The Bryn Production

and you probably won't see it again!



I'd been fooled into imagining that digital was always better than analogue - the over-compensation of advancing years! I hope you're right; I'll get an analogue version and see what it says.



I've been waiting till I can get some kind of control over humidity levels before I do the gluing tests but I have made a note of what you suggest and I'll do them before I move on to any more serious gluing.



Pretty good, actually; just a very slight step in one area (about 0.2mm) which I'm wondering whether to iron out or just sand flat since it's not over-thin in that area.

Thanks for keeping me to the straight and narrow, davewhite. I appreciate the help.

Rob

In conversation last evening with a friend who, it turns out, is deeply into matters of humidity (for health reasons) and who was genuinely interested in my new dehumidifier, though not everyone is:  "Wait a moment," he said.  "When was it exactly you were gluing up this guitar back?"  "Well," he went on, "that was about the most humid week I've ever recorded!"  (I have very interesting friends - almost as interesting as me).  It does go to show, however, that I clearly chose the wrong time for extensive use of fish glue;  apparently, everything was dripping that week.  Anyway, having carried out a range of tests on the glue, as suggested by davewhite, and in reasonable levels of humidity and warmth, I can confirm that the wood gave way before the joint did, which is what you want to see.  I haven't been able to recreate the 80+% RH (you see, I have the technical terminology to hand now) to totally confirm what went wrong but I have seen enough to be convinced.

My drinking partner was also able to confirm that the type of dehumidifier I had bought - one which behaves like a fridge with the door left open rather that one based on a chemical dessicant - is definitely the more reliable type, though he did point out, as warned by davewhite, that it costs as much to run as a fridge with the door left open:  i.e. quite a lot.  I shall just have to increase the price of my guitars in line with expenses incurred - joke.  It also dried the washing yesterday, which was an added bonus.  For interested parties, it is a Trotec TTK 75 E and has shown absolute reliability (since it arrived on Friday).

I want to give the components time to lose a bit of water before I attempt to glue them up again so I have turned my attentions to the neck and fingerboard over the last few days.  Here's a rather lovely picture of the neck in section at fret 1:

The bottom section is mahogany and douglas fir (not differentiated here) and houses the two carbon fibre reinforcements together with the truss rod down the middle;  above that, the grey area is the fingerboard which, in this case, is made of laburnum;  at either side of the fingerboard there is to be a 2mm band of mahogany (originally there to disguise the thickness of the fingerboard but now just a vestigial organ which I thought might look quite nice);  and, finally, you can see the fret, whose tang is sunk into the laburnum but trimmed off at the ends so that it is not seen - or felt - at the sides of the fingerboard.  This all means that my piece of laburnum ends up being rather narrower than you might be expecting, and now looks like this:




This is what it looks like in close-up:



Of course, I've missed out a few steps here so I have included, below, a few pictures of my home-made copy of a StewMac device being used to create the fingerboard of my previous guitar;  the original StewMac device can, I seem to remember, be seen on one of colins's threads (I think) and the fingerboard under preparation here is made of Rocklite.  









The most difficult thing as far as I was concerned was sourcing a saw with exactly the right kerf (around 0.6mm as I recall) to fit the tang of my frets.  I finally found one and it was quite cheap but does the job nicely.  This, incidentally, was about my third attempt at making a jig to cut frets accurately.  For a long time I tried to rig something up on the table saw with a narrow kerf blade but "narrow" seems to mean about 1/8" when it comes to table saw blades and I could not work out how people manage to source a blade with a 0.6mm kerf which will fit a table saw.  I then tried to use my Proxxon miniature table saw but found it doesn't really have enough places to attach the guides that you need to take the fingerboard across the blade.  What I have ended up with does the job fairly quickly, though for some reason the slots are not precisely square and I have to re-trim the board to square everything up after cutting the slots.  I'll have to look into it.  If anyone's interested in this jig I can send them more details and even, possibly, plans!

I have also finished shaping the neck, more or less, and this is what it looks like now:





Well, let's hope that this week will get me back to where I was before The Great Humidity struck.

Thanks for the "likes";  nice to know there's a world out there!

Started this morning by offering up the newly glued back to the rest of the guitar and it was more or less accepted after a little tweaking.   The back has shrunk noticeably side to side after having all the water sucked out of it but it's not a catastrophe and there should be enough left to stick, especially since half of it is removed anyway when routing out the grooves for purfling and bindings.  I did have to modify the brace-housings in the sides a tiny bit to get it to sit down but it's looking okay now.

Then I drove to a nearby village to pick up an oak bureau that needs fixing.

Then I turned back to the fingerboard and carried on where I left off last evening with alternate strips of mahogany and little blocks of camel bone.  Just to make life difficult for myself I cut the bits of bone smaller and smaller as I work my way up the fingerboard;  they in fact measure 1/5 of the fret-to-fret gap.  On the last guitar they measured 1/8 of the gap but I seem to like changing things for no good reason.  Here it is still in a bit of a mess:



I expect you've noticed it's a bit odd. Here's another picture to confirm your worries:



I have used the same arrangement on all - "all," he says - all the guitars I have made.  I know it's terribly confusing for guitarists (but actually quite funny to see the slight panic in their eyes at first) but to me the normal arrangement doesn't seem to make much sense at all.  For someone like me - not, you may remember, a virtuoso plucker - it's quite handy to be able to glance down and see where G A B C D E come on the bass string or, if the bass note is on the A-string, where C D E F G and A can be found.  I don't so often find myself looking for C# or F# or, at least, I don't want to have to remember that two of the marked notes are sharps rather than naturals like the rest of them.  I was also reassured to find that di Mauro guitars  - gypsy jazz guitars of yesteryear - adopt a similar if less complete version of my design.  I'm sure you're all screaming, "Yes, but there's a good reason for the normal arrangement," so I'd be grateful if you'd let me into the secret and I'm quite happy to return to the fold with my next build.  Meanwhile, here's the board posing on the neck - as if you hadn't seen enough of it for one evening:

I'd go for the full width nut. But that's just me

A while ago I was examining a small piece of wood I had obviously cut off a piece of furniture whilst doing a repair. I couldn't work out what it was but it was extremely hard - almost chimes when you flick it with a fingernail. After a bit of research I discovered it was jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata from Australia). Here's the piece I've got:



It's about 5" long and 1½" wide. Unfortunately, you only seem to be able to buy it in the form of recycled railway sleepers (too big) or, occasionally, as recycled parquet flooring (too small for fingerboards at least). Anyone any experience with it or more reasonable sources?

You may also be desperate to see the end grain;  here it is:

Same thing had crossed my mind. I was thinking in terms of sloping off the binding at the sides of the hole like this:



I'll see how it works. A bit of oak might be a nice change since everything else is going to be stained down. But, as you say, I'll no doubt end up trying a few variants until one looks right.

Yeah. I mean, that's why I said it. Obviously...




(actually just liked the idea of a more simple nut change if the need ever arose!)