The Bryn Production

Now for the bit that I always imagine will take quite a long time to do but which I then realise should be quite quickly over with once everything is set up.  In the end, of course, it does take quite a long time to do - but I suspect that's a self-fulfilling fear.  It's bindings and purflings - though quite why the word "purflings" would merit a wiggly red underline on a site concerned with everything guitar I'm not really sure.

First, the plan:

From top left, the brownish strip is sapele, followed by (greenish) the chevron purfling, followed by more sapele on the corner and, finally, a narrow band of maple at the bottom.  Some of the dimensions result from the fact that I have maple in 1.6mm and .6mm sheets - constructional and normal veneers - and I have sapele in 1.3mm sheets of constructional veneer.  The pragmatic approach.  The purfling is the same as the rosette:




I've learned from various sources that it's a good idea to reinforce the surface of the soundboard with a little shellac before routing it (with a fairly blunt cutter) so that's what I did:




Can you also see some faint arrows reminding me to rout these bits backwards first before doing the whole thing the right way;  this I learnt from one of nkforster 's videos and should also help guard against nasty ripping of the wood.  I then roughly sanded the sides to make sure everything was flush since the router bit just follows the shape of the side:



Now I've seen a variety of means of guiding your router so that everything ends up nice and clean at the first attempt but the simplest, as far as I was concerned, was this one:




The router bit (6mm in this case) protrudes up through the hole to the required height and the round-nosed component (on top with arrow on it) is adjusted to uncover as much of the side of the bit as you want.  Does this help?


 

Here's a picture of the first cut - not the deepest - completed:




Note the sophisticated dust-extraction!  Here the second cut is complete:




And the inevitable close-up:




It may not have escaped your notice that getting it right with this little jig is not as straightforward as I imply.  You are right.  You have to be pretty confident that your can slide the guitar past the cutter at just about the right angle - and this is made ever trickier when you have as much arcing of the soundboard and back-plate as I have.  In fact, the front part of the jig, which the guitar rests on, is rounded off severely so that it doesn't hold the edge away from the cutter but it's still not entirely precise.  I tend to have to follow up the initial cut with the router with another little thing I made a while ago;  it's called a "purfling cutter" or some such and here it is:




It's a bit like a marking/cutting-gauge but narrower so that it fits into the waist and so on.  Now you can't cut right through with it but it gives a nice start to the chisel.  The upshot of all this is that it takes me a lot longer than I would like to cut the channels for my purfling and my binding.  Does anyone have any advice as to which other method makes the job very quick and clean and doesn't cost too much (of course).  I should point out that I have already bought a pair of drawer-runners and that is the way I am inclined to go at the moment.  I know Christmas is coming but I somehow feel it really shouldn't require anything too sophisticated (and expensive) to run a router cutter along the corner of a box even if it is a funny sort of shape.

This puts me in mind of Christmas.  I have been told to suggest some presents I might like.  I wonder what I should ask for....  So far I've come up with the following:

Nut files:  (you would not believe the fiddling around I go through to scour my workshop for blades of appropriate thicknesses every time I have to prepare a nut.)
Radiused fingerboard-sanding-blocks:  (but can't help thinking I should be able to make my own accurately shaped pieces of wood since that's all you seem to be paying for)
One of those Stewmac thingamies to fool the neck into thinking it's been strung up so that it's straight when it is strung up:  (I haven't looked, but everything from that sources seems to be breathtakingly expensive.)

I could add (considerably) to this list but I've got to eat my dinner now so I may return to it later.

Here's how we stand:

This looks like very impressive, but scary stuff. I hope you enjoyed your dinner - you deserve it!

Keith

Not noddy in the least, mel ;  the horizontal beam approach is one I haven't seen before but makes good sense and, once again, shows that you've thought about this rather than just lifting other people's ideas (as I plan to!).  If I've understood it correctly, I don't think it would work for me since the rim on my guitar goes up and down rather severely because of the pronounced side-to-side arching;  it would mean checking that spirit-level rather frequently.  Thanks for the help, though and good to see another idea thrown into the pot.

I've been reading about various options - such as the one on davewhite 's website and the one on nkforster 's video - but they all involve building things and I think I'll leave that sort of project till some time next year.  Not sure that my present method is such a failure, actually. My method (actually copied from something I saw somewhere on the web) has certainly produced the necessary grooves and today I set about filling one of them.  What follows will be a fairly laborious description of the process step by step which I'm writing for my own future reference as much as anything so you'll have to put up with a rather turgid piece.

You may remember that a long time ago (when making the rosette) I cut some strips of sapele and maple constructional veneer into strips and glued them together, 4 -1-4-1 and so on.  This resulted in a sheet that looked like this:



I actually made up a new one for the purfling but it looked the same.  For all this fine cutting I use my little Proxxon table saw, though it's more like a stool saw to be honest.  Here it is:



Handy little machine if you have a lot of very fine work to do but complains noisily - slipping rubber belt - if you try to overload it.  Here is how they tell you not to force things:



I'm sure someone will be able to supply more interesting possibilities, but that's what I think it means.

Anyway, I chopped up the sheet at a jaunty angle and came up with this little pile:



These are only about 1.7mm slices so they are mainly lying on (and showing) their sides;  you can see the half-chevron pattern on one in the middle, though.  Here's another picture:



Like little sticks of rock but not very filling.

