colins
Luthier / Guitar Maker
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Post by colins on May 31, 2014 8:46:35 GMT
I'm just starting to build a batch of four 'Spanish' guitars, all based on the Torres 'La Suprema' guitar FE19. One of the four is as a 'gift' to a young lad in the USA who is of to music college this autumn to study guitar and thinks his Yamaha won't cut it. He's a nice youg lad who is also just starting to build guitars himself. I gave him a few choices of B&S wood, and he settled on some Birdseye maple, or as it has been described Teardrop maple. I'm going with some Caucasian spruce for the top. This won't be the quickest build, as I have a lot on at the moment, but I'll try and keep it rolling on. So the guitar will be: Top: Caucasian Spruce B&S: Birdseye Maple Neck: Cedrella FB, Binding: Macassar ebony Bridge: Either Macassar ebony or EIR     Colin |
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colins
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 2,397
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Post by colins on May 31, 2014 8:51:16 GMT
This guitar is one of a batch of four, so I spent a rather long weekend making laminated linings for them. My linings are four layer, so I start with the usual chunks of wood and take thin slices, which I sand down to about 1.25mm. For this guitar I'm using three layers of spruce and a capping laminate of cedrela, on some guitars I'll use a cap layer of the side wood.  I use LMI white glue for this glue up, but any decent wood glue would work, HHG and fish glue grab too fast for this process as you need the layers to slide over each other as the two parts of the mould are tightened.  I leave them to dry for about an hour then remove from the mould and repeat, and repeat, and repeat! When I have a set one corner is rounded on each lining, making sure I have two sets for top and bottom. The linings are identical and a perfect match for the plantilla.  Next job is to bend the sides, with every one of those birdseyes looking as if it wants to pop right out as soon as I start to bend the wood, so this may end up as an EIR/Caucasian FE19 :roll: Colin |
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colins
Luthier / Guitar Maker
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Post by colins on May 31, 2014 8:55:01 GMT
Well I bit the bullet and decided to bend these highly figured sides, I have bent about 150 sides of various woods in my time, with not a single crack or other failure, I had a distinct twitch in my stomach that my clean sheet was about to be sullied. :cry:
After sanding to 2mm, I profiled the back edge leaving the top straight to aid lining up in the bender.
I decided to take out a little insurance and sprayed the sides with Supersoft 2 and left to dry overnight. With the wet sides, you can see what the final figure should look like under finish
I use a very simple bending form and blanket, I like the feel of the wood bending under my hands. My stack in the bender is Spring steel/foil/paper/wood/paper/foil/spring steel/blanket.
I very lightly spritz the paper with water, make up the stack and secure it with bulldog clips then set it on the bender.
No pictures during the bend I'm afraid, rather too busy to reach for the camera, but I got the stack bent, and heard no cracking splintering sounds, so far so good.
After the bend cycle I let the side cool to room, or rather garage temperature, and inserted the clips to hold the bottom slat, these six clips stop the bottom spring steel slat trying to straighten the side when the cauls are removed.
I unwrapped the side put it in the mould and turned the bender round, this stops me bending two sides the same. and repeated the process for the second side.
So, would I have to revert to plan B? With a spare set of EIR waiting in the wings, I unwrapped the second side and hey presto, two perfectly bent un-cracked un-warped sides.
Either my fear concerning the difficulty of bending these sides was unfounded, or I'm a wood bending God, I prefer to believe the second statement.
Colin
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colins
Luthier / Guitar Maker
Posts: 2,397
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Post by colins on May 31, 2014 8:59:52 GMT
I've done a little job out of order, I made up a new run of green and white crowsfoot and some marquetry purfling, two styles I regularly use in my Torres style rosettes. So after discussing it with Brian I said that I would make up two rosettes and let him decide which to use, I did tell him that if he chose the wrong one, then we'd go with my choice! :lol:
Anyway, Brian wanted to include the green and white crowsfoot as this is a recurring theme in a lot of Torres guitars.
Making rosettes is not my favourite job, it's extremely fiddly and my lack of left hand dexterity doesn't help. Everytime I make one I tell myself that I can quite understand why people buy the ready made ones, but I can never see the type I like, and the quality of those I do see isn't very high, so I guess I'm going to be making them for the foreseeable future. 
I make my multi-line rosettes off of the top as I find it much easier to inlay the completed rosette. It's a long process that takes about five hours, most of which is glue drying time.
I make them on a board over wax paper, and form them around a UHMWP disc which is secured onto the board, all layers are glued with fish glue, with roughly an hour drying time between each set of purflings being added
When the final glue is dry I simply remove the rosette and run it through the sander to even out the faces and get it to the right thickness to inlay, and the finished result:
So, that's done and out of the way!
Colin
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davewhite
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Post by davewhite on May 31, 2014 9:12:11 GMT
Colin, Great to see you posting the making of your guitar here - gorgeous woods and a lovely rosette. Lucky Brian  |
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colins
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Post by colins on May 31, 2014 9:28:05 GMT
Dave, it is very unusual wood, I got it from Bob Cefalu about ten years ago, at an OLF swap. He had only managed to cut two sets of this, and neither he, or any one else I know, has ever seen maple like it. The guy that bought the other set broke both sides when bending them, so this may be a unique set of wood. I would say relatively unique but.....
Colin
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leoroberts
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Post by leoroberts on May 31, 2014 10:35:57 GMT
That birdseye maple looks the business, Colin! As Dave says, it looks like a lovely rosette - I'll be interested to see what it looks like in situ.. I know classical guitars tend to have wider rosettes than steel stringers.
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alig
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Post by alig on May 31, 2014 12:41:26 GMT
Absolutely lovely.
Looking forward to seeing this progress.
Alasdair.
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ocarolan
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Post by ocarolan on May 31, 2014 13:12:24 GMT
This looks lovely, Colin - very much looking forward to watching this as it it progresses - great stuff so far.
Thanks v much for posting!
Keith
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Martin
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Post by Martin on May 31, 2014 16:22:21 GMT
Great thread Colin with super pics - as others have said, the maple looks fabulous!  |
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Post by Mike Floorstand on May 31, 2014 18:00:47 GMT
I wouldn't care to meet the bird whose eyes were used to make this piece of wood, but it promises to be a stunning instrument!
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007
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Post by 007 on May 31, 2014 19:23:16 GMT
Very much enjoying watching this build love the sides
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Post by ntredwell on May 31, 2014 19:50:10 GMT
Thats some stunning wood.
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colins
Luthier / Guitar Maker
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Post by colins on Jun 3, 2014 17:39:49 GMT
Just a bit done, I have started on the neck, but I'll detail that here when it is further along.
So, I glued in the linings today, You'll remember that I use laminated linings in my guitars, which makes gluing in the linings a fairly simple task as they are already a perfect fit for the sides, so need many less clips to glue them intimately to the sides. Fish glue of course.
Just a quick shot of the neck components, I usually use the central motif in the rosette as the stripe in the headplate.
Colin
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davewhite
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Post by davewhite on Jun 4, 2014 16:57:35 GMT
Colin, Neat job with the linings and those headstock veneers look very tasty |
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Jo whoever he is.
