The Bryn Production

I always use a tiny smear of refined linseed oil- a little goes a long way!
Cheers Gary

Yes, Leo, but there's that special order you play them in...

I had to admit it to myself today:  this won't be finished by Saturday.  Let's face it, another name for Saturday is Tomorrow.  Nevertheless, I don't intend to relax or it might not be done till the New Year.  The problem is that I've started rushing things and, as they say, "more hurry, less speed";  that's what they used to say, anyway.  Unfortunately, you can't really rush polishing, especially when the object in question hasn't got any feet to stand on so that you have to keep turning it over to do the other side and you need at least one bit to hold on to which hasn't been polished yet.  What I have had to do is write out another plan - but I'll come to that later.  Back to this morning.

Well, yesterday's polish had gone off sufficiently for me to sand it (or "cut it back") with fine paper to flatten the surface of yesterday's shellac.  Here I am, ready to start:



and here I am having started:



and here, having finished (the soundboard at least):



For those who are interested, this is done lightly but repeatedly and in small circles - I prefer anticlockwise - until there is floury shellac powder everywhere and most of the surface is matt.  Any shiny bits weren't flattened before you started;  if they're shallow enough, the polish will, you hope, gradually fill them;  if they're not, then you tell yourself to prepare things better next time.  Here is an example of the latter:



and here's a bit that's not so bad:



Then I polished the back and one side again:



If you've never done this, you'd be surprised how "dry" it is even a few seconds after you have put a rubber over it.  The trouble is that it is still very soft until the solvent - alcohol I believe - has all gone and this really takes a few hours or days/weeks to be really hard.  I don't have that much time so I left it for a while and reverted to fret-end filing.  Filed all the rest of the frets so that they are ready to insert - but I don't want to insert them yet.  I then, rather daringly, attempted to polish the soundboard and the other side but - you've guessed it - this didn't do the back any favours even though it was lying on foam and baking paper.  The good thing about french polishing, though, is that minor problems with the surface - like dust or slight marks - will disappear the next time you cut it back flat, which is where we started this morning and where we will start again tomorrow morning - but with a better body of polish on the wood.

I had no choice then but to leave it alone and, of course, I haven't even started polishing the neck yet.  This was when I realised it wouldn't be finished by tomorrow.  Nevertheless, there were useful things I could do.  I cut a small piece of laburnum to maker the saddle.  This started as one piece with a flat bottom and a 16" radius top to match the fretboard radius.  I then cut it into three and tentatively sanded until it fitted in the slots:



Two things you might notice here:  the one on the left is probably upside down - I'll have a look in the morning - and I have the grain running top to bottom.  The grain direction is deliberate since it seems to me it will make a more secure vibrational (new word!) contact with the bottom of the slot that way.  Eventually, there will be little bits of fret wire in grooves atop these sadlettes but that will have to await the intonation process when the bridge is fixed in place.

The plan has changed, as I said before.  Here is the new plan, for what it's worth;  it's greenish this time to help with feelings of positivity:

1. Cut back body

2. Fill any gaps

3. Final polish back and side

4. Polish neck (guitar on front)

5. Final polish front and side

6. Oil fingerboard

7. Fit zero fret and 12th fret

8. Fit nut

9. Fit bridge when possible
 
10. Attach strings, intonate saddle and straighten neck

11. Put in frets

12. String it.

Most of this, I hope, is self-explanatory but "Fit bridge when possible" is again a reference to how quickly the polish hardens off and "straighten neck" is a vestige of my earlier plan to make a jig to record the shape of the neck when under string tension and to replicate this without the strings so that Euler's columns don't get it the way of perfection.  Gibberish?  Well I was reading about it on Roger Bucknall's website and I see there is a perfectly easily copied jig sold by Stewmac to counteract the effect and I thought I might have a go before I put the frets in place so that I can lightly sand higher parts of the fingerboard.  As I say, I haven't actually made the jig yet so I might have to ignore that bit of the list.

One of the advantages of french polishing is that you end up with truly beautiful shiny thumb nails.  Here's one of mine:

Cerise a jolly good fellow,
Cerise a jolly go.......



Quite a list there! But preferable to mine, which is about to begin with the annual Battle of the Chrristmas Tree Lights......

Keith

Mrs rthef also likes this

1. Cut back body front and one side of body

I've realised that, now that the body of the guitar has a body of polish on it, I don't actually need to put a finishing coat on all of it till later - even after the guitar is finished.  This would be impossible with the front because it might be tricky polishing around a bridge and strings but is fine for the back and for one side.  So I cut back just the soundboard and one side.  Because this is (hopefully) the final coat of polish, I sanded strictly with the grain so that any faint scratching wouldn't be apparent.



I think it's improved a bit since yesterday morning;  some of those depressions have started to fill up with polish.  I wouldn't want to pile too much shellac on to a lovingly thinned soundboard but I'm happy to build up the layers on the side.

2. Fill any gaps

I filled one or two slight cracks between purflings and bindings with coloured wax and then scraped and 0000-wire-wooled it off the surface.

3. Final polish front and side


This starts with circles, moves on to figures-of-eight and ends with straight lines, during all of which very little extra polish is added.  It should end up being fairly shiny but the surface will change slightly overnight as it loses solvent and sinks into the grain slightly.  You'll notice I didn't fill the grain with egg-white and wood dust this time;  that's because I had stained the surface and didn't want to risk rubbing through the darker surface to make it patchy.  (I never normally fill grain in this way when polishing furniture for the same reason).  Here's the back and a side:



4. Fit zero fret and 12th fret

5. Fit nut


I realise that the 12th fret will get in the way if I do get round to de-Eulerising (not a word) the fingerboard so I delayed that stage till later but did put in a zero fret and nut.  These could both be temporary, the former because I'm toying with the idea of putting in a jumbo sized fret here so that I can fiddle with the intonation at this end as well by filing bits off the zero fret, and the latter because I have spread the strings to their absolute maximum width here and they may need to be moved in from the edge.  With this in mind, the fret has had its tang "anchors" filed off and the nut has not been glued (or shaped very much at this stage).  The nut is made of laburnum and has been filed using the set of nut files that I will be getting from my in-laws for Christmas once they (the files) are cleaned up and re-packaged.



6. Polish neck

About time the neck got the treatment.  It'll need more but at least I've made a start now on this and on parts of the headstock.



7. Fit bridge when possible


Well, it wasn't possible.  I had plenty of time but as soon as I started trying to measure out the precise placement of the bridge - and bear in mind that I've also got to accurately dowel it through to the braces under the soundboard - I realised that I was going to mark the fresh polish somewhere along the line and I would have to bite the bullet and stop.  So I stopped.  Before I stopped, however, I noticed that the little screw-hole - a "door memory" - in the soundboard



is not quite going to be covered by the bridge footprint.  This is a fairly major oops.  I can't really fill it successfully at this stage so perhaps I should just be brazen about it when asked:  "It's a screw-hole!"  Could be a selling point!

So what remains to be done?  Well, this:

7. Fit bridge when possible

8. Attach strings, intonate saddle and straighten neck

9. Fit 12th fret and intonate saddle

10. Oil fingerboard

11. Put in frets

12. Final polish back and side

13. String it.

14. Sell it!  (Good point, Leo)