the treble side arches under. Then I laminate a smallish brace atop the treble side member so that it traverses the bass member both under and over. I figure I might snag some extra mid and upper partials by having the two members operate independently rather than in lockstep. Otherwise, it's a Martin bracing pattern: two lower face braces, two finger braces per side (all but the fingers are scalloped), and a maple bridge plate. The only maple I had was leftover european flame maple, but that figure will be locked in the box.

I'll match the bold herringbone rosette with bold herringbone purfling around the edges. That's maple soundhole binding with a very mild flame.

I blogged the back before. Here's another view. The two lower rungs of the ladder are this super stiff, perfectly quartered western red cedar with beautiful cross-grain silking. It was left over from the cedar the builders used on our front porch when they built this house in 2003.

Waste not, want not.

Mr. Sapele and his binding; PGM backstrip treatment

As you know, I have several projects underway. The sycamore SJ cutaway with the mahogany top, topic of December and January posts, has been re-assessed. I am not happy with the way the binding turned out. Top and back purfling, side purfling and binding strips need to be installed simultaneously, with lots of gooey, sticky glue. The purfling seated too deep. I've sanded too deep in spots, and still haven't gotten the purfling flush. In the process of binding Mr. Sapele, I discovered a marvelous technique for simplifying the installation of binding and purfling. So sycamore mahogany SJ will have his binding/purfling removed and replaced. Besides, I think sycamore next to flame maple looks cool.



Speaking of Mr. Sapele, here he was earlier today, bound and gagged. The last bits of binding and purfling were getting glued in on the upper side of the upper bout.



And, here he is after getting cleaned up. I am quite pleased with the new purfling technique and how well it worked on this guy.



And speaking of PGM, here's his back with the backstrip installed. It's a strip of flame maple binding set off by two tiny strips of bloodwood purfling. All these photos are taken with the laptop camera, so I'll only know if this is visible when you do. If you can't see it, well, I can, and it does look very nice.

I hope Eclectoman and PGM agree.

I am Bombadil

Here it is -- a map of the domain of the University of the South. If you click it, or open it in a new tab, you'll get a much larger view.

I live on the circle right above where it says "Clara's Point Road." I can jump on the yellow fire road either by cutting through my back yard or by walking up the street 40 yards. From there I can go anywhere. The yellow bits are fire roads, the red bits are perimeter trail, the green and dashed black lines are other trails which appear mostly to have at one time been roads. There are other roads and trails not marked.

A typical walk for me is to leave home, jump on the fire road marked as "parallel trail" (as it runs parallel to Breakfield Road, a decent gravel road beyond the equestrian center), walk all the way to the end, just past Brushy Lake, make a right and go up to Dotson point, take the P-trail back to Breakfield at Solomon's Temple trail, and come back on Breakfield. That takes about two hours. Last weekend, I took parallel almost to Brushy, made a left at the G10 cross road, took p-trail along Armfield bluff to the dashed black road that runs past Brushy's little arm, right on Breakfield, p-trail from Solomon intersection to the forestry cabin, fire road past cedar hollow lake, right on perpendicular road to equestrian center, then home on Wiggins Creek Drive. That took three hours.

Three hours of bliss.

The supply lines are moving

I am sorry to be slow in getting updates posted.

Two weeks ago I took my wife's ancient digital Kodak out to the perimeter trail to get some photos of this year's biggest snowfall. Bear in mind, that's a qualified description since we get very little snow here in Sewanee these days. Still, it was quite beautiful. I shall post once the correct USB cable is located.

For me, a really good day involves, of course, lots of sawdust and epoxied fingers, but also a 2-3 hour walk on the domain (that is, the largely undeveloped property of University of the South). Documenting the perimeter trail and the web of old fire roads is in the back of my mind as a blog project. I'll get a map up, by hook or crook, and point out some features.

But my posts have become less frequent of late due to the busy spring semester synchronized with my dwindling lutherie supplies. I have sought to correct the latter. The photo above shows Mr. Sapele -- now firmly in my mind as going to Eclectoguy -- with the flying buttress carbon fiber bracing installed. My hope is that the single end-block brace may have a sound-post like effect, transferring some of the vibration due to string pull directly from the top of the end block to the middle of the back. The neck block bracing to the waist area of the back is now standard.

