R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 11, 2015 18:21:09 GMT
I don't imagine I'm doing anything that someone hasn't already done; as I move into my dotage, I'm starting to believe that anything that can be imagined has already been done - and probably more than once.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 11, 2015 14:29:00 GMT
Now that's what I call an answer! Thanks very much for taking the time, Iain. The only problem is that I gave up on anyone answering earlier today and ordered the box-sections! I can always think of a justification: how about "I want to retain a little flexibility to allow the truss-rod to do its job" or " I could store spare strings down the middle of the box sections" or "it's an attempt to reduce the weight and therefore increase the resonance of the whole instrument". I'll bear your observations in mind in future and try not to be quite so tight about these things. Thanks again. Rob
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 8, 2015 22:13:08 GMT
I'm trying to look ahead so that I am not held up waiting for supplies to arrive; I wonder if anyone out there is an expert on carbon fibre - specifically to stiffen the neck. A number of American lutherie sites seem to supply 18" lengths of 1/8" x 3/8" or thereabout for between £10 and £13 - i.e. £20-£26 per neck if you're doubling up. I'm afraid I resent spending that sort of money when the material is clearly available for non-luthiers for much less. In my last guitar I used 1mmx6mm strips laminated together in 3s - a total of 6 strips altogether but I feel there must be a better way. The trouble is that suppliers for model-making or cars etc. don't produce exactly the profile that I'm after. Then I noticed a photo from Taran Guitars (I think it was) which appeared to show box-section tube and I could epoxy 2 x 4mm tubes together each side of the truss rod for just £7. Am I right to think this would be a pretty rigid arrangement?
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 7, 2015 18:28:36 GMT
Yes, Andy, I'm very aware of Adrian Lucas and his feelings about the use of home-grown and recycled wood. Quite right, too. Though I'm not sure that I personally have the ear to hear the difference in any case, I do like the idea of not imposing on endangered species when it's not really necessary (viz. the Leonardo Project). It's also cheaper!
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 7, 2015 12:23:31 GMT
I very much like the idea that colins propounds that the linings together with the two blocks form the skeleton upon which the rest of the guitar “hangs” (I hope I’ve got that right) and represent a good starting point. With this in mind I moved on to making the neck- and tail-blocks. My neck-block is rather pathetic since I don’t bolt or dovetail into it but the idea is the same. Having made one neck-block with the grain running the wrong way, I then made two of each with the grain running the right way:
(Rather a nice little still-life there. The table is the same table I had to take a plank out of a few weeks ago which has just today been collected so that I can actually walk freely around the workshop again.) These blocks came from a table top (probably Edwardian) bits of which I have from a previous ebay buy. Here’s what’s left:
You might be able to see that I’ve started slicing round the edge of this on the table saw because I’m going to use it for the back and sides of one of the guitars since there’s not enough walnut left for me to do two. Here’s the walnut:
When this photo was traken, I was still trying to remove slices thin enough to allow me to use it for both guitars but had to give up and resort to the table saw. Here is my walnut “set”:
and my mahogany:
There’s still polish on half of it and it’s not quite wide enough so I am popping a bit of the walnut down the middle. I could, of course, pretend this was always the plan but you’d probably guess the truth. I’m also not sure I intended to have hinge screws in the side but I’m sure they’ll make a nice feature!
and they are near enough to the edge for me to avoid them (with luck) but it’ll be a very tight squeeze. But think of the money I’ve saved. This picture was taken after the sides had been thicknessed (with a bit of hand planing and a bit of sander-thicknesser) down to 1.9mm. Now the 80 grit paper on the sander has been on there for a while now and some of the edges have started to tear and several times it snatched at the end of the walnut/mahogany sides as they came in. The results were alarming but not disastrous; I managed to retrieve one bit that had flown past my ear and glue it back on but you’ll notice there’s still a bit missing from the corner:
As a I result, I spent much of yesterday afternoon trying to detach old sandpaper from stick-back Velcro. If you’re interested, a green washing up scourer and warm soapy water leaves it cleanish and, once dried in the sun, the Velcro even retains its stickiness. I’ll have to load some more paper before thinning the backs.
So you’re up to date. I’ll have to look at my “what to do next” list to see where I go from here.
