The next one

I carved the braces to some kind of shape - pointed at the soundhole, theoretically,  which took a little while.  Then I sanded the inside of the back down through the grades as far as 240 grit.  That took a while, too.  Then I trimmed the back down very close to its final size and marked out where to cut the notches in the sides to accommodate the ends of the back-braces.  Doesn't sound like a great deal of progress but it all has to be done.  Here are some pictures:





And with some glueless cramps to check that it all fits -  I still have to finalise a few things inside the top before I can stick it all together:





Will I get to glue it together tomorrow?  Tune in to find out.

Ooops - pay no attention if you wondered what that was.

Admittedly I also fitted in the oiling of a small table-top and the first stages of polishing a slightly bigger one, but most of this morning was spent wrestling with bindings and rope.  Mr Somogyi* advocates the use of cotton rope wrapped very tightly round and round the body in a particular sequence - the guitar body, that is - as a foolproof way of attaching recalcitrant bindings.  Now I had cut my maple bindings a bit thick and had had awful trouble bending-without-breaking them on my bending-iron but they were rather over-sized and very hard to persuade into their proper place.  I decided to adopt the Somogyi method.  I'm sure it works but I went through 2 or 3 dry-runs and every time the rope slipped off at one stage or another and all the tension was lost.  I had a quick lunch and decided to cut my losses.  I cut some new strips of maple and ran them through my sander-thinnesser to something very close to their final size this time before bending them to shape - quicky and efficiently and even quite accurately.  I then used my tried and tested method of hot-hide glue and strong fingers followed by a little tape... and with considerable success.  I'll pop the back ones in first thing tomorrow but then I've got to zoom off to Addenbrookes so that they can tell me my heart is fine again.  (Actually, they've promised me a recorder which will show what my heart is doing all day - beating, I hope - so that could be quite exciting.)  Meanwhile, here are a couple of pictures:


 

Damn!  I should have shellacked the edges of the soundboard before slopping glue all over it!

*  A world-renowned builder of expensive acoustic guitar and writer on the subject of expensive guitar building.

Yesterday was one of those days where you seem to do quite a lot of work and then go to bed with the feeling that you have lost ground.  Two major things were worrying me as I lost consciousness:  first, I had tried to scrape and sand the bindings flush with the sides only to find that they were dangerously thin in one or two places and would, ideally, need to be removed and the channels re-routed;  second, I had just had trouble with one of the machine-heads which tightened up as I turned it and then seemed to stop working altogether.

To take a step back in order to explain the latter more clearly;  I like to get the strings on at this point (especially after the last beefy guitar which still needs to have the fretboard sorted out before it will play) so that I can be fairly sure the action is somewhere about the right area before I actually install the frets.  In order to put the strings on, you first need to put some kind of saddle in place and also install the machine-heads so that you can tighten then strings.  I made up the wooden parts of the three-part saddle - what I call the "sub-saddle" because it is topped by bits of fret wire in its final form - and adjusted their height and curve to match the fretboard.  At the other end I realised I really ought to get some polish on the headstock before putting the machine heads on because you don't want to keep installing and uninstalling the bushes through which the string-pegs slide because they are quite a tight fit.  (Last time I believe I took some veneer off when removing one).  Of course, before you polish something, you need to sand it to its final shape and smoothness.  You will have noticed that I spend a lot of time stepping back and back and back in order to achieve a fairly simple final aim.  After all this,  it looked like this:



Looks nice but I know that there's a bad join in the surface plate of laburnum just up near the top that will need filling at some point in the finishing process and I also know that the bottom right-hand machine head (i.e. the one for top E) needs to be removed and to have its holes re-aligned.

With all that on my mind you can probably imagine the sort of nightmares I had but I won't burden you those horrors.

Today was a new day and things always look better in the morning.  Went for a run with some village people (not Village People) at eight and got into the workshop around 9.30 and spent much of the day in there.  I sorted out the rogue machine-head and moved on to sorting out the neck and fretboard.  I had another carve at the heel and finalised the edge of the fingerboard as far as I could before actually installing the frets.  I re-sawed all the fret slots to make sure there was enough depth there to take the tang of the frets - about 1.5mm and cut all the frets the right length from my roll of fret-wire.  I didn't actually hammer in any frets at this stage because I hadn't yet checked the geometry of the strings/neck/bridge.  Once it was strung up I plucked a few strings to reassure myself that it sounded like a guitar and then measured the action at the twelfth fret:




Looks like about 2.3 mms, which is well into the right area.  (Notice, by the way, that any frets inserted at this stage have had their barbs removed so that they can be inserted and removed easily but which, for the same reason, don't actually sit flush with the fretboard).  Here's a picture of the whole thing:



By the way, have you noticed my orifice?  I'm rather proud of it.  It's the first time I have installed a truss-rod in a flat-top with access at the head end because I don't like fiddling around with little screws and covers so I have adopted the ajlucas hole in the head.  I think it's rather nice if a little orificial.

This evening I managed to insert three frets before I was called upon to light a barbecue, cook some food on it and then wash everything up.  I'll have to get back to it tomorrow.

Oh, by the way, I've decided not to lose sleep over the skinny bindings;  I'll leave them as they are for the time being and come back to them after I've polished the guitar if necessary.  I haven't really got time to fiddle with them at the moment.

well, it certainly looks guitary A day well spent, I'd spent.

Yup - it's come up a treat!

Right.  I finished polishing the Beefy Bryn at the end of last week and put the strings back on it and it plays.  Not only does it play but it plays very nicely.

I then looked at the new one - the one that this thread is concerned with.  Mrs RtheF and I looked at it and she agreed that it looked like a greasy tea-towel.  She didn't think that was a good look.  Not only is it plain but it is also greasy-looking.  If you put that together with the fact that I suspect it is not very "responsive" - i.e. it doesn't sound dramatically good - there is obviously only one way to turn.  I took a decision to hit it with scrapers and heavyweight sandpaper.  I probably took about a millimetre off it in places with 80 grit paper and then took it down through the grades until its texture was reminiscent of human skin.  It now steps up quite dramatically to the central spine and, with luck, that will help it sing a little;  it has certainly improved its looks.  Here is the process in photos;  here's how it stood last time you saw it:



Here's how it looked after a concerted effort with the old 80 grit (and a lot of hoovering):



And then simply add polish:



Yes!  It suddenly looks like a freshly laundered tea-towel;  let's hope it doesn't sound like one.

An enforced day off in London - the boy was performing in the Albert Hall (he dropped in nonchalantly...) - and then back to finishing off the polishing this morning.  Tomorrow I hope to finish the polishing and get the strings back on and see what it sounds like without the grease.  Mrs RtheF also wondered why I hadn't taken the sleeper-wood strip right down to the tail - or "butt" as the Americans would have it... quaint.  I think I see what she means.  It's not as if I didn't have enough sleeper.