The top is glued, clamped, and is presently drying in the shop. Once I've trimmed the edges, routed a binding ledge, glued and tied the purfling and binding on, I'll photograph and post again.

More re-supply is underway. I have frets, side dots, tuners and spool clamps coming in from Stew-mac. I've gotten truss rods and the killer cocobolo back and side set from Allied. Allied is also sending me a Carpathian spruce top with some bold herringbone rosettes and purfling for PGMs guitar. With the flying buttress carbon fiber tubes, I got also -- from a kite equipment supplier -- some flat carbon fiber rods for neck reinforcement. Some of this is here, some will arrive this week. As it arrives and I get time downstairs, I'll post on progress for Eclectoman and PGM.

Sorry to be a geek, this is all very exciting to me.

More snippets from Frankenstein's luthiery

I'm awaiting some more supplies, so there's little more to show for no. But, it's wintertime, which means the humidity is low and the conditions are ideal for bracing tops and backs.



Here's a freshly braced top for a parlor sized guitar. It's teeny-weeny! I only need one lower face brace, and one finger brace per side. PGM gave me his copy of "Clapton's Guitar," a very enjoyable book about master luthier Wayne Henderson; I drew inspiration from the photos of his braced tops in shaping these braces.



This is the parlor's braced back. That's mostly cocobolo with a wedge of zebrawood.



Finally, I drilled out the player port on Mr. Sapele. Both sound and reptiles are directed at the player's face. If the carbon fiber rods would ever get here, I could reinforce the neck and end blocks, then install the top, trim the overhang, rout for binding and purfling and finish off this body.



I also bought this cocobolo set from Allied in California. Pretty wild, eh?

Don't leave them cold and damp ....

Okay, so lutherie hasn't actually dominated my life in recent weeks (as it had during the holiday break). My schedule is settling down a bit, and I'm finding some time in my week when I can get some work done.

This is the braced underside of the top for the sapele guitar. Now that the sycamore and mahogany SJ (small jumbo) is done, I've returned to this Orchestra model. My aim is to make it as good a guitar as the mahogany and cedar guitar Eclectic Guy and all the fine folks at HalcyArt liked so much. So I have high hopes for it.



You can see the striped figure so prevalent in Sapele. I asked the folks at LMI (Luthier's Mercantile International in Windsor, California) to pick some super-stripy sapele sets when I ordered a few sets last fall. I wedged in an ultra groovy strip of cocobolo down the middle just for giggles.



And, here's the back's innards. I glued the back to the sides earlier today.

I like building guitars because they are alive. I mean, in the end they have voices of their own, sometimes in fulfillment of your vision, and sometimes in what amounts to an utter surprise. And they come to life at early stages, not just after the wet sanding, rub-out, set-up and strings. Sometimes the wood does exactly as you expect (and makes you feel really capable, a genius the world is aching to discover), but other times ... .

It seems to me you have to follow the wood and do what it allows you to do. A more seasoned craftsman than myself might be able to coax exactly what he (or she) wants from every piece of wood. Perhaps I'll be able to in time. I can usually win my way with every stick, but sometimes the wood doesn't do just what you want it to. Or, sometimes it does, but you reach a point at which you stand over a half-completed neck, or a freshly bound and sanded body, and re-assess just what it is you have.



Here's the sycamore and mahogany SJ cutaway. It's a big, deep box. The bracing all over is stiff, and that top is really stiff. This box is whispering to me "Coach, let me play 12-string! I know I can do it!" Coach is thinking, kid, you look like a 12-string. Maybe this is a good idea.

But, what about the 12-string body I made in December?

And, more importantly, what about Eclectic Guy? I was thinking SJ would be his guitar for some time.

Eclecto is born and bred a classical player -- he just wants to play and hear the ringing harmonics of steel. I'd thought the cutaway would give him upper fingerboard access he's not got on his nylon instruments, might open up some areas to his thinking. Of course, he's not suffering for a lack of ideas. And, moreover, when we talked about this in WV during December, he says he cares not one whit about getting more than 12 frets clear of the body. I should listen to him, he's the player.