By the way, when you’re repolishing furniture (I’m a French polisher, you see), you always have to stain the wood either to match the rest of the piece or to make it look the right age or to make it look like a piece of furniture as opposed to something that someone’s just knocked up from new wood in their shed. People don’t seem to do this with guitars but I’m afraid these two are going to get the furniture treatment. A nice dose of bichromate of potash solution should bring out the Victorian in them.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 7, 2015 11:16:28 GMT
"Auditorium" I like, earwighoney; it's got a bit of class. "OM" is too much like a bra size.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 6, 2015 19:37:53 GMT
Research done! Ta.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 6, 2015 17:05:53 GMT
I should think you have just doubled the numbers attending. Only trouble is I don't know when and where "HB" is. I shall have to do some research.
Doesn't that bog-oak fretboard look glorious, though?
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 6, 2015 16:55:24 GMT
Yes, Iain. I have actually just googled "scallops" (with predictably juicy results) since I didn't want to make a fool of myself. The prototype had scalloped braces but only because that seemed to be the thing to do. I am now beginning to see that there are different camps here (as with everything) what with scallops and tapers and parabolas etc. and I need to take an objective look at keeping strength and losing rigidity. That's actually what I meant by "carve away a little more of the diamond" whilst trying to keep my precise options open. It would seem to me that keeping the height of these primary braces and narrowing them would do the job but then you've got to make sure they are very vertical so that they don't suddenly tilt and buckle. Maybe a cross brace linking just the tops of the two braces (like a bridge) at a critical point would be an answer since it wouldn't inhibit vibration of the soundboard itself. Needs more thought.
Incidentally, I am becoming more and more intrigued by the possibilities of my lopsided design from late last night. Appeals to me!
ps your door will have to stay in your loft if your loft is where I think it is.
Rob
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 6, 2015 12:47:31 GMT
For my purposes (at between £1 and £3 per soundboard) Douglas Fir has all the warmth and separation and clarity and projection and depth and darkness and lightness that anyone could want! Dimensions as follows (though I'm not sure which "size" this most closely matches - maybe someone could tell me); I have rounded up/down the dimensions to the nearest figure for the two I'm making now:
It's this way up so that you can read most of the numbers.
Rob
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 5, 2015 21:48:06 GMT
Had a drop of red with my dinner and re-read the above and started wondering....
Rob
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on Jun 5, 2015 20:41:39 GMT
Having completed my prototype, I decided to get straight on to building a couple of guitars together/in parallel, each of which will be almost but not quite the same as the “Almost built first build” guitar. With luck the differences will be improvements but we’ll have to see about that – and things might change as I along; they usually do. That thread began at the end and this one begins right at the beginning and will, I hope, show some of the difficulties we ordinary mortals have in making our first guitars, especially when you’re a poor amateur chap who tries to live within his means and can’t really justify the expense of too many visits to the Stewmac website. So here we go, warts and all.On 17th May I bought 4 likely looking doors locally for £20 (£5 each, buyer collects). Into the back of the Golf and then home to be stacked away and butchered when necessary. Here’s the first in mid-butchery – note the handsaw and sweaty patches: These instantly recognisable doors are from the 1930s and are generally made of quarter-sawn Douglas Fir. This may not be the best material for a soundboard but it’ll do me because it’s a lovely colour and not a knot in sight. Our house is full of them:
but we need those to fill the holes so I buy them on ebay for building guitars. They don’t yield as much timber as you might think because they’re full of finger-thick dowels but you can skim off quite a lot if you’re careful. Here is what I did to one stile with my trusty table saw cunningly lined up with the growth rings – not a job for the shaky of hand: I’ve taken 2 strips for heftier braces (c. 7mm), 2 for lighter braces(c 5mm) and the rest (just under 2mm thick) for laminating the linings. I follow colins religiously on these so need similar strips of mahogany and these come from a table leg circa 1830, I reckon. (This table cost £25 and yielded three large leaves as well as the legs, though I had to travel 30 miles to pick it up). Here’s a similar one which is on ebay now:: And this is the leg of mine being sliced into rashers – thin-kerf blade to save on wastage (1 browny point): Of course, these have to be thinned a little before laminating and I do this in my home-made sander-thicknesser – (plans found on-line):Still following colins’s method, I thin the Douglas Fir and the mahogany to 1.25mm and then laminate them in cork-lined formers: Now I’ve never been very pure in my methods so these have been glued with Cascamite (wash your mouth out with soap and water) because it gives you plenty of open time and they come out jolly stiff, which is the aim after all. [Cascamite, for those who don’t know and want to, is in fact a white powder 2-part glue (urea-formaldehyde) which is only activated when you add water. It then sets chemically into whatever