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.