So, now I'm thinking Mr. Sapele is for Eclecto. It's light, light, light. Back bracing is uber stiff, and flying buttress carbon fiber will make it more so. Top is less stiff, and is actually scalloped near the bridge to allow more rocking. Silk and steels will mimic nylon string tension for his left hand and feel closer to nylons for his manicured fingernails and classical technique.

I also patched the bass side upper bout rib to drill out a "player port" -- an extra sound hole aimed at the player's face.



This is the 12-string body I built in December. Or, so I thought. It actually has only two finger braces per side (rather than the three I saw in a Guild 12 top) and two lower face braces (again, rather than the Guild's three). The X members are actually only a little over 1/4" wide, and not all that tall. They aren't scalloped -- but neither were the braces on the red guitar. Now, the X does have a 120 degree spread. Other than that, the ONLY difference between this box and the red guitar is that this top is engelman spruce and red was, of course, western red cedar.

So, I think this guitar wants to be another orchestra model a la red. Mahogany back and sides, flame maple binding, minimal purfling. Oh, yeah, that's what this guy needs to be.



This is another Engelmann top, but Sycamore back and sides. Flame maple bindings, lots of bwb purfling, herringbone, and that back strip is two flame maple binding strips with a highly figured hunk of sycamore down the middle. I think this one will look really cool when it's finished -- all those medullary rays in the sycamore, all that flame maple. I hope to make PGM's guitar much like this one. He wanted the redwood top, and I don't blame him at all -- the figured white back and sides with that dark, rich, straight grained top will look really cool.

I could throw this at Eclectricity man. But it's a risk. I braced it for a tailpiece. The X is really stout, no scalloping at all. Of course, no bridge pad on the underside.

But, I did put three fan braces between the X under the bridge, and one finger brace on each side. Even without a bridge pad, I could do a pinless bridge. I did a pinless bridge for Addison Willis' guitar, and it works just dandy. A pinless bridge for eclectoman would be quite reminiscent of the classical. In fact, I could do EXACTLY a classical bridge! A 12-fret join! A slotted peghead! What a rig that would look like, if we stuck a magnetic pickup in something looking that much like a straight classical guitar!

In the end I don't know. Right now I'm leaning toward Mr. Sapele for Eclectic Guy.

Several nights of insomnia ought to straighten this out. Guitar building is a sleep disorder.

Body binding and purfling

First, I've been slow posting this past week because Tuesday (1/16/07) was the first day of class this semester. Moreover, my office was moved during winter break, and so I've been wrestling with boxes and networking in addition to the usual demands of new students.

As per previous post, binding and purfling ledges were routed. I went ahead and took care of the non-cutaway side, as it's a tad easier to bind.

Part of my reason for blogging my building is to be honest about this process. Neither am I god's gift to lutherie, nor am I without skill. I changed the name of this blog because the old title made me sound too incapable, too pathetic. I am neither. But, I have to work at this, and some times it is a struggle. The only way to improve skills is to try and fail and try some more. Now, I don't think I've failed -- far from it! But I've had to follow the "two steps forward, one step back" method as well.

Do I have the courage to say all this in a public forum? Is it not wiser (from a marketing viewpoint) to allow those folks for whom I build guitars to nurture an image of a master artisan whose every move leads to a predictable and calculated outcome? Perhaps it is. But that doesn't feel right to me. I do know what I'm doing. Still there are surprises along the way. Not all surprises are welcome. Some turn out in a way not intended. So, I have to go back and fix things. I am and will always be learning. I cannot believe this is not also true of every instrument builder, even Charles Fox, Kevin Ryan and Jeffrey Elliot. I bet Torres had to fix a few of his own mistakes now and then.

To my mind there is no shame in producing by hand an instrument which does not display the cosmetic perfection of a factory instrument. If you can tell it's hand made, that's no tragedy. It's an instrument -- a vehicle -- for the making of music. If it has an interesting voice that speaks to the musician and that musician's listeners, if it's playable and allows the musician to try new ways of playing, or to write new songs, or if it inspires a new musician to learn to play and brings the satisfaction of participating in acts of music-making, then it is a complete success. Cosmetics be damned.

