The next one

I don't even know your wife!

Late last night the denouement was as expected (The luthier in the workshop with a chisel):

 



- half a guitar and I was pretty pleased with it but soon these words came back to haunt me....  "Notice that the bass-side slot is a bit too roomy for the end of the side, which slides around a little too loosely in it. That should be fine once I have glued the soundboard on since it will then be held in place - whether in the right place or the wrong place is another matter."  

By now, if you're following, you'll realise that the soundboard end of the bass side is firmly fixed in place by the soundboard but the other end was still moving around.  The problem was that it was not obvious whether the glued end was fully inserted into the slot or not so I wasn't sure where the free end ought to be.  Not for the first time I lost my presence of mind and decided to stop mucking about and fill the hole with Cascamite so that everything would be irreversibly locked in place.  But where to lock it?  Well, I fiddled about a bit and thought I had it more or less right and then filled the hole full of the aforementioned urea-formaldehyde glue.  It fills gaps and goes off relatively quickly but, even so, I decided to leave it for a few hours...  I was so ashamed of what I had done that I took no photos.  I thought I might be able to get away without telling you about it!

While I was waiting for that to settle down, I thought I would get on with the next process.  Now, next on my list is to do the bindings and purflings around the soundboard.  I couldn't do that for two reasons:  firstly and very obviously, because I had just glued up the side/neck joint and was waiting for it to go off and, secondly, because I haven't decided what to do about the 4mm thick section of soundboard where it reaches the edge at top and bottom.  Here is a picture of it at the top end:



That's the neck on the left and you can see the soundhole centre-top.  Since the router is guided by the surface of the soundboard and will cut a regular 6mm (say) down from that surface, it's as well to know exactly how thick the soundboard is going to end up after sanding and shaving.  Otherwise, the binding might be left rather shallow all of a sudden.  

Thus I decided to hold off with bindings.  I could, however, get going on the bridge - and a pretty odd bridge it's going to be.  I found a piece of laburnum big enough to allow me to make up a two-piece blank and, having sharpened my blades, I planed and scraped it till I was happy it would stick together:



I ended up with a nice book-matched blank:



I spent several hours hacking away at it and taking the occasional photograph:

  



It's turning into a bit of a mouseman, don't you think?  (This is a mouseman).  Not finished yet but it's got possibilities.  I did this this afternoon.  Last night I had had a look at the Cascamited body of the guitar...

The glue had turned to rock and everything seemed to be firmly in place.  Then I checked the arch of the soundboard; it was fine on one side but on the other side the arch tightened up far too much and the whole soundboard was asymmetrically curved at the neck end.  This was now locked in the wrong position by large amounts of Cascamite.

I told nobody.  I went to bed.  I awoke early and thought about it.  It could not be left like that for a number of reasons....

Now people say Cascamite is very good glue but the problem is that you can't reverse it.  In other words, if you use it, you'd better be pretty damned sure everything's in the right place because that's where it's going to stay.  As you know, I am an experienced furniture fixer and I like a challenge and by 8.30 I was in the workshop with chisels and saws and plenty of light (though no "hot water and plenty of it"):



De-wedged...



... and a firm tap with a little hammer and by 9 o'clock it was free again:



I made up a couple of new wedges and fixed it in place.  I used hot hide glue this time...

Great posts Rob. Fascinating to observe both how the guitar develops and how you cope with overcoming the obstacles along the way. Looking forward to hearing the finished article
Iain

Absolutely determined not to make any more mistakes with this guitar.  I started the day by carving down the bridge to something like its final shape and proportions.  The plate at the bottom is only 2.5mm thick and had to be handled carefully but all went well. 

  

As you can see, I also successfully routed out the 2.5mm recess in the soundboard to take the bridge.  Everything went fine and the plate fits perfectly:


   

What?  What??

"Now what can I foul up next...?"  You should never joke about things like this, especially if you have "form" - and I have form.  So what happened next?  Well, I made two major mistakes.  There's a surprise.  They are there plain to see in my post but either nobody was paying proper attention or else you're all too polite to mention it.  My "new design" will sort out both problems at once but will put me back a couple of days, especially since I've just heard I've got to give some teenagers a "lift" to Reading tomorrow morning!  Anyway, back to my new design.  Here is today's progress.

I began by extending the routed bit down to the sound hole:



I had actually considered this option when first sorting out this new design and I'm quite happy with it.  It certainly gives more support to the whole section between the bridge and the soundhole.

Now I needed a new longer bridge - preferably right-handed.  I sorted out a piece from my dwindling supply of laburnum, took a couple of slices off and glued them together;  (We have all been here before, We have all been here before...):

 

Here's the blank:



Here's the same thing with some holes drilled in it:





Now, nothing else can possibly go wrong.

Don't ask why - just look very carefully at the picture just above the words "Now, nothing else can possibly go wrong" - but I switched from the laburnum bridge to another one, this time made of sleeper. Jarrah.

I have discovered that jarrah is very very heavy - the piece I cut off the sleeper and measured seems to have density of about 1.1 10³kg/m³. I think that might mean it would sink in water! I couldn't move the sleeper on to my table saw so I cut a piece off with a hand saw. This was hard work and hot work. During the process I discovered that jarrah - or, at least, this jarrah - smells a bit like socks when it's disturbed. I checked with Mrs RtheF that my olfactory equipment wasn't misleading me and she shied away with stifled cries of something about cheese; she had her hand over her mouth so I couldn't make it out exactly. I've search-engined it and it's not supposed to have a smell but some have detected what I have detected and there is a theory that it may have to do with the previous use of the sleeper below train toilets. Now I refuse to believe, as I was explaining to my family over dinner, that one particular sleeper made of such impermeable timber could be permeated by waste products to such a degree that there would be an odour a full inch below the surface. Bear in mind that, after a drenching, it would be washed by rain and/or dried by wind and sun quite soon. However, it does smell bad.

Not to worry.

It also has very interlocking grain to the extent that, even with the sharpest blades, it refuses to be planed unless it is approached very laterally/diagonally with an extremely fine-set blade with a pronounced slicing motion. Even then, the grain can rip out quite deeply in big splinters if caught unawares. I had to use planes, chisels, rasps and sandpaper to get it to anything approaching a bridge - and it's still not finished. Hard work. And all the time it is being smelly.

I am further encouraged to search out a source of laburnum!

I believe you may be right about it not being jarrah. I've checked out a list of other species used for railway sleepers and there's one called Mora which looks like mine, has endgrain like mine and, more to the point, "Mora can have an unpleasant and sour odor while being worked." Jarrah has a very distinctive zig-zag pattern in the endgrain and I've yet to see that in my sleeper. I'll keep looking.