The next one

There's a pretty huge gluing area under this, Francis so it's got a better chance of staying put than the bridge I use at the moment. It will also, of course, be dowelled through to the major braces as usual.  The front step also provides a firm stop against the pull of the strings (even though it might form a pivot for the back to rise up).  It will be important to make sure the bottom of the recess is dead flat and that might need a bit of planning - I feel a little jig coming on.  The rationale is that there is no bridge-plate to spread the load underneath the soundboard so I'm effectively putting it on top of the soundboard.  Not really very revolutionary, I'm afraid.  (By the way, aren't pocket joints the things they use to screw table-tops on?!)

So here are some pictures. Here's part of a door:



A nice bit of Douglas Fir/Oregon Pine/Columbian Pine from the 1930s so it should have settled down by now and it's nicely quarter sawn, which means it'll just get slightly narrower if it dries out any more rather than bending one way or the other.  I imagine they used this for doors just for that reason;  nothing worse than a warped door.  I'm not sure that I love the smell, which is quite distinctive.  Quite a strong taste, too.  I ran it through my table-saw/circular-saw on all four sides to cut as far through as possible and then finished off the job with a hand-saw leaving a third slice, containing most of the dowels, as waste - but it'll come in useful for something.



There's an hour or two gap here which involves a lot of sweating over various hand-planes to get it down to a manageable thickness and to remove the soaked in finish on one side and the remains of the dowels on the other.  It's not quite wide enough, either, so I had to remove an inch-wide strip and move it along a bit:

   

My gluing contraption next.  Of course I couldn't remember how to use it so had to look up the pictures in my last build to check.  It's quite easy once you get the hang of it but I'm not as young as I used to be:



I was also a bit lazy here.  You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson by now but, rather than setting everything up to make absolutely sure that the two edges were dead square and would make the perfect joint, I just did what I'd do for two planks which need joining edge to edge.  It's an old method that seems to work.  The idea is that even if your planing is far from square, as long as you plane both edges together, they will both be equally out of square and will therefore fit perfectly:



I used fish glue and I seem to have a soundboard;  a very thick soundboard but it makes a nice noise when you tap it and look thoughtful.

I think I've already decided to do just what you say about locking the rods between the neck-block and the waist and I understand the distinction you're making between the two potential types of distortion - especially if it saves money! The trouble with the tailpiece and floating bridge is that it takes me straight back to my rather unpopular design of earlier today with the strings anchored a little lower down the tail - and I don't think we want to revisit that, do we? It's another animal altogether and, I suspect, not one that will sound too good without a pick-up and certainly not one that will appeal to most guitarists out there. Rather than try to side-step the problem of bridge rotation I'd like to face up to it like a man (or woman - but not like a mouse, male or female).

Obviously I've re-designed the guitar since last I spoke; well it was about 36 hours ago. A few superficial things and a few fundamentals.

The fundamentals are that the fretboard/neck are going to join the body at the 12th instead of the 13th fret; it's a fairly simple change really since I'm just plunging the whole neck one fret space (18.1mm in this case) further into the body and moving the soundhole down the same distance to make room. I know this is a bit traditional but I would like to know if it makes a difference to put the bridge even more central to the "round" bit of the soundboard. This was brought to mind because I also wanted to move the hole to a more average position at the waist of the guitar; my previous ones have had the hole very high up the face of the soundboard in an attempt to provide more soundboard area to vibrate. I've also taken the opportunity to increase the size of the soundhole because some very good-sounding guitars seem to have big holes. The sound seems to "open up" - quite literally. I did ask davewhite about this with reference to the guitar he has just taken off the road trip having found a worthy winner of the young guitarist competition (I can't remember what it's called because it's in Irish and if I leave this page I usually lose everything I've written so far) since the hole looks quite big in proportion to the body. I think he thought I was being flippant - or perhaps I had discovered the secret of his success. Anyway, I haven't done anything radical, just increased the diameter from 101mm to 106 and then lined it, which will bring it back to somewhere around 104mm. That's only about a 3% increase in the area of the soundhole.  I've also decided to go with the distinct thickening of the soundboard in a strip down the middle, to let and extended bridge plate into the surface of the soundboard and to arch the soundboard as I had in previous (but not in the last) build.  All of these modifications are aimed at increasing the resilience of the soundboard to the twisting forward of the bridge but should still leave me free to brace the soundboard fairly lightly.  (Actually, the sinking of the bridge so that the edges are flush with the surface of the soundboard will also make a considerable difference to the ease of finishing the top;  if you are french polishing right up to a raised piece, it's extremely difficult to keep the polish looking perfect.)

