"Bogha Fada" - a guitar for Steve Tilston
May 16, 2020 10:06:33 GMT
jonnymosco, Akquarius, and 13 more like this
Post by davewhite on May 16, 2020 10:06:33 GMT
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.
The guitar “Bogha Fada” – Gaelic for “Long Bow” - is based on my parlour/Terz guitar body, “An Féa Caol”, modified to be slightly longer and have an asymmetric body shape with soft cutaway in the style of my “Buachaill Mór” model. It has a 640mm scale length, slotted headstock and 12 frets clear of the body. It will has 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, bridge and fingerboard. It has a set of Gotoh classical tuners with steel string barrels fitted, Ebony bridge pins, a K&K Pure Mini pickup, Gold Evo fretwire, and is fitted with Alliance Corum Savarez 500ARJ strings (standard tension trebles with high tension bass). Nut width is 48mm and 57mm string spacing at the saddle. It has one of my custom bound/rebated rosettes in Yew and a “porthole” soundport with a Yew “bung” so that it can be played with the port open or closed. It has an X braced soundboard and you can see a photo documentary of it being made here on my website.
“Bogha Fada” fits nicely into a ¾ sized case and is living in the one used for the Acoustic Soundboard Forum “An Féa Caol” Road Trip.
I did a recording for Steve of "Mammy O'Mine" (Pinkard/Treacey) based on John James and Pete Berryman's version on "Sky in my Pie" and have had a Zoom session with him to show him the finished guitar. The task now is to get the guitar to Steve in the current situation.
A big thank you to colins for his advice and donation of some of the woods, leoroberts for acting as “midwife” to the project, Martin for kindly hosting the pictures so that they show up on the Forum and to Steve for letting me make him a guitar – I just hope he likes it.
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.
The guitar “Bogha Fada” – Gaelic for “Long Bow” - is based on my parlour/Terz guitar body, “An Féa Caol”, modified to be slightly longer and have an asymmetric body shape with soft cutaway in the style of my “Buachaill Mór” model. It has a 640mm scale length, slotted headstock and 12 frets clear of the body. It will has 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, bridge and fingerboard. It has a set of Gotoh classical tuners with steel string barrels fitted, Ebony bridge pins, a K&K Pure Mini pickup, Gold Evo fretwire, and is fitted with Alliance Corum Savarez 500ARJ strings (standard tension trebles with high tension bass). Nut width is 48mm and 57mm string spacing at the saddle. It has one of my custom bound/rebated rosettes in Yew and a “porthole” soundport with a Yew “bung” so that it can be played with the port open or closed. It has an X braced soundboard and you can see a photo documentary of it being made here on my website.
“Bogha Fada” fits nicely into a ¾ sized case and is living in the one used for the Acoustic Soundboard Forum “An Féa Caol” Road Trip.
I did a recording for Steve of "Mammy O'Mine" (Pinkard/Treacey) based on John James and Pete Berryman's version on "Sky in my Pie" and have had a Zoom session with him to show him the finished guitar. The task now is to get the guitar to Steve in the current situation.
A big thank you to colins for his advice and donation of some of the woods, leoroberts for acting as “midwife” to the project, Martin for kindly hosting the pictures so that they show up on the Forum and to Steve for letting me make him a guitar – I just hope he likes it.