That being said, I try hard to make 'em as pretty as I can. Each guitar is better than the last, and I work steadily to make that trend continue.

I'm using thin b/w purfling on the top, back and sides, as well as fine herringbone on the top. The idea is easy, but with bindings, two fine purfling strips and herringbone on top, coupled with the fact that you install the back bits and top bits per side simultaneously, it's not hard to end up with a gluey mess. It's also possible for the fine purflings to become misaligned. When they do, you have to yank it all apart, douse it with water, realign and re-clamp. Ugh!

Clamping, as you can see, is done with this mediaeval device, rope and wedges. Oh, yeah, it also helps to do it all before the power failure hits (as it did this morning, hence the mag-light illumination). Fortunately, I had everything in place and most of the ropes on. You can see that I'm clamping the binding/purfling around the lower bout, and that the upper bout remains on the "to-do" list.

Already the voice is changing quite a bit. I indicated in a previous post that the sound of the box is changed completely by the binding. At the halfway point already there was more sustain and a clearer, deeper tonal response from a fleshy-thummed thump.

Body

I installed the carbon fiber stiffeners for the tops of the neck and end blocks, let it set and glued on the top without thinking that I should take a picture. Sorry, I'm still getting used to this whole "documentaton" trip. Here's the body fresh out of the mold. Note the overhang around the top.

Some tools are just a miracle of ingenuity. To me, router bits with bearings fall into this category. I use a flush-trim bit to kill the overhang. It has a little bearing (and by that I mean not a single ball bearing, but inner and outer steel rings loaded with ball bearings in between, so that the two rings roll freely of one another) whose external diameter matches the diameter of cut of the blades. The bearing reads the bent sides as the rotating blade cuts the overhang to perfectly (or close enough) match the shape of the sides.

And, here's the result. I've also routed a channel and installed a bit of cocobolo (cut from a discarded fingerboard extension) at the top of the cutaway. This gives a very defined edge there and will provide a nice transition from body to neck heel.

At this point, what's been just a gob of sticks and glue not only begins to look like a musical instrument, but commences also to give utterance. It's certainly not singing, or even talking, but gives a sort of shrill cough. I used to think of binding as trim and nothing more, mere decoration to define the edges of the guitar. When I began this quest I read someplace that the purpose of binding was to protect the guitar, that stiffer rosewoods around the rim can protect softer cedars and spruces from breakage as the guitar receives the inevitible bumps it will receive. If the binding breaks, the guitar can be re-routed and new binding installed, then re-finished. Certainly the binding performs these two functions, but its primary purpose is much more central, and one I couldn't have guessed prior to building. It does bind the top and back to the ribs. The aforementioned router with bearing-tipped bit is used to cut a rabbet (shelf to receive the binding) around the edges for binding installation. That channel cuts through the top plate into the sides. The binding binds both to sides and top (or back), actually surrounding the top (or back) plate. I know that this has a structural effect on the instrument because the voice changes from a cough to a speaking voice once the binding is in place. The box will talk.

As the wood relaxes, it starts to sing.

Redwood and Sycamore

I live right close to Nashville, a lovely city, which seems to host more guitar players per square inch than any other city on earth. At the invitation of one such, which I'll refer to here as PGM, I took three of my instruments on the road yesterday to that fair city for a showing. PGM has sought in the last six months to supplement his keen piano playing skills with a facility for the guitar. Despite a full-time job in a position of great responsibility, he's managed to put in between one and two hours of practice every day sinc commencing his lessons. It shows in his playing!

Anyway, I owe a debt of gratitude to PGM for his immense hospitality yesterday. I had three of my guitars (including the two pictured in the 12/26/06 and 12/28/06 posts, as well as the little maple guitar with the adjustable neck) in a conference room with PGM and several other fine players. It is always useful to me to hear my instruments played; they just sound different from the front than they do behind, and it's easier to gauge projection and balance from a distance. Players' comments are always welcome to me, both positive and negative. It's nice of course when the positives outweigh the negatives, as they did yesterday. I need all the encouragement I can get!