More superficially, I have decided not to have a cutaway on this guitar, unless I am tempted to try what RosieTGC and francis have done with a "scoop" which I find quite appealing and shouldn't be too much trouble since the sides of the guitar are made of 8mm plywood; I could almost nail it in place. This is partly my response to reading that ocarolan can't stand the pointy type of cutaway I have employed so far and anyway it will save time.  It's very important to keep the leaders on your side.  I also had an aesthetics discussion with Mrs RtheF under the cherry tree this morning and she finds my guitars a bit "flashy" looking. Who's not flashy? I wondered. Taran, I thought. So I had a quick look and sure enough found some nice pictures of very plain (but lovely) guitars which Mrs RtheF approved of. "I prefer the look of mel 's guitars to yours," she added just to spur me on;  Mel has actually been here with guitars that he has built so she knows what she is talking about.  "Taran and Mel don't use old doors and tables to make their guitars," I muttered under my breath as I slunk off to my designing place. So I'm going what's known as "minimalist" with my decoration, though that could end up as plain dull in my hands.

What's behind most of this is, if you want me to be honest, the fact that I am going to Halifax in September and would like to take a newly finished guitar with me.  With that in mind I am very happy to simplify a few of the processes and see what comes out at the other end while, at the same time, building on what I have learned from previous guitars.

Here's what I've been doing since last time.

I think I left the soundboard all roped up in my gadget which holds the two halves together.  Well, it came out in one piece, about 5mm thick.  I drew a couple of lines down it and planed it down to about 2.5mm towards the sides while leaving a meaty 4mm in the middle strip.  This is quite hard to do with planes which generally have very flat bottoms and don't appreciate a lateral jump but I managed to produce something which approximated to the plan:



There is a snag insofar as the thicker strip down the middle retains the discolouration of the door finish whilst the areas which are cut deeper into the wood (towards the sides) are lighter.  Not pretty.  I had a go with some of this:



(nasty stuff so don't lick your fingers after use or breathe in the sanding dust you may produce) since it acts as a gentle but usually very effective bleach on wood with nasty marks on it.  As you can see, I am a "professional" despite appearances.  It did improve things but I'll wait till everything's sanded down to its final position before doing any more bleaching.  Here's a picture - not sure why - of it doing its stuff:



Here's a picture of the end to give you an idea of the way the thickness varies at the moment though it'll end up a little less abrupt than it appears here:



I notice it knows what's coming, too, and has already started to arch by just about the right amount without any persuasion at all.  

I moved on apace, drawing in the circle where the hole was to be 



Okay.  So it took me two goes to get it at the right end of the soundboard but I was working fast.  I've already shellac-ed the area around the correct hole in this photo and all is ready for my sophisticated routing jig.  This consists of a sawn-off nail sticking up through the soundboard and a hole in the bottom plate of the router:



As you can see, this is rather hit and miss.  There are a number of holes drilled in the bottom plate and which one you use really depends how big you want your soundhole to be and how big your router bit is.  In the end I found a good combination and set about the job:



(I don't think it was quite so pink and green in real life but it makes its point.)  A quick rub round with a bit of 180 grit sandpaper for any rough areas and I was ready to prepare the lining.  This was to be of mahogany (because I had some strips of table leg lying around which were about the right thickness):



I trimmed a piece off and shaped it on a hot side-bending iron at about 150 degrees C:



and glued it in with fish-glue, which is up-your-arm runny in this sort of weather:



I'm sure I should have reinforced the area before gluing in the lining but I didn't and I explain this by saying that it is already 4mm thick in this area and will be further supported by having braces passing in close proximity.  Or else it won't be too difficult to add a bit of extra support at a later point.

I'm afraid it was so hot when I was running this evening that my brain completely shut down and I didn't have a single thought.

"Nigel" being nkforster and "HO" being Howe-Orme, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but then again I have very little idea what I am talking about and haven't heard his guitar!

Well put Leo.