space it is filling. It gives ample time to sort things out before it goes off but you don’t have to leave it for 12 hours before touching the joint/repair. It doesn’t smell and isn’t even bothered by water. You can even colour it to match surrounding wood. Perfect…. for irreversible work - though it is reversible with a file or a chisel or drill - and you would have to be rather strange to want to reverse the gluing of these laminates!] Nevertheless, I am reforming and the fish glue arrived just in time to do the last set – still cramped up at present so more of that later. [By the way, fish glue doesn’t smell horrible: when I was young (in the make-do 50s) we had a tube of “Seccotine” with a screw-eye bunging up the end in the sideboard drawer which was used for all our daily sticking needs - paper, card, leather and probably plates, too. And that’s what fish-glue smells like – a bit like hospitals or laboratories]. Now you have to remember that for 2 guitars you need 2 left top linings and 2 left bottom and 2 right top and 2 right bottom, which makes 8 gluing sessions. Furthermore, I don’t seem to be able get away without bending each component on a bending iron before putting them into the former (fairly tight bends on this guitar) and that’s a total of 4 x 8 = 32 bending sessions. All good practice, I suppose. The other problem I have is that there is a 1775mm radius arch across the top of the guitar and a 1185mm radius arch across the back. This means that the sides become considerably deeper and shallower as they move in and out and the linings have to follow these curves, which look like this: While these will be sanded to their final contour after being attached to the sides, they have to be cut approximately to shape before being attached. Since laminating them in their final form is quite tricky, I’ve found it best to draw in the shape on the inside laminate so that they can be glued with straight edges and cut to shapes after being removed from the forms. Here are a couple of pictures which may explain what the hell I am talking about: Meanwhile, I am thinking about modifying the bracing of the soundboard. Some expressed doubts about the lack of a UTB (Upper Transverse Brace or Ugly Thick Bit – take your choice) in the design for my prototype:
"In conventional guitar construction without other means of support such as flying buttress bracing it's main job is to stop the end of the fingerboard disappearing into the box and the rest of the guitar top collapsing into the sound hole under string tension. But that could be a false rumour spread by luthiers - you'll find out. "
and
"I'm sorry, you decided on your first guitar to leave out the UTBs because you didn't understand what it did and it was a bit ugly! Have you noticed that every guitar out there has them, steel strings, classicals. It is a major structural element of the guitar which helps stop the thing folding in half. "
and time may well prove them right to have worried. However, I actually think my death-defying diamond design provides the “support such as flying buttress bracing” that the former advocates and, if I may be so bold, overdoes it. I think the rigidity built into the prototype almost stifles its ability to sing out so I am going to try to lighten it up a little this time. So here below are designs of the prototype bracing followed by the slightly changed bracing I’m planning for the two under construction:
The one on the right lightens some of the secondary bracing but I will also carve away a little more of the “diamond” to see how much I can get away with. The middle version resulted from a comment made by a violin-maker friend of mine who says “With violins, some people have tried making the strongest point of the bass bar [this is a brace] right under the bridge and this isn't helpful - you need the driving force away from the centre or strongest point, just like bowing a string in its middle has less effect than bowing nearer the bridge.” I wasn’t brave enough to shift the cross-over to the side and make the whole thing asymmetrical so I took an easier option and extended the diamond past the bridge area. Whether violins can teacher guitars anything is uncertain since the energy input is continuous when bowing a violin as opposed to a little pluck but it’s worth a try.
Hope you don’t find all this a bit excessive but I’ve got no one else to talk to about it!
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on May 27, 2015 18:38:18 GMT
These ones are so discrete you can't actually see them when you want to...
... not quite sure what they're there for!
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on May 24, 2015 18:53:33 GMT
A lot of food for thought there, Mark. I'd thought of trying different weight strings - it's got Newtone PB 12-52 on it at the moment - but I decided to go for the "different players" option first. I'm hoping to get one or two other guitarists to try it out over the next week or two - it's certainly a good way to meet people to turn up on their doorsteps with a guitar and "I understand you play guitar...."! Different tunings could also make a difference. As you say, so many variables.
Luckily, I'm very very happy with it and I'm sure it'll sort itself out one way or another. It's certainly encouraged me to start playing guitar a bit more than I normally do; "Sore fingers" is very appropriate. Thanks very much for your encouraging words.
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R the F
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 1,135
My main instrument is: bandsaw
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Post by R the F on May 23, 2015 15:14:42 GMT
The best possible response. Thanks for your positivity, Iain, and really helpful tips.
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