PGM liked the red guitar. He's interested now in having me build essentially the same guitar, but with sycamore back and sides and a redwood top. So I've put the back and side set aside, and will soon be ordering the top and other supplies. HUZZAH!

Apologies to those quoted herein

If ever you read anything well-written herein, likely the source was someone other than myself. My intention is not to take credit for things penned by others, and I'll try to remember to include citations. The last post, for instance, contains a few lines from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." Eliot's poetry is with me always, peppers my thoughts, and so the likelihood of my failure to provide citation is high.

Also, to protect the identities of living persons depicted herein, I invent aliases.

I shall do my damnedest not to offend either by sins of omission or the latter sins of comission.

Progress and reflection ...

This blog is rapidly becoming a "how to" document, which is not what I intend, nor is a "how I do it". But, I suppose, that's part of it, so I'll go with that and try to sneak more of what I really want in here as well.

Here's the sapele guitar in the dished sandpaper workboard with the ribs being shaped to receive the top. Once they're shaped, I install the linings. I use kerfed linings rather than solid linings. I've tried the solid kind, but have switched back to the kerfed style. You must bend solid linings, which is truly no hardship, but the solid linings are stiff and therefore difficult to fit perfectly inside the bent side. Moreover, they are not as wide as the kerfed variety, and so supply less of a gluing surface for the top and back than the other.

The drawback for the kerfed variety is that they break easily. Soaking the mahogany kerfed linings in water helps quite a bit; I've used boxwood as well, but it seems to stay more brittle when wet. Here you can see linings installed on the back of the sycamore guitar, and the bass side lining for the top clamped in place.

My original intention with this cutaway design was less to provide access to the upper frets than to introduce a bit of asymmetry in the appearance of the guitar. I'm really happy with the way it's playing out with this instrument.

It is probably stupid of me to announce how pleased I am with the sycamore box in a public forum. All manner of disaster could strike. Until it's done done done -- strings on, singing away -- the box will live in a crowded and cluttered shop filled with heavy equipment and sharp tools. Accidents, as Prof. Costello so brilliantly enunciated, do happen.

And, far be it from me to fail to credit myself where credit is most certainly due. I am easily the most dangerous force in the universe in regards to this embryonic instrument. As it speaks to me from the future I envision for it, I hear a voice with authority, not deep, but not without a low end; clear and penetrating like a trumpet; sparkly as a simmering brushed cymbal. But I will assault the wood with sharp tools, many powered with electricity, seeking to cut away that which is not guitar. I am capable of weakening that voice, preventing its clarity, even threatening its ultimate existence. Control over my tools, even my own hands, is educated and practised -- but far from perfect.

Every instrument is an invitation to learning and disaster.

"And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start."

And so I have learned the hard way that much of lutherie is not design and execution, but making the best of mistakes that are as certain as the sun is to rise tomorrow. Vision of the final instrument often must be altered to correct errors. I do not say "hide mistakes," because there is no intent to put flawed instruments in the hands of players. There is an ongoing recalculation of optimal strategy at every point in the building process.

That is, there's a composition, but there's improvisation as well. I'm just reacting to that fickle organic stuff -- wood -- which seems to have a mind of its own.

And, of course, my own abilities and limitations.

Sycamore thumbscrews

Maybe I shouldn't call him PH; that's just what he called himself after we played with photobooth on my macbook and produced the photo atop the last post. Actually, it's EclecticGuy of OccasionalBlog. He and I met 35 years ago when I was whistling "Thick as a Brick" in junior high school gym class, and he recognized the tune. We've been talking music ever since. He's a great friend and an outstanding musician who's taught me many, many things. So I'm charged beyond words to be making him an instrument.

