"Bogha Beag" - an eight string Piccolo guitar

It’s a weird world and strange times that we are living in so I thought it appropriate to start a slightly bonkers project – an eight string Piccolo guitar - but first some history. I’ve always been a big fan of Steve Tilston and had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time at the 2014 Llyn Acoustic Guitar Festival. We got talking about woods when he told me he was a keen bowman and we discussed Yew that was the back and sides of a guitar I made for Leo Roberts (leoroberts) who was also at the Festival. Then last September at HB10 in Halifax Steve, Colin Symonds (colins) and I talked again about archery and Steve pointed out that Port Orford Cedar was a prized wood for making arrows – a lot of my guitars at HB10 had Port Orford Cedar tops that came from a tree that grew in my front garden. Steve was very taken with the Piccolo guitar that I had made for Leo and I started to form the idea in my mind of making a guitar using as far as possible woods used in Archery.

After HB10 with Colin’s knowledge of archery and guitar woods I had a look through my stash of woods together with wood passed on to me by Colin and came up with what I thought would work. With Leo’s help I contacted Steve and proposed making him a Piccolo guitar with these archery woods. Steve was fascinated by the idea of a bow wood guitar but as he put it was “well stocked” with guitars and didn’t want one he wouldn’t play. After further discussion we homed in on a parlour sized “crossover” nylon strung guitar which I also had the same bow woods for. This guitar “Bogha Fada” – Gaelic for “Long Bow” is almost finished and its making is documented here on my website.

This left me with the Piccolo guitar bow woods but the problem is I already have a Piccolo guitar. I was going to adapt a set of mandolin tuners down to six for the Piccolo guitar but then thought why not use all eight. I don’t really like the idea of four single strings and two double strings like Taylor and others have done with eight string guitars, and going higher/lower by four or five semitones with the extra two strings would lead to some very heavy or light gauge strings for them and some odd tunings. Then I thought about harp guitars that I make where the sub bass strings go down only by a semitone or two at a time and this idea seemed more promising. On harp guitars the sub bass strings aren’t fretted and are on a separate hollow arm. I didn’t have big enough pieces of wood to go down this route but having the extra two strings on the fretted fingerboard meant that they could be played unfretted as on a harp guitar but also with the option of playing them fretted as well. The downside is that the main neck has to be wider leading to a different playing style but after doing the maths the neck width will be similar to those of lutes – worth an experiment.

A Piccolo guitar is roughly equivalent to a normal guitar played with the capo on the eighth fret – C-C if in standard tuning intervals and Bb-Bb if in DADGAD tuning intervals – and my model has a scale length of 440mm. I’m thinking of having a tuning of G Ab Bb F Bb Eb F Bb which is BCDADGAD capoed at the eighth fret.

The guitar is called “Bogha Beag” - “Little Bow” in Gaelic. It will have a 440mm scale length, 12 frets clear of the body and a cutaway. It will have a Port Orford Cedar (used for making arrows) top that came from a tree that grew in my front garden, Yew (traditionally used in longbows) back and sides, Ash (used for Medieval longbows) neck, Holly (used to make Medieval low draw-weight practice bows for children) bindings and East Indian Rosewood (used for modern bow cores) headstock veneers and fingerboard.

As pictures on my website server won’t display on the forum they will be done as clickable links that should pop up in another window and bring you back to this thread when you close them. Again suitably quirky for these times and will be a test of your interest/boredom if you choose to follow the build.

Firstly here’s what my Piccolo guitar “Suzanna” looks like:

"Suzanna"


I use this body shape with a cutaway for my mandolin “Celtic Tigger” which will give an idea of how the body will look on “Bogha Beag” but with a longer and wider neck:

"Celtic Tigger"


OK, here we go - start with the beginnings of a cunning plan:

Plans

Here are the thicknessed Yew sides ready for bending:

Yew Sides

The soundport “porthole” is cut in the bass side using a 35mm Fostner bit:

Cutting the "porthole"

Next the sides are bent using this Fox style bending jig with the heating blanket - the porthole has a temporary “bung” installed:

Bending the sides

The East Indian Rosewood porthole ring is glued to the backing plate:

Making the porthole

The centre of the porthole is then routed out:

Porthole hole

Result

The "porthole" is then glued into the side using fish glue:

Glueing the porthole

Here are the sides in the mould after being shaped on the hot pipe and cut to length. The cutaway side will be bent on the hot-pipe:

Sides in the mould