Take two of these that match up:  N.B.  if you're on a curvy bit, it's worth looking for two pieces that aren't spaced quite the same so that the curve will equal up the pattern.  Here are two pieces which I reckon will go together nicely:



As you might imagine, these are pretty fragile - about 1.7 x 2.4mm with cross grain and glue.  This means that you can't force them round corners very easily without their breaking so I warm up my bending iron to about 90 degrees C and, very gently, allow them to bend:



(The overalls were being sold off cheap last time I was in Cuba - joke - and I haven't washed them since - not a joke;  dirty overalls help convince people you know what you are doing.)  They come out of this looking slightly or very bent (not the overalls):



- slightly in this case.  I didn't mention, by the way, that I had previously glued in a strip of sapele (1.3mm) with hot hide glue, which you can see on the right (above).  Having been cut and stuck and cut and bent, these chevron strips are by now feeling the strain and I found it helps to glue them together for a little moral support.  (All hot hide glue).



The groove has some hardened glue deposits in it which are left over from fixing the line of sapele.  These get the hot wet hammer treatment (see previously when fitting the rosette) and the softened glue is then scraped out with a chisel:




before gluing in the new strip and holding it in place with my fingers.  After about 30-40 seconds you are in danger of becoming permanently attached to the guitar (or losing your fingerprints) and the strip, already bent to shape, should now stay put:



It's a white knuckle ride all right;  so just to make sure, I put a few bits of tape on:



The tape's not really doing anything.  That is the beauty of hot hide glue;  if you're careful, you can even start planing and scraping it down flush within a few hours, though I don't want to take it right down at the moment because I may want to come back to re-melt the glue and press the purfling in further once I've had a chance to look at the results with the outside binding in place.



Here's a quick peek at where it's going.  My 13-year-old thought it looked cool so it must do because he certainly doesn't lie to keep me happy.

Hello eskimo - welcome aboard! Hope you like it here.

Why not tell us a little about yourself, your musical interests and say Hi in the Introductions Section?

Keith

I think Stefan has done something vaguely similar recently, but my guitar dates to the time I had some element of (a) dark hair and (b) disposable income (ie before wife, children and dogs), when Stefan was a young lad experimenting in bird's foot purfling. I'm sure he would be envious of your endeavours: let's hope it stays in one piece when the strings are tensioned (I'm sure it will).

Last night I finished with the channels cut ready to receive binding:



Looking at it this morning, I realised that, whilst some of it was fine,



some still needed a bit more work so I ran my little hand cutter round areas that needed it,



and trimmed them off with a chisel, little sanding blocks, scrapers and anything else that came to hand.  I put the constructional veneer through the Proxxon and prepared to fill the channels with the little strips that came out the other end... but still a problem;  I've never really worked out what to do with this bit:



so I asked my wife before she went to work and she said,



or words to that effect, so that's what I did.  Of course, there was some of this on the way:



and I discovered that greaseproof paper (or "baking parchment") is very kind to the fingerprints when hot hide glue is threatening to rip them off for ever.  Last of all I manage to slap in an end-graft but it was all a bit messy by this stage so we'll have to see how it looks when I clean it up:



The whole lopsided heel thing is a bit of a disaster really.  It resulted from some over-enthusiastic trimming of the sides when I made the cutaway (mentioned in dispatches at the time) and was not part of the plan.  Next time I promise to do better.

Now I was supposed to finish the binding and purfling by tonight and I'm not far off my target but the whole thing needs washing off and trimming back and that will take up some of my time tomorrow.  I also have to go to my son's Christmas performance for a couple of hours, which will make a pleasant change from guitars, and I believe tomorrow is the day we sort out a Christmas tree and decorate it.  All this will be very nice but I wouldn't be surprised if it pushes my schedule back somewhat.  On the other hand, I've only given myself "Stick the fretboard on" for tomorrow (with a few frills to make it look interesting) so I might get away with it.  I'll have to see what I can manage.

Yesterday went from theatre-school performances to visiting friends in a new house to picking up child from work and so on.  I finally got home at about 5.30 and decided that I had lost a day.  So already by day two on the schedule I was a day and a quarter behind since I had left the bindings globbed with glue and untrimmed.

Sunday morning, up at 7, running with Peter at 8 (in the drizzle) back by 9, showered soon after, breakfasted by 9.30 and down the workshop.  There's dedication for you.  

Lots of boiling water and a j-cloth and yellow rubber-gloves;  not childbirth - just cleaned off the glue:







Lots of planing and scraping and a bit of sanding and soon everything was flush:









Almost lunchtime by now and I had just about reached the schedule for the end of day one (at day two-and-a-half).  

I was undaunted, Fellow-Acoustic-Soundboarders.

Glued a previously prepared shallow wedge onto the bit of the soundboard between the sound-hold and the neck.  Sanded it so that it ran straight as an extension of the neck.  Sanded the fingerboard sides down the the correct dimensions:  see my instructions in blue above.  Glued the fingerboard on to the neck - hot-hide glue of course:



So here is how the day ended:



I did actually have time to start messing slightly with my bridge blanks but I still have a whole day to work on that so I will just be thankful for now that I have maintained my lag at one day.  Have to work hard tomorrow...