Anyway, this goodie is a side bender. When you get the back and side set from your supplier, the pieces need to be thicknessed and trimmed. I've learned that prior to using the bender you must mark the sides. Then you give 'em a healthy dunk in some clean water and make a sandwich. After you've eaten, you make a sandwich consisting of, from the bottom up, steel slat, side to be bent, bending blanket (an electric goodie which heats up to 450 degrees -- though you don't want to get it that hot), and steel slat. Slide it into the bender and tighten the waist press. Turn on the blanket and wedge a cooking thermometer between the upper slat and the blanket (I usually put it between the waist and the hip). Monitor that temperature, baby! When it says 225, start screwing down the waist press. Take it all the way down! (But, of course, stop when you hear your wood break. If it does, break down and cry. Then back out and try to fix it with glue and voodoo. If the wood gods are with ye, breakage will not occur. The sycamore sides I bent the other day might as well have been made of rubber -- over 1/8" thick, but bent easily, and held their shape nicely. But I digress.) There are two spring loaded thingies you can slide from the waist up and down over the bouts. Do this slowly to avoid breakage.

If by now you've not turned off the blanket, it's 350 degrees, and your sides are rapidly attaining charcoalhood. So, throughout this process watch that temperature! Different woods take heat differently. This Sycamore bends at low heat but tends not to char. Mahogany seems to like more heat for bendability, but will char. I've had no trouble bending flame maple, but it seems to be happier with more water and higher heat. Cocobolo bends nicely, but is so oily you have to scrape off cooked sap. Yuck!

Here you see clamped into the two halves of the external body mold the results of bending. I am delighted with how well they turned out.

Here's a lovely partially braced mahogany top (for the sycamore guitar). It sits on a towel covering a dished workboard. The workboard is covered with sandpaper -- hence, the towel. The surface of the workboard matches the surface of a sphere of radius 12 feet. That's a fairly standard workboard for the back, but tight for the top. Some guitars I build have tailpieces, so I like a tight radius.

How does this bracing get done?

Here are two lower face brace blanks. You can't really see it in the photo, but the planes of the grain lines run parallel to the largest surface in these rectangluar timbers. That's what you want for stiffness. So, I pull the top and towel out of the way, and grind one edge of each blank against the sandpapered surface of the workboard, thereby transferring the 12 foot radius onto the glued edge of each brace. Slick! Then I use other sophisticated devices (i.e., a nice flat hunk of MDF with sanpaper glued on to it) to give the rest of the brace its shape.

This dandy is called a go deck. I don't know why. But it's really a cool and low-tech way to get braces glued in place. I spread as thin a layer of glue as I can manage on the curved edge of the braces with a stiff bristled little paint brush, put the brace in position, surmount the brace with a wood scrap clamping caul, and hold it in position with these fiberglass go sticks. Each one exerts a surprising amount of pressure, and collectively you can create firm and even pressure to get your top and back braced.

Finally, I installed neck and end blocks in the sycamore guitar. Here the wood is being tortured with glue and clamping pressure, forced to do my bidding. BWAAAHAAHAAA!

New year, new instrument (for Pineapple-Head)

As you can see, this guy needs a guitar. We'll call him PH for brevity.

As per previous post, PH is a classical player at the core. But he hears things he'd like to play more readily accomplished with steel strings. How to set him up?

I'd previously braced a top and a back for another instrument with the same body as the red guitar. When PH played red, he got confused about where he was on the neck. Now, PH is one hell of a player, and the confusion was my fault. It has white side dots on maple binding, so it's hard to tell where you are. The 14-fret body join was confusing since he's used to classicals with the traditional 12-fret join. So, I WILL PUT VISIBLE SIDE DOTS ON THE PH BOX FINGERBOARD! I'm also thinking short scale, mostly to help replicate that loose nylon string feel. I'll do a slotted peghead because of PH's affinity for classicals, and because they're cool.

I checked the dimensions of this braced top, and I can do a 24.9" scale with a 13-fret join. That ought to offer some key features for PH. Reduced string tension should offer a wider variety of string choices; silk and steel, for instance, might let him keep the tension-feel of classical strings. Also, it puts the bridge near the "sweet spot" of the top, with that lovely tonal response. Besides, I was quite happy with the bracing I did on the top. It's got a simple ring of black walnut as a rosette, and black walnut sound-hole binding. Simple and elegant.

LMI thicknessed the back as a classical for me, and it's somewhat thin for a steel string. So, I put 4 rather than 3 ladder braces on the back, and I made 'em tall. I want it stiff for sustain, and I want to emphasize the midrange.

Next: to bend the sides.